....they just want a nice piece of paper to wave in front of possible employers.....
That is because that's what employers require before they'll give an applicant even a second look. Long before institutionalized learning existed, the object of all learning was to have life and survival skills. These were passed from parents and grandparents to the children -- from generation to generation. As the productivity of people increased beyond the bare bones survival level, the arts and sciences and with them education became more common and was institutionalized.
Even as late as in my father's day, children were ready to become productive members of society by the time they were 18 or so. Today a person of this age very often has still no idea what they would like to do to pay their way through life. In his day, an 8th grade education and an apprenticeship was the norm for boys. Girls learned domestic skills from their mothers.
Learning is a lifelong process, but it should not come at the expense of the average person not becoming a productive member of society for as long as is usually the case today. Society does NOT owe anyone an easy living.
...What is the proposed physics of these "properties of space"? Why would they affect the speed of light but not any other details of the radiation passing through?....
Space, like any other medium through which electromagnetic radiation travels has an effect on the propagation thereof. Space has certain measureable electrical and magnetic properties. As the Universe expanded, space expanded with it. There is indeed evidence that light speed has changed over time. The quantized redshift observations is one such evidence. (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0008/00080 26.pdf) Abandoning the belief of the absolute constancy of certain parameters of the Universe makes the job of explaining recent observations a lot simpler. The pioneer space probe (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0104064) puzzle is easily explained, as is the problem of "dark matter" and "dark energy" if the speed of light and its inverse Planck's constant are not really constant. The properties of space affect not only the propagation of energy, but also the some fundamental properties of every atom contained in that space. Radioactive decay is one of the properties of the atom that will change. When such fundamental parameters vary, the relationships between them can and do remain constant, making it hard to determine what is going on until some abolute quantity can be found to compare each of them against.
.....While I and many other christians don't agree with the creationists attack on evolution....
Many Christians have also bought into the one fundamental tenet of evolution. That is the immense periods of time evolution requires to accomplish its work. Of all physical quantities scientists can measure time is more accurately measured than any other physical quantity, yet nobody REALLY understands its true nature. All measurements of time (clocks) require some kind of constant, repetitive motion. Until recently, man has used the regular motion of the earth and other heavenly bodies to mark off times and seasons. Nowadays we use the motion of atoms, such as the cesium beam clocks and radioactivity to date rocks and other things. The motions of all clocks are governed by forces and interactions of gravity in the former and the forces of electrodynamics in the latter. It is the ASSSUMED constancy of these forces that governs the constancy of the clocks. If either of these forces change, then the clocks based thereon will also change. The equations of gravity to not contain any units referenced or related to time, whereas the equations for the electrodynamic interactions do, such as Planck's constant h or c, the speed of light.
Modern science is based on the BELIEF that these "constants" have never changed. As a Christian you can read in your Bible (1Peter 3:3-10) a little hint from God Himself, penned by the Apostle Peter that things have not always been and will not always be as constant as many assume or would like them to be. There have been and will be again, major discontinuities in both the physical creation which scientists can study and also even more so in the spiritual dimensions that can only be grasped by faith.
Constructs such as as dark matter are needed only because of this underlying belief in the unchangeableness in the "constants" of nature. God doesn't change, but that doesn't mean He who came up with the laws of nature by which evolution operates, cannot adjust these laws of nature as he sees fit. God tells us in many places of the Bible that He has in the past and will in the future change how nature operates in some very fundamental ways.
.......And emotion has anything to do with science?....
Very much so, for better or worse, since scientists are still human. Humans make assumptions (faith) and then color all their observations by that faith.
One assumption that most scientists are emotionally attached to is the idea of "constants" in nature, none of which are allowed to change over the vast periods of time the Universe has existed. There is no reason to postulate that all or at least some of these "constants" are not subject change except belief or faith.
When Edwin Hubble discovered the red shift of distant starlight, he ASSUMED this is caused by the well known Doppler effect. This has been and still is the DOGMA ( Hubble's LAW even) that neccessitates fictional, convoluted inventions such as dark matter, dark energy and possibly gravitons.
.....You know as a child I made up invisible things to blame....
Scientists also, like children, make assumptions (faith, belief) that even when long held may turn out to be wrong. The rapid motions of the galaxies arises from the ASSUMPTION that the oberved red shift of the light from these galaxies is due to the Doppler effect, rather than other reasons. One thing true of all humans, including scientists, is that we generally resist change. Scientists like to assume that there are certain constants in nature that NEVER change. This assumption may not be correct for ALL so called constants in nature -- some may not be constant over the vast periods of time involved. One of these is Planck's "constant" which governs how atoms, when excited, emit light. Another is the speed of light c, inversely related to the above. The value of c is highly dependent on the medium through which it propagates. If the very properties of space itself change, as the Universe expands, then the speed of light will also change. If the red shift of the light from these distant galaxies is due to such a change, then there is no need to "invent" dark matter or convoluted graviton explanations because the galaxies are NOT moving at the astonishing velocities the present underlying assumptions require.
....This will surely end up in the lap of the Supreme Court, and hopefully they will find the DMCA unconstitutional.....
More likely this will come up before Congress after millions of video ipod owners find that they cannot do with the movies they own for artificial legal reasons, what they have been doing with their music. This DMCA crap is something that Congress came up with and that only Congess can fix. It has nothing to do with the constitution.
.....Such a license could also be created so as to be non-transferrable, in that if you sell someone the original media, they don't get the license.....
Bullshit! The doctrine of first sale applies to ALL goods, even software. A piece of paper from a corporation does NOT make a binding law. If I buy some software for a Windows computer and later get a Mac, I can sell the whole Windows computer and all the software disks that came with it or that I bought for it later. Whatever is printed on the packages or on the disks cannot EVER prevent me from doing this. ANYTHING I buy, I can sell again, no matter what the corporate fat cat lawyers write in their worthless paper. Copyright laws is just that -- it applies to making copies, not how you use or dispose of legitimately aquired material.
