Because, cladistically speaking at least, birds are dinosaurs, most closely related to the Dromaeosauridae like the Velociraptor.
True - but the dinosaur ancestors of birds displayed none of the attributes that this paper specifies as enabling them to escape this instant extinction story. So that hurts rather than helps their case.
Mammals 65 million years ago were tiny (mice sized) and most likely nocturnal
And this leaves out all the animals that survived and were much larger than many of the dinosaurs that went extinct. Crocodiles, for example. They weren't small, and couldn't burrow - so this bit of speculation falls straight over.
Then, of course, there's all the animals that lived in the sea that died out right along side similar-sized animals that didn't.
No, I think simplistic explanations just aren't going to cut it. Clearly there was something more complex going on - but it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure at this point, short of inventing a time machine. Certainly the fact that population sizes and diversification had already been decreasing for quite a long time tell us that there were other factors at work.
Looks solid to me. Unless something new comes up I consider the puzzle of the extinction events solved
I presume you mean "extinction event", not "events". There have been a few mass extinctions, not all caused by impacts.
Anyway, there's a lot of evidence to indicate that something probably hit the Earth, yes. The puzzle that remains is why it only affected the dinosaurs.
Remember, they were all sizes and lived in all kinds of environments, so saying things like "the smaller animals did such-and-such" also includes the smaller dinosaurs. We don't have any small dinosaurs running around today (or even large ones - assuming that they would have kept their capacity for diversifiation and speciation if even some had survived) so there was obviously more to it than "something big hit the Earth".
That is the remaining puzzle - and nobody has been able to even come close to solving it that I've heard. I'd be interested to hear of anyone who has, though!
The new study reviewed existing geologic evidence for the known impact and considered interesting patterns in species survival. How did some birds, mammals, crocodiles, snakes and other animals endure the calamity that wiped out larger species?
That's a good question. But it's got a bug in it - the phrase "wiped out larger spieces". Better to say - selectively wiped out one branch of animals that came in all shapes and sizes, and lived in all kinds of environments right alongside animals that *didn't* die out.
That asteroid sure was amazing!
The survivors burrowed underground or were protected from the firestorm by swamps or oceans, says study leader Doug Robertson of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The details were published in the May-June issue of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.
That's so plainly idiotic that it beggars belief. Dinosaurs came in a wide variety of sizes, some smaller than chickens. And there were many aquatic animals that also became extinct, that supposedly would have been safe according to this "study leader".
Another win for the hypothesis that makes for a good special effect, then. And published by the Geological Society - well colour me not suprised.
Even if that's a forgery, and not the real owner of the journal (the/. account is new with only this one message logged) there's truth to what is being said there.
Please don't troll this person's journal, no matter how uncool or lame or whatever it appears to you. It probably is someone the OP has a personal grudge against for some reason - otherwise why be so specific as to link to it?
According to Evan's first post, we'll soon be able to know "What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric."
Slashdot, be prepared to hand over the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters"!!
Were there cave men at the other end of history that couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest in sharp sticks?
Definitely. Imagine the first time you saw one announced at SS3 that had a sharp bone tied to the end, and then soon after a specially chipped and sharpened *rock*?
And then later, when the ones made from *metal* were developed the excitement would have even approached the fever pitch of the Ginger/IT hype. Except that it would have been well justified in that case...
The Domain Name System (DNS) is an example of a system that blends peer-to-peer networking with a hierarchical model of information ownership.
I think I see - it's the separation of the structure of the information at any point in time from the networking architecture that allows this definition to work. So even though requests may only ever go from server 1 to server 2, it's still peer-to-peer. That's an interesting idea - especially when you consider that in some cases the hierarchy is dynamic (a Transaction Monitor may be subordinate to another TM in one transaction, then the situation may be reversed in the very next transaction).
that is now starting to get seriously damaged by the civil and criminal suits that are getting about these days.
Perhaps. But maybe it's a question of language. Writing my previous post on this topic started me thinking that since "P2P" is now almost synonymous with "file sharing", you could just come up with a new name for all other applications. ("federated", perhaps?)
