How is this even remotely surprising? Being "mentally challenged" doesn't mean you have to look odd. We're looking at the tail end of the bell curve here, not some alien species.
Don't show the user what he/she doesn't need at the moment (context sensitivity).
Oh dear, I really don't like this one. The UI will be in constant flux. I won't know where things are or what the application can do. Also, there's a chance I am about to do what they don't expect me to do.
Bullshit. Human interaction with computers is embarrassingly inadequate. I still have a calculator, despite having a computer capable of billions of FLOPS, why? I still sometimes write things on paper, even with my computer right in front of me, and being able to type faster than I write by hand--why do I do that?
I'll tell you why: because computer interfaces still pretty much suck. Getting what I want in front of me RIGHT NOW is an elusive thing in computerland.
DNA mutation rates are not fixed. They need to be calibrated against the fossil record, as well as a bunch of other stuff. DNA evidence is not the magic definite science you seek.
The problem with bats was the lack of early fossils. Morphological studies with a good fossil record can be pretty reliable. It is not just conjecture--morphological studies include predictions which can be tested.
I aree with what you've said to a point. But consciousnesses don't mingle (at least, mine hasn't...), our consciousness remains locked to our individual brains and perception. If we do any sort of human brain networking, that could change. And that would be mind-bendingly weird.
Yeah, I agree. You can bet they're using equipment (cameras, microphones, etc.) from film schools too. It would be interesting to see how much this would have cost if they'd paid wages and bought or rented their equipment.
"Groupthink"? Oh please. This issue is discussed over and over in the literature. The impact hit large animals with high energy requirements hardest, and everything else hard. Hence you get big things with moderate to high metabolisms going extinct completely, and many, many smaller things going extinct as well. If you were small, you had a chance. If you were big, but had low energy requirements, you had a chance. If you were big, and had high energy requirements, you had little to no chance. This is the pattern of the extinction, and it matches the impact theory.
I see this over and over again on Slashdot: the assumption that scientists are complete fools who have not managed to think of some simple gotcha you do seconds into thinking about a topic. THEY DO, they also look at a bunch of stuff you haven't thought of, and test it as well.
Sorry, but it really seems like you're talking out of your arse. You do not prove things in any science, you come up with falsifiable theories, and test them out. The more falsifiable the better. It is also clear that you are not at all familiar with the research in the area. The bolide impact theory has a lot of interface with the data, and is immensely falsifiable. It has enormous explanatory power, and is not at this moment falsified by any data.
Could it be wrong? Sure it could! But coming up with little pet theories about what "killed the dinosaurs" is not going to cut it, and neither are tired and refuted arguments like the one above.
These arguments are trashed out in the literature, you just have to look at it.
The fossil record goes through good and bad patches. Very few people suggests this actually corresponds to real biodiversity. The second-to-last (Campanian) stage of the Late Cretaceous is very good in a lot of places, whereas the stages both earlier (Santonian) and later (Maastrichtian) are not so good. In fact, the Maatstrichtian deposits show more diversity than any pre-Campanian deposit in the Late Cretaceous. What we are probably looking at is a spectacularly good stage for preservation in the Campanian, followed by merely decent one in the Maastrichtian.
That would be true if the sample is small (which to a certain extent it is). We will never "prove" (proof is for mathematicians) that a bunch of things went extinct on a certain date, but we can built a compelling statistical likelihood.
Where are you getting your information? I expect what you say is true of small animals, but nearly all non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous were large (large=bigger than a cat, in this context). They almost certainly would have died out in the weeks and months following the impact. I'm not aware of any confirmed non-avian dinosaurs alive after the iridium layer.
No, all the evidence suggests it was in a blink of an eye. Also, there's no reason to think that mammals were "more adaptive" than dinosaurs (if anything, it was the other way around!).
The problem with the "already in decline" arguments is that there are statistical effects that make sudden extinctions look gradual. This has pretty much been demonstrated to be the case for Late Cretaceous dinosaurs (I don't know about ammonites).
People want to cling to the K/T extinction being a mystery for some reason. It just isn't anymore. If you want a good mystery, the Permian-Triassic extinction event is bigger, and still (relatively) unexplained.
That paper has been sharply criticised by other palaeontologists working in the area.
Please, treat all, "the meteorite didn't kill the dinosaurs!" articles and papers (even if they're in peer-reviewed journals) with extreme scepticism. They are almost always embarrassingly myopic or out of date. There is an imperial fuckload of evidence that the bolide impact did it.
You know what, everyone on slashdot loves to keep repeating this, but things change. It's obvious that copyright has become a sort of property right. If you want to change copyright, argue on its merits, not on what it was "designed" to do originally.
Why shouldn't we let astronauts take risks, if they are willing to do so?
Doing this stuff with very low risk mean we are much less likely to try at all. If you've got people that want to try, why not?
Slashdot Mirror
... you mean most of the people here aren't chicks? I'VE WASTED MY LIFE!
How is this even remotely surprising? Being "mentally challenged" doesn't mean you have to look odd. We're looking at the tail end of the bell curve here, not some alien species.
Don't show the user what he/she doesn't need at the moment (context sensitivity).