.....The question that needs to be asked is, if you buy a DVD, are you allowed to put it onto an iPod?.....
According to fair use, yes, according to the DMCA no. I suspect this conflict of law may have to get sorted out in court. As the video iPods get more numerous, millions of consumers will get upset that they cannot do with their purchased DVDs as the now do with the audio CDs they have bought. They will either ignore the DMCA law wholesale or, what is more likely, clamor for the law to be changed. Corporations do not vote, but the people do and that fact is not lost on our Congress persons. Once there are 20 to 30 million video iPods and/or other portable playback devices in the hands of the public, the people will not stand for what the content providers have been able to pull off regularly before digital technology came along -- make everybody purchase the same stuff over again, just because the media upon which the content resides changes from time to time. What happened to music will also take place in the video arena. Existing video content will be migrated to new devices without the content owners getting a piece of the action again and again for the stuff people have already paid them for.
....Other than continuing availability of new titles and of reprints of older titles? Where is your VHS now?.....
Some key advantages of DVD over VHS do not exist for the DVD to HD DVD transition. Tapes need rewinding and are subject to deterioration and wear. DVD's are random access, don't wear and did not need the replacement of the rest of the reproducing equipment. For HD TV, unless a new very expensive TV is purchased, there is no advantage in having to buy new equipment and the same content again. Both CDs and DVD's are plenty good enough for millions of consumers. The new, fancy super quality audio SACD and DVDs have bombed and so will the new expensive HD DVDs, especially if there is a bruising format war between BluRay and HD-DVDs.
(...Computer hardware wears out and eventually fails catastrophically....)
I still have a 1993 Apple Color Classic that runs 24/7 as an answering/fax machine just fine. A well made computer can last for a pretty long time. It is also still useful as a programmer for a number of X-10 power control modules scattered around the house. Hard drives are pretty cheap these days. If a computer still works, replacing one is much cheaper than a whole new computer.
(......All new computers that are preloaded with Windows Vista will have a Trusted Platform Module....)
Are you saying that MS will not make a version of VISTA to upgrade the millions of already existing ordinary PCs? I don't believe that. However, if this were true, then that is another good reason to buy an OSX or Linux system. MS has tried and failed to control the Internet and there is really no compelling advantage for technology companies to make a product for which there is no demand by the customers. Of course the content providers may purchase Congress once again, like they did for the DMCA and get laws passed mandating such technology.
......Because you're still running on a virtual PC. You basically have an extra layer of software which translates the signals and requests from your virtual OS to the OS that's actually interfacing with the hardware. There's always going to be slowdown when you have an extra translation step involved - that's a simple fact that you can't get around........
You are right, there will be some slow down, especially if, as has been true so far, the context switching between the host and guest OS and its apps is done in the host OS software. However, the biggest time penalty is in the translations of the actual processor instructions if the those of the guest OS are written for a different instruction set. This has been true for VPC running under the PPC version of OSX, but would no longer apply in the new Intel based Macs. In addition, as I understand it, the new Intel processors support some of the context switching between OS directly in hardware, thereby further reducing the performance penalty of virtualization. The goal of virtualization is to be able to run multiple OS and their attendant apps, all simultaneously on a given hardware yet allow close communication between the systems. This makes a single computer running say OSX, Windows and Linux all at the same time much better than three computers, all natively booted into those respective OS. This advantage of virtualization also applies to the case of three OS booted on one computer in three sepearate disk partitions. It is a case of the sum being greater than its individual parts. The power of modern, multi-processor computer hardware is such, that speed considerations are secondary in the actual uses such hardware is put by the vast majority of users. On my dual PPC PowerMac, VPC works about as well as it does on our older 1.2Ghz AMD powered box, both running Win2K.
High action type games are indeed the most common, very processing intensive applications, for which a dedicated game console is a much better solution than a general purpose computing device.
Virtualization overcomes the fact that each OS has its own distinct file system. A dynamically expanding virtual disk file for each guest OS is a much more efficient way to utilize disk space than needing to have a seperate disk or partition for each OS. Also, getting a virus in virtual Windows is not nearly as bad as on a standard PC, since a clean backup of a virtual disk file can replace the infected one in a few seconds. Because the screwed up virtual disk file(s) can be mounted in the master OS, OSX in this case, the personal data thereon can be recovered without danger from the virus and re-copied quickly to the clean virtual disk file. After the restore is done, the old infected virtual file is trashed and a new backup of the restored virtual disk created. The whole cleanup and restore process could be done by a special program that is activated with a single mouse click.
That's 5 to 9 years away! This is an eternity in Internet time. Meanwhile I'll not hold my breath. How many people are still using Win98 or even Win95? Look how slowly the much vaunted transition to HD TV is going. Government and big business have a hard time forcing stuff down people's throats when the majority don't see a compelling advantage over the stuff that exists already. I suspect the HD DVD will bomb spectacularly since this technology doesn't offer a really compelling advantage over existing DVD. The reason the ipod is so successfull is that it allows anyone to take their entire music collection with them, wherever they go. That possibility has never existed before. What advantage will a new computer with TPM have over even a Win98 box for a Joe or Jane who just want to e-mail their kids and grandkids? What advantage will such a computer have for a video or photo maker. What advantage will such a computer have for a doctor or hospital that just wants to access the patient information?
Even for millions of users, government, businesses and home users to be required to replace their still otherwise perfectly working networking components will be a tough sell. Unlike, earlier analog days, digital information can be reformatted and re-purposed easily and without quality losses. Any artificial roadblocks, such as DRM, to this inherent property of digital data are ultimately doomed to fail. It's like trying to make the shit from your toilet flow uphill.
.....The ONLY thing holding linux back from mass-acception is games and certain applications like......