It's not fair and it's not right, but if it does reach the stage where everyone who talks about "peer to peer" is immediately suspect and investigated it might be the path of least resistance. At any rate, these systems are far too useful and ubiquitous to be stopped now, so I wouldn't worry about that!
I wonder if those companies with miss chat, dns, nntp, etc
A digression: I wasn't quite prepared to say that DNS is strictly peer-to-peer in my other post on this topic because I'm not familiar enough (read: can't remember) with the gory details. I was cautiously leaving it out as the servers higher up in the namespace never (that I remember) make requests of those lower down. Then again, since the servers are all providing the same functionality (broadly speaking) and whether they make calls or don't of any other specific server is an accident of their place in the hierarchy, and not intrinisic, I supposed you could make the case that it is in fact peer-to-peer.
It would definitely be a great example if it can in fact be defended as being truly peer-to-peer.
Anyone but a hypocrite can tell you that most P2P apps are indeed made for trading copyrighted material
There have been a few of these posts following the form of "but what are P2P apps used for, if not sharing copyrighted material?" I'll try to answer. If everyone said "P2P file-sharing apps" or just "file-sharing apps" or something along those lines I would tend to agree with you - these *are* mainly used for sharing copyrighted content.
However, not every "peer to peer" system is made for, or even capable of, file sharing. The only requirement is that both components in a networked system are "peers" - operating at the same level in the system's architecture. For example, your web browser and the Slashdot web server do not form a peer-to-peer system. One is a client and one is a server.
Now, if I've explained that correctly, you'll probably be able to come up with quite a few examples of real life "P2P" systems that having nothing to do with file sharing. To start with, anything that is capable of being "federated" is most likely some kind of P2P system. Enterprise level messaging and event processing systems are an example. Anything that is trying to maintain consistency across multiple copies of a document, or trying to move data around from server to server to optimize access is also probably some kind of peer-to-peer system at core.
I've worked on and contributed to a number of systems that are also P2P, yet that was not those system's important feature from the user's point of view - it just happened to be the selected architecture for the system.
Anyway, you probably get the idea. P2P applications, not used for file sharing, really are very commonplace.
Re:Setting the record straight on tithing
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 1
I've never known a church to do that!
No, they don't actually do a direct extraction from your credit card account, they use social pressure and fear of eternal torment and so on, but it's a joke, you see? Automated virtual religion + automated tithe extraction. It's funny, laugh, etc.
The principle in the NT church is that we are simply to be generous, for "God loves a cheerful giver.
I agree with this interpretation, and if I were a Christian that would be my position. And so it looks like you're lucky/smart enough not to be part of one of the organizations that forces this issue. But that does not mean it never happens.
As far as I can tell, the requirement to give 10% is very popular (just do some searching on the web), and there is definitely great pressure applied. I've known people who've had their local church leader person (minister, priest or whatever they called it, I know it varies between organizations) actually sit them down and insist on knowing their income to calculate the "tithe" properly. It's not quite handing over your tax return and credit card number, but it's heading that way.
It won't be a total substitute until you can hand over your credit card and income details so they can conveniently extract 10% of your pre-tax income out of you.
Don't forget Perl - the cover of Larry Wall's book "Programming Perl" has always featured a Camel, and the animal has since become the mascot of the language.
And "Learning Perl", likewise, has always had a Llama on the over, and is therefore referred to as "the llama".
Creationism, on the other hand, should be taught in school right next to evolution. They are both theories, neither of which is proven, and one should not be chosen above the other, but both should be taught
Now that's just sad.
But what the hell, I demand we also teach my theory that pink unicorns created the universe last Tuesday! Hint: "Creationism" is not a scientific theory, or any kind of science at all. Teach it all you want... just don't spout nonsense like, "it's a theory just like evolution." It only makes you appear ignorant.
Executive sycophant #2: "Maybe we shouldn't have outsourced the code to Elbonia for *this* project... especially if we were going to do the demo in the boardroom with live ammunition."
Actually, this was something the copy editor messed up, unfortunately. At ZeroC, there is absolutely no shortage of C++ skills:-) The sentence was meant to read "At Mutable Realms...", where some (but not all) developers have C++ experience.