Oh dear, I really don't like this one. The UI will be in constant flux. I won't know where things are or what the application can do. Also, there's a chance I am about to do what they don't expect me to do.
Bullshit. Human interaction with computers is embarrassingly inadequate. I still have a calculator, despite having a computer capable of billions of FLOPS, why? I still sometimes write things on paper, even with my computer right in front of me, and being able to type faster than I write by hand--why do I do that?
I'll tell you why: because computer interfaces still pretty much suck. Getting what I want in front of me RIGHT NOW is an elusive thing in computerland.
It may give that feeling--but it doesn't actually give me conscious experience of any other brain.
'Fish' is the plural of 'fish'. 'Fishes' refers to a taxonomic group (now largely out of favour), which is why you see it in technical writing.
DNA mutation rates are not fixed. They need to be calibrated against the fossil record, as well as a bunch of other stuff. DNA evidence is not the magic definite science you seek.
The problem with bats was the lack of early fossils. Morphological studies with a good fossil record can be pretty reliable. It is not just conjecture--morphological studies include predictions which can be tested.
I agree! That all makes perfect sense... except for that bit after "Qadi Sa'id develops a concept of time [...]".
I aree with what you've said to a point. But consciousnesses don't mingle (at least, mine hasn't...), our consciousness remains locked to our individual brains and perception. If we do any sort of human brain networking, that could change. And that would be mind-bendingly weird.
"The nerd rapture"
Yeah, I agree. You can bet they're using equipment (cameras, microphones, etc.) from film schools too. It would be interesting to see how much this would have cost if they'd paid wages and bought or rented their equipment.
This is absolutely correct.
"Groupthink"? Oh please. This issue is discussed over and over in the literature. The impact hit large animals with high energy requirements hardest, and everything else hard. Hence you get big things with moderate to high metabolisms going extinct completely, and many, many smaller things going extinct as well. If you were small, you had a chance. If you were big, but had low energy requirements, you had a chance. If you were big, and had high energy requirements, you had little to no chance. This is the pattern of the extinction, and it matches the impact theory.
I see this over and over again on Slashdot: the assumption that scientists are complete fools who have not managed to think of some simple gotcha you do seconds into thinking about a topic. THEY DO, they also look at a bunch of stuff you haven't thought of, and test it as well.
Sorry, but it really seems like you're talking out of your arse. You do not prove things in any science, you come up with falsifiable theories, and test them out. The more falsifiable the better. It is also clear that you are not at all familiar with the research in the area. The bolide impact theory has a lot of interface with the data, and is immensely falsifiable. It has enormous explanatory power, and is not at this moment falsified by any data.
Could it be wrong? Sure it could! But coming up with little pet theories about what "killed the dinosaurs" is not going to cut it, and neither are tired and refuted arguments like the one above.
These arguments are trashed out in the literature, you just have to look at it.
The fossil record goes through good and bad patches. Very few people suggests this actually corresponds to real biodiversity. The second-to-last (Campanian) stage of the Late Cretaceous is very good in a lot of places, whereas the stages both earlier (Santonian) and later (Maastrichtian) are not so good. In fact, the Maatstrichtian deposits show more diversity than any pre-Campanian deposit in the Late Cretaceous. What we are probably looking at is a spectacularly good stage for preservation in the Campanian, followed by merely decent one in the Maastrichtian.
Well, we are obviously talking about a context outside of a large bolide impact.
That would be true if the sample is small (which to a certain extent it is). We will never "prove" (proof is for mathematicians) that a bunch of things went extinct on a certain date, but we can built a compelling statistical likelihood.
Where are you getting your information? I expect what you say is true of small animals, but nearly all non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous were large (large=bigger than a cat, in this context). They almost certainly would have died out in the weeks and months following the impact. I'm not aware of any confirmed non-avian dinosaurs alive after the iridium layer.
No, all the evidence suggests it was in a blink of an eye. Also, there's no reason to think that mammals were "more adaptive" than dinosaurs (if anything, it was the other way around!).
2.45729 times bigger.
The problem with the "already in decline" arguments is that there are statistical effects that make sudden extinctions look gradual. This has pretty much been demonstrated to be the case for Late Cretaceous dinosaurs (I don't know about ammonites).
People want to cling to the K/T extinction being a mystery for some reason. It just isn't anymore. If you want a good mystery, the Permian-Triassic extinction event is bigger, and still (relatively) unexplained.
That paper has been sharply criticised by other palaeontologists working in the area.
Please, treat all, "the meteorite didn't kill the dinosaurs!" articles and papers (even if they're in peer-reviewed journals) with extreme scepticism. They are almost always embarrassingly myopic or out of date. There is an imperial fuckload of evidence that the bolide impact did it.
You know what, everyone on slashdot loves to keep repeating this, but things change. It's obvious that copyright has become a sort of property right. If you want to change copyright, argue on its merits, not on what it was "designed" to do originally.
Why shouldn't we let astronauts take risks, if they are willing to do so? Doing this stuff with very low risk mean we are much less likely to try at all. If you've got people that want to try, why not?
I would use the Loc Nest Monster [...]
Err, LocH NesS Monster. So called because it (supposedly) lives in Loch Ness. Not a nest.