Not ONLY that, but that many hardware devices don't work with Linux because there are several flavors of Linux and manufacturers of such hardware have really not an economic incentive to spend writing drivers that will work correctly with the various flavors of Linux. With Windows, a user can pick any network or USB device at Best Buy or Fry's and upon getting it home, have a good chance that it will work on the first try. With Linux, many devices will never work, even if the user is an advanced geek. With Mac OSX, the driver issue is less difficult because there is much less variation in the hardware and the software then with PC/Windows. Look at the installation instructions for a good sampling of hardware devices, such as scanners, printers, USB MIDI adapters and such and the instructions for OSX are the shortest, most often a single mouse click or maybe two. Linux need one standardized version and someone with the *authority* to enforce that standard. Absent this, Linux will be used as servers and other uses only by very computer expert users. Embedded applications wilth limited user interaction are also good candidates for Linux.
.....First of all, OSX is going to be Treacherous too......
Not likely unless Jobs dies or is kicked out of Apple (again) and replaced by someone like Ballmer. As the millions of non-geek iPod users discover that they cannot copy their favorite DVD movie they bought at Walmart to their iPod not because of some technical limitation, but only because of some stupid law called the DMCA, there is a good chance the the outcry will reach and force Congress to revisit that issue. These millions of DVD and iPod owners will want to watch their movies on their iPods without having to buy/download a special copy of content they already paid for. There is a convoluted way of doing this now using (illegal) DVD ripping software and the proper encoding programs. The number of video iPods and other mobile video devices is still quite small, but will likely increase geometrically in the next few years. In the end it is still people, not corporations that vote. Politicians know this and are surprisingly responsive to a massive outcry from their constituents. Most music on iPods got there from people's CD collections because CDs can be easily copied. Millions of people will want to do the same thing from their DVD collection. Up until now the DMCA and DRM has not really had much effect on the large masses of the voters, but the shit will hit the fan when millons find out that the lawmakers have artificially prevented them from doing with video, what they have been doing for years with audio. DRM will be dead after all that happens -- and it will!
...... in order for your machine to get a routable IP address.....
How will this work for machines behind a router/NAT/firewall box? Our machines get their ip on the LAN from its DHCP service and the WAN section gets an ip from the ISP. The ISP has no way of determining what kind of computers are connected to the LAN. Will MS force everyone to replace or reprogram their network gateways?
I don't think this can be implemented until ip6 becomes used by everyone-- world-wide.
.....and the performance will always be singificantly slower than on a native windows box......
Why should this be if the processor in Windows and OSX is the same? Perhaps some game programs that can and are allowed to access video hardware directly may be slower. If these new Intel Macs sell well, the game developers should be able to make games run on the Mac fairly easily. For other Windows software, such as special vertical apps, virtual PC works reasonably well, even now on a PPC based Mac. It should be much better on the new Macs since there is no emulation. MS will likely make an new version of VPC available and sell that bundled with Windows XP or the upcoming VISTA. The may make more money from that than they do with the Mac version of office.
....Mammals, perhaps, couldn't evolve in such a scenario, but plenty of life on earth deals with changes.....
There are of course lower life forms and even warm blooded creatures (penguins) that can take some pretty extreme conditions, especially of cold, but there is not much of anything that can survive at 100C or above for long, if at all. Certainly Mercury and Venus are way too hot for any kind of life. Complex biological processes operate most efficiently in a very narrow range, the blood temperature of the warm blooded species.
To have a planet that can have intelligent life (what SETI is looking for) needs to have a number of other narrowly defined specifications. There must be water and oxygen (the right amount of each) and those require a minimum and maximum size (mass). Too high a mass would not allow poisonous gases like methane to escape from the atmosphere, a planet like Venus and larger. Too small mass and the planet could not retain water. It would evaporate into space, and make a planet like Mars or Mrecury.
The rotation rate must be reasonable. If too slow, it gets too cold at night and if too fast, the storms in the atmosphere can get really devastating. There are other critcal specs, such as the size and location of the moon(s) (if any), a magnetic field to deflect damaging charged particles, carbon dioxide-water vapor balance, uv shielding (ozone or equivalent) and others.
The star such a planet orbits must meet certain specs also. Too large a star would cause its long term energy output vary more than living things could stand. A too tiny star would force the planet to be too close to its sun to get enough heat for life. This would mess up the rotation of tsuch a planet and cause tidal forces that would make life difficult if at all possible.
There are other requirements, such as the spectral quality of the light and others.
Statistical analysis by modern computer methods shows that by random processes alone much fewer than one trillionth of one trillionth of one precent of all stars might be part of a system such as what we call the solar system, our home. Since the universe contains about a trillion galaxies, with each galaxy some 100 billion stars, that leaves us still far short of even one planet such as Earth coming into existence by any random evolutionary process. SETI is a big waste of money!
.....We used to sell them to customers too far out in the sticks to get anything but dialup.....
Apple sells the Airport extreme wired/wireless router with a modem built in. For anyone who does not do much more on the Internet than send/receive simple, text based email once or twice each day or send some simple text based data to some data center, dial up is still a perfectly reasonable, low cost way to use the Internet. Combined with a router as you mentioned, or one of the airport units, a fairly safe system, even for Windows can be had without the interminable update downloads. Clicking on an email or malicious web page can get your windows computer infected, regardless of whether it is connected over dial up or a 45Mb/s fiber connection. When the need for a faster connection arises, plug a DSL or cable modem into the airport and enjoy the speed. Broadband is swell, and so is a fast car, but some people still get where they want to go on a bicycle.
.....as we are the system seems to be one of those rare single star systems......
Good thing for us that there isn't another object the mass of the sun within about 3.8 light years of earth. Even as it is, the planets do influence one another's orbits, but their masses and spacing are such as to keep the earth's orbit from getting too elliptical. Because of the nearly circular orbit, the distance to the sun is constant enough keep the temperature within the bounds needed for life. Another object approaching the mass of the sun would force the orbit to be more elliptical, which would make this planet unsuitable for life as we know it. About half of the known stars are too close to each other for any of those to have a planet that could keep its temperature in the very narrow range wherein water exists in its liquid form. The temperature specs for higher life forms are considerably narrower than this. The nearest star to earth is Alpha Centauri, a nice safe 4.2 light years distant.