Thanks for clearing that up - I wondered about that. It jumped out as probably the most untrue statement regarding the skill-set of an organization that I have ever seen!;)
Re:Bad form to reply to one's own posts, but...
on
Voice Of The Fire
·
· Score: 1
my plan is to overthrow God with my large and formidable army
According to the mythology, the last being with enough integrity to stand up to this disgusting, genocidal, and absolutely immoral tyrant has had rather bad press ever since.
Re:Bad form to reply to one's own posts, but...
on
Voice Of The Fire
·
· Score: 2, Funny
There is a God - the one in the Bible - fear and believe Him and you will be saved on Judgement Day.
Well, that's me convinced! It's all so simple. Just believe in anything that people tell you. Got it. Now, where do I sign up to give away ten percent of my pre-tax income?
Every non-technical user I know has similar sounding Windows troubles. And me, who rarely uses Windows, has to figure it out, and let me tell you right now - it isn't intuitive or easy to use in any way for the non-initiatied into "One Microsoft Way". This whole rant could well have been about any number of Windows sub-systems I've had to struggle with over the years.
Honestly, this problem is pretty much endemic in all software. And that's not a good thing - it's a important lesson for *every* software developer to learn.
I played many of these games to death on the C64. Some where a humorous slant on established themes (Matrix/Centipede, Attack of the Mutant Camels/Atari Empire Strikes Back), but others were truly original, like Iridis Alpha - a horizontally scrolling shooter where your craft was in the same level in two different dimensions at once via a split screen effect. That was really interesting twist on the old scrolling shooter - the Viewtiful Joe of it's day, but for shooters and not platform games.
Anyway, I want to point out that Jeff's a pretty good *writer*, as well. Back in the day (1983), the game "Matrix", with it's smooth scrolling grid background, was very impressive. Jeff wrote an article in some magazine describing exactly how he did this. Right down to the machine code level. No listings, just an engaging and detailed description that left you understanding *exactly* how to do it (*). So much so, that I turned around and added it to the game/toy/demo thing I was mucking about with at the time. I was 13. I'm not saying that makes me a child prodigy (I'm sure others will quickly list their early coding experiences that beat that), I'm actually saying that makes Jeff's writing very, very, good.
I'd like to see him write perhaps a whole book on something technical. Anything:) Perhaps a "Programming Pearls" style book for programmers seeking to get the most bang for the buck. His games seemed to break the boundaries of what we thought the C64 could do almost effortlessly.
(*) I know, you want to know how it was done, without using the C64's hardware smooth scrolling. The simple answer is he took an unused character, and altered the bitmap for it. So take a "T", then create 8 frames where the horizontal bar drops so that your bitmap is an upside down "T". Because of the way the C64 video chip worked, altering the bitmap of a character made *every* instance of this character on the screen change *instantly*, in hardware. So fill the screen with your "T", hook up a little bit of machine code to an interrupt to drive the animation, and you've got a full screen smooth scrolling grid with "practically zero effort" as Jeff put it. Reverse the animation and you go backwards. Now *that's* lateral thinking.
"Martians are from Mars, Venusians are from Venus"
So, according to Futurama, peddlers of stupid metaphors managed to finally sort that one out, even if it did take them 1000 years. I say that's far too optimistic.
No matter how unfairly you believe you were treated, don't bitch and moan about it.
We had to interview one job applicant who was recently laid off. He went into this long rant about how the management were incompetent, his coworkers were retards, it was all everyone else's fault, he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone was just too stupid to see it, and so on. There was also a mini-version of that same rant in his resume!
This frightening outburst was prompted by a fairly unprovocative question about what he did at his previous job.
We were left in absolutely no doubt as to why he was sacked. Why would you want someone like that around, who casts blame on everyone else at the first opportunity and behind their back when under pressure?
Slashdot Mirror
Because, cladistically speaking at least, birds are dinosaurs, most closely related to the Dromaeosauridae like the Velociraptor.
True - but the dinosaur ancestors of birds displayed none of the attributes that this paper specifies as enabling them to escape this instant extinction story. So that hurts rather than helps their case.