Other than emulation speed, running VPC on a dual 2Ghz Mac works very well. Running Windows on the Mac allows me to use certain software that is not available on the Mac directly. Transferring data between the Mac side and the Windows Apps via the clipboard or shared folders allows both softwares to make a workflow greater than its parts. I never use the insecure virus plagued (I did get a virus once) Windows section for any significant Internet activity any more. In fact the VPC setup allows running the Windows part without any Internet access, while the Mac portion talks to the Internet. Instantaneous switching between environments and good communication between them allows me to use the best of both worlds on one computer.
I don't see that running multiple OS and their attendant apps as any sort of computing Nirvana, but an inevitable consequence as the technology of virtualization becomes mainstream. I am looking forward to getting a new Macbook as soon as it becomes possible to do thereon what I can do today on my PPC desktop system.
Some illusions can be very real. What's wrong with having a computer that can run *any* software there is? The Macs are not there yet, but will be the closest thing to a universal computer available right now. With virtualization technology in hardware, OSX, any flavor of Windows, 3 or 4 versions of Linux and who knows what else, can all run well or at least OK on the new Macs, all simultaneously. The same may be true in the future of machines from other hardware makers. You'll be able to buy a software box at any store and there will be no need to pay attention to "System Requirements" because ALL software will run on ALL computers -- even game console's programs. Systems will be differentiated by quality, security and preferred use. For Apple's computers the base OS wil be some future version of OSX or even OSXI with the others virtualized thereunder For the other hardware makers some future version of Windows will be the governing OS and others virtualized. All of this will be running on hardware so fast, that 90% of the time hardware effect will not even be noticed. Users will not notice the OS itself nearly as much if at all. A user will switch between a proprietary corporate database program designed for Windows and a graphic design program designed for Macs and some other programs for Linux, without really knowing or caring which OS the application is running under. The "soul" of a computer is its software, not the hardware.
One of man's innate natures is this religious thing. Man is incurably religious and this cannot be explained by the normally assumed drivers of evolution, such as the "survival of the fittest" mantra. If anything, putting energy end effort into building cathedrals and temples and other very costly edifices to religion are a drag on human strength and resources and, as you point out, a source of killing and destruction. War usually kills those who are the most able to help carry on the propagation of the species.
The enigma of the Jewish people and re-emergence of Israel also cannot be explained by the usual anthropological understanding. In 70AD the all powerful Roman Government sent their best army to put down yet another Jewish rebellion. Rome generally respected great architecture and the troops were under orders not to destroy such, but the fierce resistance of the Jews generated such anger in the Roman soldiers, that contrary to orders they set fire to the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. The wood paneling inside burned and its gold covering melted into the cracks of the rocks. The orders were given and the temple was dismantled so that the prophecy of Jesus 35 years earlier came true, not one stone remained on top of another. Now that the temple, the centerpiece of the Jewish religion, was gone it was easier to deport the population into the most distant parts of the empire.
There have been many movements and migrations of many nations and with the exception of the Jews, these resulted in the assimilation of those dispersed into the cultures where they settled, whether forcibly or voluntary. The African Americans is one example. ONLY in the case of Jew has this not happened, but they have always, throughout the centuries maintained their identity, despite being persecuted by those around them.
When theologians and other scholars in previous centuries read about the biblical predictions of a future rising again of the nation of Israel, they had all sorts of explanations, except what actually happened in 1948; namely the actual physical rising of this nation. If you are young enough, you may also still see the predicted reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
Among the things that change when people migrate is that their language dies out and they adopt the language of the place they move to. Even at the time of Jesus, the Hebrew language was akin to Latin today. It was used by scholars and priests. That is why Alexander the Great ordered the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek, since that was what most people used daily.
Yet, when it came time to choose a language for the new nation of Israel, Hebrew was resurrected and is the ONLY formerly dead language that once again became a living language used every day by the common people of a land.
The existence of Israel is not something that happened because of any human effort, but took place despite of human opposition, that continues to this day. What other city other than Jerusalem do you know of, where a zoning change and the construction of some housing threatens World Peace? This city is important to the three biggest religions and will one day be the bone of contention over which the final battle of the last war of humanity will be fought.
You are right, most wars have been fought with religious reasons or at least pretexts. If there is no God, where does man's otherwise inexplicable propensity for religion and worship come from? This is not a minor artifact or side effect of human existence, but a very centerpiece of human nature that causes us to violate the tenets of evolution and kill one another for reasons that have nothing to do with survival or being a more "fit" species.
We don't have sales tax on anything here in Oregon. If I buy something for $.99, I get a penny back on a dollar. In neighboring California, most food in grocery stores does not have sales tax but everything else does. In the US every state has their own rules as to what if anything gets taxed and by how much. This is one of the reasons why Internet purchases are not always taxed even if a similar purchase in a store would be.
..... they have not been able to shake off their occupiers for more then 20 years.....
I as not talking about and it was not the purpose of the founding fathers to protect citizens against a foreign army, but to prevent the government from arresting people secretly in the middle of the night, which was happening in their time and throughout history. The reason for the existence of *any* legitimate government is to protect its citizens from anarchy, where anyone can take whatever they want from their neighbor by means of force. The phrase the Constituiton uses is "to ensure domestic tranquility" against foreign and domestic lawlessness. This is why a strong military sworn to uphold the Constitution is essential. In many countries, the military takes over and the people become subservient to a military leader.
The Palestinian leaders encourage, or at least tolerate groups whose goal is to eliminate the state of Israel, just about the only democratically freely elected regime in that whole region. Every time the enemies of Israel have attacked her, they got their a***s kicked and then they bitch about it.
I happen to believe the ancient biblical prophecies made to Abraham and many others after him. That tiny nation will remain and prosper, regardless of what the rest of inhabitants of this planet say or do. Psalm 2 says so. Read it sometime.
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....they just want a nice piece of paper to wave in front of possible employers.....
That is because that's what employers require before they'll give an applicant even a second look. Long before institutionalized learning existed, the object of all learning was to have life and survival skills. These were passed from parents and grandparents to the children -- from generation to generation. As the productivity of people increased beyond the bare bones survival level, the arts and sciences and with them education became more common and was institutionalized.
Even as late as in my father's day, children were ready to become productive members of society by the time they were 18 or so. Today a person of this age very often has still no idea what they would like to do to pay their way through life. In his day, an 8th grade education and an apprenticeship was the norm for boys. Girls learned domestic skills from their mothers.
Learning is a lifelong process, but it should not come at the expense of the average person not becoming a productive member of society for as long as is usually the case today. Society does NOT owe anyone an easy living.
...What is the proposed physics of these "properties of space"? Why would they affect the speed of light but not any other details of the radiation passing through?....
0 26.pdf) Abandoning the belief of the absolute constancy of certain parameters of the Universe makes the job of explaining recent observations a lot simpler. The pioneer space probe (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0104064) puzzle is easily explained, as is the problem of "dark matter" and "dark energy" if the speed of light and its inverse Planck's constant are not really constant. The properties of space affect not only the propagation of energy, but also the some fundamental properties of every atom contained in that space. Radioactive decay is one of the properties of the atom that will change. When such fundamental parameters vary, the relationships between them can and do remain constant, making it hard to determine what is going on until some abolute quantity can be found to compare each of them against.
Space, like any other medium through which electromagnetic radiation travels has an effect on the propagation thereof. Space has certain measureable electrical and magnetic properties. As the Universe expanded, space expanded with it. There is indeed evidence that light speed has changed over time. The quantized redshift observations is one such evidence. (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0008/0008
.....While I and many other christians don't agree with the creationists attack on evolution....
Many Christians have also bought into the one fundamental tenet of evolution. That is the immense periods of time evolution requires to accomplish its work. Of all physical quantities scientists can measure time is more accurately measured than any other physical quantity, yet nobody REALLY understands its true nature. All measurements of time (clocks) require some kind of constant, repetitive motion. Until recently, man has used the regular motion of the earth and other heavenly bodies to mark off times and seasons. Nowadays we use the motion of atoms, such as the cesium beam clocks and radioactivity to date rocks and other things. The motions of all clocks are governed by forces and interactions of gravity in the former and the forces of electrodynamics in the latter. It is the ASSSUMED constancy of these forces that governs the constancy of the clocks. If either of these forces change, then the clocks based thereon will also change. The equations of gravity to not contain any units referenced or related to time, whereas the equations for the electrodynamic interactions do, such as Planck's constant h or c, the speed of light.
Modern science is based on the BELIEF that these "constants" have never changed. As a Christian you can read in your Bible (1Peter 3:3-10) a little hint from God Himself, penned by the Apostle Peter that things have not always been and will not always be as constant as many assume or would like them to be. There have been and will be again, major discontinuities in both the physical creation which scientists can study and also even more so in the spiritual dimensions that can only be grasped by faith.
Constructs such as as dark matter are needed only because of this underlying belief in the unchangeableness in the "constants" of nature. God doesn't change, but that doesn't mean He who came up with the laws of nature by which evolution operates, cannot adjust these laws of nature as he sees fit. God tells us in many places of the Bible that He has in the past and will in the future change how nature operates in some very fundamental ways.
.......And emotion has anything to do with science?....
Very much so, for better or worse, since scientists are still human. Humans make assumptions (faith) and then color all their observations by that faith.
One assumption that most scientists are emotionally attached to is the idea of "constants" in nature, none of which are allowed to change over the vast periods of time the Universe has existed. There is no reason to postulate that all or at least some of these "constants" are not subject change except belief or faith.
When Edwin Hubble discovered the red shift of distant starlight, he ASSUMED this is caused by the well known Doppler effect. This has been and still is the DOGMA ( Hubble's LAW even) that neccessitates fictional, convoluted inventions such as dark matter, dark energy and possibly gravitons.
.....You know as a child I made up invisible things to blame....
Scientists also, like children, make assumptions (faith, belief) that even when long held may turn out to be wrong. The rapid motions of the galaxies arises from the ASSUMPTION that the oberved red shift of the light from these galaxies is due to the Doppler effect, rather than other reasons. One thing true of all humans, including scientists, is that we generally resist change. Scientists like to assume that there are certain constants in nature that NEVER change. This assumption may not be correct for ALL so called constants in nature -- some may not be constant over the vast periods of time involved. One of these is Planck's "constant" which governs how atoms, when excited, emit light. Another is the speed of light c, inversely related to the above. The value of c is highly dependent on the medium through which it propagates. If the very properties of space itself change, as the Universe expands, then the speed of light will also change. If the red shift of the light from these distant galaxies is due to such a change, then there is no need to "invent" dark matter or convoluted graviton explanations because the galaxies are NOT moving at the astonishing velocities the present underlying assumptions require.
....This will surely end up in the lap of the Supreme Court, and hopefully they will find the DMCA unconstitutional.....
More likely this will come up before Congress after millions of video ipod owners find that they cannot do with the movies they own for artificial legal reasons, what they have been doing with their music. This DMCA crap is something that Congress came up with and that only Congess can fix. It has nothing to do with the constitution.
.....Such a license could also be created so as to be non-transferrable, in that if you sell someone the original media, they don't get the license.....
Bullshit! The doctrine of first sale applies to ALL goods, even software. A piece of paper from a corporation does NOT make a binding law. If I buy some software for a Windows computer and later get a Mac, I can sell the whole Windows computer and all the software disks that came with it or that I bought for it later. Whatever is printed on the packages or on the disks cannot EVER prevent me from doing this. ANYTHING I buy, I can sell again, no matter what the corporate fat cat lawyers write in their worthless paper. Copyright laws is just that -- it applies to making copies, not how you use or dispose of legitimately aquired material.
....they could have ELUAs on each CD.....
Since when are EULAs legally binding agreements? Corporations want people to think they are, but that does not make it so.
.....The question that needs to be asked is, if you buy a DVD, are you allowed to put it onto an iPod?.....