Mammals 65 million years ago were tiny (mice sized) and most likely nocturnal
There were larger ones.
And this leaves out all the animals that survived and were much larger than many of the dinosaurs that went extinct. Crocodiles, for example. They weren't small, and couldn't burrow - so this bit of speculation falls straight over.
Then, of course, there's all the animals that lived in the sea that died out right along side similar-sized animals that didn't.
No, I think simplistic explanations just aren't going to cut it. Clearly there was something more complex going on - but it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure at this point, short of inventing a time machine. Certainly the fact that population sizes and diversification had already been decreasing for quite a long time tell us that there were other factors at work.
Looks solid to me. Unless something new comes up I consider the puzzle of the extinction events solved
I presume you mean "extinction event", not "events". There have been a few mass extinctions, not all caused by impacts.
Anyway, there's a lot of evidence to indicate that something probably hit the Earth, yes. The puzzle that remains is why it only affected the dinosaurs.
Remember, they were all sizes and lived in all kinds of environments, so saying things like "the smaller animals did such-and-such" also includes the smaller dinosaurs. We don't have any small dinosaurs running around today (or even large ones - assuming that they would have kept their capacity for diversifiation and speciation if even some had survived) so there was obviously more to it than "something big hit the Earth".
That is the remaining puzzle - and nobody has been able to even come close to solving it that I've heard. I'd be interested to hear of anyone who has, though!
The new study reviewed existing geologic evidence for the known impact and considered interesting patterns in species survival. How did some birds, mammals, crocodiles, snakes and other animals endure the calamity that wiped out larger species?
That's a good question. But it's got a bug in it - the phrase "wiped out larger spieces". Better to say - selectively wiped out one branch of animals that came in all shapes and sizes, and lived in all kinds of environments right alongside animals that *didn't* die out.
That asteroid sure was amazing!
The survivors burrowed underground or were protected from the firestorm by swamps or oceans, says study leader Doug Robertson of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The details were published in the May-June issue of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.
That's so plainly idiotic that it beggars belief. Dinosaurs came in a wide variety of sizes, some smaller than chickens. And there were many aquatic animals that also became extinct, that supposedly would have been safe according to this "study leader".
Another win for the hypothesis that makes for a good special effect, then. And published by the Geological Society - well colour me not suprised.
Yeah, maybe, but on the other hand back then everything was just black and white!
Even if that's a forgery, and not the real owner of the journal (the /. account is new with only this one message logged) there's truth to what is being said there.
Please don't troll this person's journal, no matter how uncool or lame or whatever it appears to you. It probably is someone the OP has a personal grudge against for some reason - otherwise why be so specific as to link to it?
According to Evan's first post, we'll soon be able to know "What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric."
Slashdot, be prepared to hand over the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters"!!
Were there cave men at the other end of history that couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest in sharp sticks?
...
Definitely. Imagine the first time you saw one announced at SS3 that had a sharp bone tied to the end, and then soon after a specially chipped and sharpened *rock*?
And then later, when the ones made from *metal* were developed the excitement would have even approached the fever pitch of the Ginger/IT hype. Except that it would have been well justified in that case
I know, I realized *after* I submitted it. The propaganda is clearly working on me. God damn it.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is an example of a system that blends peer-to-peer networking with a hierarchical model of information ownership.
I think I see - it's the separation of the structure of the information at any point in time from the networking architecture that allows this definition to work. So even though requests may only ever go from server 1 to server 2, it's still peer-to-peer. That's an interesting idea - especially when you consider that in some cases the hierarchy is dynamic (a Transaction Monitor may be subordinate to another TM in one transaction, then the situation may be reversed in the very next transaction).
Its a really fertile area for research
Yes, I sincerely believe that is true.
that is now starting to get seriously damaged by the civil and criminal suits that are getting about these days.
Perhaps. But maybe it's a question of language. Writing my previous post on this topic started me thinking that since "P2P" is now almost synonymous with "file sharing", you could just come up with a new name for all other applications. ("federated", perhaps?)