According to fair use, yes, according to the DMCA no. I suspect this conflict of law may have to get sorted out in court. As the video iPods get more numerous, millions of consumers will get upset that they cannot do with their purchased DVDs as the now do with the audio CDs they have bought. They will either ignore the DMCA law wholesale or, what is more likely, clamor for the law to be changed. Corporations do not vote, but the people do and that fact is not lost on our Congress persons. Once there are 20 to 30 million video iPods and/or other portable playback devices in the hands of the public, the people will not stand for what the content providers have been able to pull off regularly before digital technology came along -- make everybody purchase the same stuff over again, just because the media upon which the content resides changes from time to time. What happened to music will also take place in the video arena. Existing video content will be migrated to new devices without the content owners getting a piece of the action again and again for the stuff people have already paid them for.
....Other than continuing availability of new titles and of reprints of older titles? Where is your VHS now?.....
Some key advantages of DVD over VHS do not exist for the DVD to HD DVD transition. Tapes need rewinding and are subject to deterioration and wear. DVD's are random access, don't wear and did not need the replacement of the rest of the reproducing equipment. For HD TV, unless a new very expensive TV is purchased, there is no advantage in having to buy new equipment and the same content again. Both CDs and DVD's are plenty good enough for millions of consumers. The new, fancy super quality audio SACD and DVDs have bombed and so will the new expensive HD DVDs, especially if there is a bruising format war between BluRay and HD-DVDs.
(...Computer hardware wears out and eventually fails catastrophically....)
I still have a 1993 Apple Color Classic that runs 24/7 as an answering/fax machine just fine. A well made computer can last for a pretty long time. It is also still useful as a programmer for a number of X-10 power control modules scattered around the house. Hard drives are pretty cheap these days. If a computer still works, replacing one is much cheaper than a whole new computer.
(......All new computers that are preloaded with Windows Vista will have a Trusted Platform Module....)
Are you saying that MS will not make a version of VISTA to upgrade the millions of already existing ordinary PCs? I don't believe that. However, if this were true, then that is another good reason to buy an OSX or Linux system. MS has tried and failed to control the Internet and there is really no compelling advantage for technology companies to make a product for which there is no demand by the customers. Of course the content providers may purchase Congress once again, like they did for the DMCA and get laws passed mandating such technology.
......Because you're still running on a virtual PC. You basically have an extra layer of software which translates the signals and requests from your virtual OS to the OS that's actually interfacing with the hardware. There's always going to be slowdown when you have an extra translation step involved - that's a simple fact that you can't get around........
You are right, there will be some slow down, especially if, as has been true so far, the context switching between the host and guest OS and its apps is done in the host OS software. However, the biggest time penalty is in the translations of the actual processor instructions if the those of the guest OS are written for a different instruction set. This has been true for VPC running under the PPC version of OSX, but would no longer apply in the new Intel based Macs. In addition, as I understand it, the new Intel processors support some of the context switching between OS directly in hardware, thereby further reducing the performance penalty of virtualization. The goal of virtualization is to be able to run multiple OS and their attendant apps, all simultaneously on a given hardware yet allow close communication between the systems. This makes a single computer running say OSX, Windows and Linux all at the same time much better than three computers, all natively booted into those respective OS. This advantage of virtualization also applies to the case of three OS booted on one computer in three sepearate disk partitions. It is a case of the sum being greater than its individual parts. The power of modern, multi-processor computer hardware is such, that speed considerations are secondary in the actual uses such hardware is put by the vast majority of users. On my dual PPC PowerMac, VPC works about as well as it does on our older 1.2Ghz AMD powered box, both running Win2K.
High action type games are indeed the most common, very processing intensive applications, for which a dedicated game console is a much better solution than a general purpose computing device.
Virtualization overcomes the fact that each OS has its own distinct file system. A dynamically expanding virtual disk file for each guest OS is a much more efficient way to utilize disk space than needing to have a seperate disk or partition for each OS. Also, getting a virus in virtual Windows is not nearly as bad as on a standard PC, since a clean backup of a virtual disk file can replace the infected one in a few seconds. Because the screwed up virtual disk file(s) can be mounted in the master OS, OSX in this case, the personal data thereon can be recovered without danger from the virus and re-copied quickly to the clean virtual disk file. After the restore is done, the old infected virtual file is trashed and a new backup of the restored virtual disk created. The whole cleanup and restore process could be done by a special program that is activated with a single mouse click.
....between 2011 and 2015....
That's 5 to 9 years away! This is an eternity in Internet time. Meanwhile I'll not hold my breath. How many people are still using Win98 or even Win95? Look how slowly the much vaunted transition to HD TV is going. Government and big business have a hard time forcing stuff down people's throats when the majority don't see a compelling advantage over the stuff that exists already. I suspect the HD DVD will bomb spectacularly since this technology doesn't offer a really compelling advantage over existing DVD. The reason the ipod is so successfull is that it allows anyone to take their entire music collection with them, wherever they go. That possibility has never existed before. What advantage will a new computer with TPM have over even a Win98 box for a Joe or Jane who just want to e-mail their kids and grandkids? What advantage will such a computer have for a video or photo maker. What advantage will such a computer have for a doctor or hospital that just wants to access the patient information?
Even for millions of users, government, businesses and home users to be required to replace their still otherwise perfectly working networking components will be a tough sell. Unlike, earlier analog days, digital information can be reformatted and re-purposed easily and without quality losses. Any artificial roadblocks, such as DRM, to this inherent property of digital data are ultimately doomed to fail. It's like trying to make the shit from your toilet flow uphill.
.....The ONLY thing holding linux back from mass-acception is games and certain applications like ......