It's not fair and it's not right, but if it does reach the stage where everyone who talks about "peer to peer" is immediately suspect and investigated it might be the path of least resistance. At any rate, these systems are far too useful and ubiquitous to be stopped now, so I wouldn't worry about that!
I wonder if those companies with miss chat, dns, nntp, etc
A digression: I wasn't quite prepared to say that DNS is strictly peer-to-peer in my other post on this topic because I'm not familiar enough (read: can't remember) with the gory details. I was cautiously leaving it out as the servers higher up in the namespace never (that I remember) make requests of those lower down. Then again, since the servers are all providing the same functionality (broadly speaking) and whether they make calls or don't of any other specific server is an accident of their place in the hierarchy, and not intrinisic, I supposed you could make the case that it is in fact peer-to-peer.
It would definitely be a great example if it can in fact be defended as being truly peer-to-peer.
Anyone but a hypocrite can tell you that most P2P apps are indeed made for trading copyrighted material
There have been a few of these posts following the form of "but what are P2P apps used for, if not sharing copyrighted material?" I'll try to answer. If everyone said "P2P file-sharing apps" or just "file-sharing apps" or something along those lines I would tend to agree with you - these *are* mainly used for sharing copyrighted content.
However, not every "peer to peer" system is made for, or even capable of, file sharing. The only requirement is that both components in a networked system are "peers" - operating at the same level in the system's architecture. For example, your web browser and the Slashdot web server do not form a peer-to-peer system. One is a client and one is a server.
Now, if I've explained that correctly, you'll probably be able to come up with quite a few examples of real life "P2P" systems that having nothing to do with file sharing. To start with, anything that is capable of being "federated" is most likely some kind of P2P system. Enterprise level messaging and event processing systems are an example. Anything that is trying to maintain consistency across multiple copies of a document, or trying to move data around from server to server to optimize access is also probably some kind of peer-to-peer system at core.
I've worked on and contributed to a number of systems that are also P2P, yet that was not those system's important feature from the user's point of view - it just happened to be the selected architecture for the system.
Anyway, you probably get the idea. P2P applications, not used for file sharing, really are very commonplace.
Hope that helps!
We might actually have to go back to using Usenet and the streets of New York for our bootleg videos and music! How could we do that?
Easy. We could go to the streets of New York to download The Gangs of New York.
Alternatively, we could go to the gangs of New York to download The Streets of New York.
I've never known a church to do that!
No, they don't actually do a direct extraction from your credit card account, they use social pressure and fear of eternal torment and so on, but it's a joke, you see? Automated virtual religion + automated tithe extraction. It's funny, laugh, etc.
The principle in the NT church is that we are simply to be generous, for "God loves a cheerful giver.
I agree with this interpretation, and if I were a Christian that would be my position. And so it looks like you're lucky/smart enough not to be part of one of the organizations that forces this issue. But that does not mean it never happens.
As far as I can tell, the requirement to give 10% is very popular (just do some searching on the web), and there is definitely great pressure applied. I've known people who've had their local church leader person (minister, priest or whatever they called it, I know it varies between organizations) actually sit them down and insist on knowing their income to calculate the "tithe" properly. It's not quite handing over your tax return and credit card number, but it's heading that way.
It won't be a total substitute until you can hand over your credit card and income details so they can conveniently extract 10% of your pre-tax income out of you.
Don't forget Perl - the cover of Larry Wall's book "Programming Perl" has always featured a Camel, and the animal has since become the mascot of the language.
...
And "Learning Perl", likewise, has always had a Llama on the over, and is therefore referred to as "the llama".
Can't be a coincidence
Creationism, on the other hand, should be taught in school right next to evolution. They are both theories, neither of which is proven, and one should not be chosen above the other, but both should be taught
... just don't spout nonsense like, "it's a theory just like evolution." It only makes you appear ignorant.
Now that's just sad.
But what the hell, I demand we also teach my theory that pink unicorns created the universe last Tuesday! Hint: "Creationism" is not a scientific theory, or any kind of science at all. Teach it all you want
There is almost no difference between C#/Mono/.NET and Java, but almost no Linux developers write in Java
;)
We don't need, or want, Java *or* C# because we already have Python
"YOU HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS TO COMPLY!"
...
... especially if we were going to do the demo in the boardroom with live ammunition."
Executive sycophant puts down weapon
*BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA*
*BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA* *BUDDA*
Executive sycophant #2: "Maybe we shouldn't have outsourced the code to Elbonia for *this* project
Actually, this was something the copy editor messed up, unfortunately. At ZeroC, there is absolutely no shortage of C++ skills :-) The sentence was meant to read "At Mutable Realms...", where some (but not all) developers have C++ experience.
;)
Thanks for clearing that up - I wondered about that. It jumped out as probably the most untrue statement regarding the skill-set of an organization that I have ever seen!
my plan is to overthrow God with my large and formidable army
According to the mythology, the last being with enough integrity to stand up to this disgusting, genocidal, and absolutely immoral tyrant has had rather bad press ever since.
There is a God - the one in the Bible - fear and believe Him and you will be saved on Judgement Day.
Well, that's me convinced! It's all so simple. Just believe in anything that people tell you. Got it. Now, where do I sign up to give away ten percent of my pre-tax income?
Every non-technical user I know has similar sounding Windows troubles. And me, who rarely uses Windows, has to figure it out, and let me tell you right now - it isn't intuitive or easy to use in any way for the non-initiatied into "One Microsoft Way". This whole rant could well have been about any number of Windows sub-systems I've had to struggle with over the years.
Honestly, this problem is pretty much endemic in all software. And that's not a good thing - it's a important lesson for *every* software developer to learn.
I played many of these games to death on the C64. Some where a humorous slant on established themes (Matrix/Centipede, Attack of the Mutant Camels/Atari Empire Strikes Back), but others were truly original, like Iridis Alpha - a horizontally scrolling shooter where your craft was in the same level in two different dimensions at once via a split screen effect. That was really interesting twist on the old scrolling shooter - the Viewtiful Joe of it's day, but for shooters and not platform games.
:) Perhaps a "Programming Pearls" style book for programmers seeking to get the most bang for the buck. His games seemed to break the boundaries of what we thought the C64 could do almost effortlessly.
Anyway, I want to point out that Jeff's a pretty good *writer*, as well. Back in the day (1983), the game "Matrix", with it's smooth scrolling grid background, was very impressive. Jeff wrote an article in some magazine describing exactly how he did this. Right down to the machine code level. No listings, just an engaging and detailed description that left you understanding *exactly* how to do it (*). So much so, that I turned around and added it to the game/toy/demo thing I was mucking about with at the time. I was 13. I'm not saying that makes me a child prodigy (I'm sure others will quickly list their early coding experiences that beat that), I'm actually saying that makes Jeff's writing very, very, good.
I'd like to see him write perhaps a whole book on something technical. Anything
(*) I know, you want to know how it was done, without using the C64's hardware smooth scrolling. The simple answer is he took an unused character, and altered the bitmap for it. So take a "T", then create 8 frames where the horizontal bar drops so that your bitmap is an upside down "T". Because of the way the C64 video chip worked, altering the bitmap of a character made *every* instance of this character on the screen change *instantly*, in hardware. So fill the screen with your "T", hook up a little bit of machine code to an interrupt to drive the animation, and you've got a full screen smooth scrolling grid with "practically zero effort" as Jeff put it. Reverse the animation and you go backwards. Now *that's* lateral thinking.
"Martians are from Mars, Venusians are from Venus"
So, according to Futurama, peddlers of stupid metaphors managed to finally sort that one out, even if it did take them 1000 years. I say that's far too optimistic.
No matter how unfairly you believe you were treated, don't bitch and moan about it.
We had to interview one job applicant who was recently laid off. He went into this long rant about how the management were incompetent, his coworkers were retards, it was all everyone else's fault, he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone was just too stupid to see it, and so on. There was also a mini-version of that same rant in his resume!
This frightening outburst was prompted by a fairly unprovocative question about what he did at his previous job.
We were left in absolutely no doubt as to why he was sacked. Why would you want someone like that around, who casts blame on everyone else at the first opportunity and behind their back when under pressure?