Not ONLY that, but that many hardware devices don't work with Linux because there are several flavors of Linux and manufacturers of such hardware have really not an economic incentive to spend writing drivers that will work correctly with the various flavors of Linux. With Windows, a user can pick any network or USB device at Best Buy or Fry's and upon getting it home, have a good chance that it will work on the first try. With Linux, many devices will never work, even if the user is an advanced geek. With Mac OSX, the driver issue is less difficult because there is much less variation in the hardware and the software then with PC/Windows. Look at the installation instructions for a good sampling of hardware devices, such as scanners, printers, USB MIDI adapters and such and the instructions for OSX are the shortest, most often a single mouse click or maybe two. Linux need one standardized version and someone with the *authority* to enforce that standard. Absent this, Linux will be used as servers and other uses only by very computer expert users. Embedded applications wilth limited user interaction are also good candidates for Linux.
.....First of all, OSX is going to be Treacherous too......
Not likely unless Jobs dies or is kicked out of Apple (again) and replaced by someone like Ballmer. As the millions of non-geek iPod users discover that they cannot copy their favorite DVD movie they bought at Walmart to their iPod not because of some technical limitation, but only because of some stupid law called the DMCA, there is a good chance the the outcry will reach and force Congress to revisit that issue. These millions of DVD and iPod owners will want to watch their movies on their iPods without having to buy/download a special copy of content they already paid for. There is a convoluted way of doing this now using (illegal) DVD ripping software and the proper encoding programs. The number of video iPods and other mobile video devices is still quite small, but will likely increase geometrically in the next few years. In the end it is still people, not corporations that vote. Politicians know this and are surprisingly responsive to a massive outcry from their constituents. Most music on iPods got there from people's CD collections because CDs can be easily copied. Millions of people will want to do the same thing from their DVD collection. Up until now the DMCA and DRM has not really had much effect on the large masses of the voters, but the shit will hit the fan when millons find out that the lawmakers have artificially prevented them from doing with video, what they have been doing for years with audio. DRM will be dead after all that happens -- and it will!
...... in order for your machine to get a routable IP address.....
How will this work for machines behind a router/NAT/firewall box? Our machines get their ip on the LAN from its DHCP service and the WAN section gets an ip from the ISP. The ISP has no way of determining what kind of computers are connected to the LAN. Will MS force everyone to replace or reprogram their network gateways?
I don't think this can be implemented until ip6 becomes used by everyone-- world-wide.
.....and the performance will always be singificantly slower than on a native windows box......
Why should this be if the processor in Windows and OSX is the same? Perhaps some game programs that can and are allowed to access video hardware directly may be slower. If these new Intel Macs sell well, the game developers should be able to make games run on the Mac fairly easily. For other Windows software, such as special vertical apps, virtual PC works reasonably well, even now on a PPC based Mac. It should be much better on the new Macs since there is no emulation. MS will likely make an new version of VPC available and sell that bundled with Windows XP or the upcoming VISTA. The may make more money from that than they do with the Mac version of office.
....Mammals, perhaps, couldn't evolve in such a scenario, but plenty of life on earth deals with changes.....
There are of course lower life forms and even warm blooded creatures (penguins) that can take some pretty extreme conditions, especially of cold, but there is not much of anything that can survive at 100C or above for long, if at all. Certainly Mercury and Venus are way too hot for any kind of life. Complex biological processes operate most efficiently in a very narrow range, the blood temperature of the warm blooded species.
To have a planet that can have intelligent life (what SETI is looking for) needs to have a number of other narrowly defined specifications. There must be water and oxygen (the right amount of each) and those require a minimum and maximum size (mass). Too high a mass would not allow poisonous gases like methane to escape from the atmosphere, a planet like Venus and larger. Too small mass and the planet could not retain water. It would evaporate into space, and make a planet like Mars or Mrecury.
The rotation rate must be reasonable. If too slow, it gets too cold at night and if too fast, the storms in the atmosphere can get really devastating. There are other critcal specs, such as the size and location of the moon(s) (if any), a magnetic field to deflect damaging charged particles, carbon dioxide-water vapor balance, uv shielding (ozone or equivalent) and others.
The star such a planet orbits must meet certain specs also. Too large a star would cause its long term energy output vary more than living things could stand. A too tiny star would force the planet to be too close to its sun to get enough heat for life. This would mess up the rotation of tsuch a planet and cause tidal forces that would make life difficult if at all possible.
There are other requirements, such as the spectral quality of the light and others.
Statistical analysis by modern computer methods shows that by random processes alone much fewer than one trillionth of one trillionth of one precent of all stars might be part of a system such as what we call the solar system, our home. Since the universe contains about a trillion galaxies, with each galaxy some 100 billion stars, that leaves us still far short of even one planet such as Earth coming into existence by any random evolutionary process. SETI is a big waste of money!
....Actually, from what I understand, a Sun-like star could pass.....
The article was not about some object just passing through, but an object the mass of the sun being in a binary system with the sun.
.....We used to sell them to customers too far out in the sticks to get anything but dialup .....
Apple sells the Airport extreme wired/wireless router with a modem built in. For anyone who does not do much more on the Internet than send/receive simple, text based email once or twice each day or send some simple text based data to some data center, dial up is still a perfectly reasonable, low cost way to use the Internet. Combined with a router as you mentioned, or one of the airport units, a fairly safe system, even for Windows can be had without the interminable update downloads. Clicking on an email or malicious web page can get your windows computer infected, regardless of whether it is connected over dial up or a 45Mb/s fiber connection. When the need for a faster connection arises, plug a DSL or cable modem into the airport and enjoy the speed. Broadband is swell, and so is a fast car, but some people still get where they want to go on a bicycle.
.....as we are the system seems to be one of those rare single star systems......
Good thing for us that there isn't another object the mass of the sun within about 3.8 light years of earth. Even as it is, the planets do influence one another's orbits, but their masses and spacing are such as to keep the earth's orbit from getting too elliptical. Because of the nearly circular orbit, the distance to the sun is constant enough keep the temperature within the bounds needed for life. Another object approaching the mass of the sun would force the orbit to be more elliptical, which would make this planet unsuitable for life as we know it. About half of the known stars are too close to each other for any of those to have a planet that could keep its temperature in the very narrow range wherein water exists in its liquid form. The temperature specs for higher life forms are considerably narrower than this. The nearest star to earth is Alpha Centauri, a nice safe 4.2 light years distant.
.....If the hardware runs 10 times as fast.....
Other than emulation speed, running VPC on a dual 2Ghz Mac works very well. Running Windows on the Mac allows me to use certain software that is not available on the Mac directly. Transferring data between the Mac side and the Windows Apps via the clipboard or shared folders allows both softwares to make a workflow greater than its parts. I never use the insecure virus plagued (I did get a virus once) Windows section for any significant Internet activity any more. In fact the VPC setup allows running the Windows part without any Internet access, while the Mac portion talks to the Internet. Instantaneous switching between environments and good communication between them allows me to use the best of both worlds on one computer.
I don't see that running multiple OS and their attendant apps as any sort of computing Nirvana, but an inevitable consequence as the technology of virtualization becomes mainstream. I am looking forward to getting a new Macbook as soon as it becomes possible to do thereon what I can do today on my PPC desktop system.
....Universal binaries are an illusion....
Some illusions can be very real. What's wrong with having a computer that can run *any* software there is? The Macs are not there yet, but will be the closest thing to a universal computer available right now. With virtualization technology in hardware, OSX, any flavor of Windows, 3 or 4 versions of Linux and who knows what else, can all run well or at least OK on the new Macs, all simultaneously. The same may be true in the future of machines from other hardware makers. You'll be able to buy a software box at any store and there will be no need to pay attention to "System Requirements" because ALL software will run on ALL computers -- even game console's programs. Systems will be differentiated by quality, security and preferred use. For Apple's computers the base OS wil be some future version of OSX or even OSXI with the others virtualized thereunder For the other hardware makers some future version of Windows will be the governing OS and others virtualized. All of this will be running on hardware so fast, that 90% of the time hardware effect will not even be noticed. Users will not notice the OS itself nearly as much if at all. A user will switch between a proprietary corporate database program designed for Windows and a graphic design program designed for Macs and some other programs for Linux, without really knowing or caring which OS the application is running under. The "soul" of a computer is its software, not the hardware.
.......I don't believe in god.....
One of man's innate natures is this religious thing. Man is incurably religious and this cannot be explained by the normally assumed drivers of evolution, such as the "survival of the fittest" mantra. If anything, putting energy end effort into building cathedrals and temples and other very costly edifices to religion are a drag on human strength and resources and, as you point out, a source of killing and destruction. War usually kills those who are the most able to help carry on the propagation of the species.
The enigma of the Jewish people and re-emergence of Israel also cannot be explained by the usual anthropological understanding. In 70AD the all powerful Roman Government sent their best army to put down yet another Jewish rebellion. Rome generally respected great architecture and the troops were under orders not to destroy such, but the fierce resistance of the Jews generated such anger in the Roman soldiers, that contrary to orders they set fire to the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. The wood paneling inside burned and its gold covering melted into the cracks of the rocks. The orders were given and the temple was dismantled so that the prophecy of Jesus 35 years earlier came true, not one stone remained on top of another. Now that the temple, the centerpiece of the Jewish religion, was gone it was easier to deport the population into the most distant parts of the empire.
There have been many movements and migrations of many nations and with the exception of the Jews, these resulted in the assimilation of those dispersed into the cultures where they settled, whether forcibly or voluntary. The African Americans is one example. ONLY in the case of Jew has this not happened, but they have always, throughout the centuries maintained their identity, despite being persecuted by those around them.
When theologians and other scholars in previous centuries read about the biblical predictions of a future rising again of the nation of Israel, they had all sorts of explanations, except what actually happened in 1948; namely the actual physical rising of this nation. If you are young enough, you may also still see the predicted reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
Among the things that change when people migrate is that their language dies out and they adopt the language of the place they move to. Even at the time of Jesus, the Hebrew language was akin to Latin today. It was used by scholars and priests. That is why Alexander the Great ordered the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek, since that was what most people used daily.
Yet, when it came time to choose a language for the new nation of Israel, Hebrew was resurrected and is the ONLY formerly dead language that once again became a living language used every day by the common people of a land.
The existence of Israel is not something that happened because of any human effort, but took place despite of human opposition, that continues to this day. What other city other than Jerusalem do you know of, where a zoning change and the construction of some housing threatens World Peace? This city is important to the three biggest religions and will one day be the bone of contention over which the final battle of the last war of humanity will be fought.
You are right, most wars have been fought with religious reasons or at least pretexts. If there is no God, where does man's otherwise inexplicable propensity for religion and worship come from? This is not a minor artifact or side effect of human existence, but a very centerpiece of human nature that causes us to violate the tenets of evolution and kill one another for reasons that have nothing to do with survival or being a more "fit" species.
.....Who doesn't pay sales tax?.....
We don't have sales tax on anything here in Oregon. If I buy something for $.99, I get a penny back on a dollar. In neighboring California, most food in grocery stores does not have sales tax but everything else does. In the US every state has their own rules as to what if anything gets taxed and by how much. This is one of the reasons why Internet purchases are not always taxed even if a similar purchase in a store would be.
..... they have not been able to shake off their occupiers for more then 20 years.....
I as not talking about and it was not the purpose of the founding fathers to protect citizens against a foreign army, but to prevent the government from arresting people secretly in the middle of the night, which was happening in their time and throughout history. The reason for the existence of *any* legitimate government is to protect its citizens from anarchy, where anyone can take whatever they want from their neighbor by means of force. The phrase the Constituiton uses is "to ensure domestic tranquility" against foreign and domestic lawlessness. This is why a strong military sworn to uphold the Constitution is essential. In many countries, the military takes over and the people become subservient to a military leader.
The Palestinian leaders encourage, or at least tolerate groups whose goal is to eliminate the state of Israel, just about the only democratically freely elected regime in that whole region. Every time the enemies of Israel have attacked her, they got their a***s kicked and then they bitch about it.
I happen to believe the ancient biblical prophecies made to Abraham and many others after him. That tiny nation will remain and prosper, regardless of what the rest of inhabitants of this planet say or do. Psalm 2 says so. Read it sometime.