....My experiences with Apple product support have been no better than the product support from other major laptop manufacturers....
Apparently Consumer Reports does NOT agree with you on that. They pegged Apple at the top of the heap for service and quality. Their opinion may still only be an opinion, but it is worth more to most people than your opinion on the matter.
...If they were closer in price to the pc laptops people might opt for them....
So then all the cheapskates buy PC and those who want quality buy a Mac. There are those who are happy with a Yugo and then are those who want a Mercedes. Apple is selling plenty of computers at the prices they charge and BMW is selling a lot of cars also. If you can't afford a Mac, don't whine, get a cheap Dell and be happy.
...Applying that to make a laptop chassis is NOT innovative....
Maybe that is your opinion, but I suspect it will be a long while, if ever, before you'll be able to buy a cheap Dell made that way. Apple didn't invent the portable music player or cell phone either. Still their iPods and iPhones are selling by the millions and Apple is laughing all the way to the bank. If you have some extra money, buy some Apple stock, because it WILL go up again. They have good products and many people will pay extra for good design.
...there will always be things that having a individual machine is better suited for...
Indeed, is that not why PCs took over from the old centralized mainframe days 30 years ago? The thin clients of today are a little better than the old Wyse or VT100 terminals, but the limitations are the same. If the mainframe dies, everybody can only twiddle their thumbs until it comes back up. Redundant decentralized systems using full fledged PCs are more reliable, but have administration and security issues. In perusing all the posts here, most of them are from the perspective of the IT workers who laud the easier administration of mainframe networks.
Back in the mainframe days, the techno-priests who ran the "big computers" behind the glass walls in the air-conditioned "holy place" of computing felt very important. When the age of the PC dawned, these high priests were quite dismayed by their loss of authority over users. Now, with buzz-words such as "thin clients", "cloud computing" and in the name of security, they are trying to regain the kingdom of computing that they lost to the users through the mechanism of a completely functional autonomous personal computer. It is not surprising to see that most/. posts sing the praises of going back to the old centralized ways of doing things, since many here are indeed members of the computing priesthood.
It will be difficult to stuff the genie of user independence given by the PERSONAL computer back into the bottle, but the priests are surely trying. Bill Gates and Co. made an attempt at "secure computing". Fortunately, that went nowhere. The security mantra got us the PATRIOT act and will likely also go a long ways in re-establishing the central authority of the computing priesthood. For the sake computing freedom, I hope their efforts at killing the personal computer fails miserably.
....why is it assumed that life has to develop on a planet by current definitions...
It does not really matter what you call the environment where life may exist or develop. It could be a spaceship such as Hollywood's death Star. The point is, that the environmental requirements for physical life are quite narrow. Even a single cell is far more complicated than a large city. On the atomic and molecular level, the process of life is extremely complicated and intricate. More complex systems generally have stricter environmental requirements than simpler ones.
Isn't it interesting, to contemplate the large amount of human effort that is expended to answer the question: "Are we alone in this great big huge universe?" The hoped for and yet also feared answer to this question apparently is a resounding "no"! We do not like the idea of being "home alone", but also fear that some alien life form coming here might have us for lunch. How is this question related to the questions of origin and purpose? Is the the fact that all humans are incurably religious also related to these questions?
If someone did come and visit us, someone from far beyond our own galaxy, how would such a living being convince us that he/she/it really did come here from a distant universe, or even more far out, some other universe? Would a few Star Trek like demonstrations of advanced technology do the trick to convince us? Is sufficiently advanced technology truly indistinguishable from the supernatural? How would such a visit have played out centuries ago, before our own modern technological age began? Is it possible or even probable that such a visit has already taken place in the history of humanity?
...You know of course that IF they find a whole bunch of earthlike planets...
That is a big IF. Over half of all known stars can never have an earth-like planet for the simple reason that half of all stars are too close to each other. To have a planet with a temperature range suitable for life, its orbit has to be very regular. Another star too close prevents such stable orbits. Other parameters such as the right elements in the proper proportions must also be right, as must be the rotation rate and gravity. The likelihood of all that coming together by sheer chance is exceedingly remote.
Underlying the laws of biology are the laws of physics. In this case, specifically the electronic binding energies of atoms to each other. To have PHYSICAL life forms, requires complex molecular structures, such as proteins. One of the definitions of "life" is the ability to reproduce. This implies some way to record and pass on the structural and functional capabilities, such as DNA. We have evidence that the elements that exist here on Earth are also present in the distant reaches of the universe. It also appears that the basic laws of physics and chemistry are amazingly uniform throughout all of space we can observe.
Of all elements able to form the foundation for large complex molecules, none is better than carbon. Together with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, carbon alone is able to meet the complexity requirement of living chemistry.
The next best is silicon, but its binding energies to other atoms is too high for really complex molecular assemblies. Therefore, the conditions for life, especially intelligent? life like ours could not be too different from what we know. This essentially means a temperature range where water can exist as a liquid. Life chemistry proceeds most effectively between 32 to 42 degrees C. It is no accident that the internal temperature of warm blooded creatures lies in this range.
Conclusion: If there is physical, as opposed to some sort of spirit or mind-life, such life is likely to be not very different in its basis than ours.
... I wonder what the parameters for "earth like" should be....
Do you mean by that the conditions necessary to develop intelligent life, such as the SETI project is looking for? Assuming that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe, the molecular binding energies for living things would dictate the temperature range. For practical purposes this would mean the temperature range in which water remains liquid at least some of the time. This would require a stable orbit around a star the output of which does not fluctuate too much. Orbital mechanics show that such a star must not have a neighbor closer than about 3.8 ly. By that specification alone, about one half of all stars in the universe are disqualified from having such a planet because they are too close to each other.
Really big stars are also disqualified because their output varies too much in order for intelligent life to develop or exist. If a star is too small, a potential planet must be placed too close in order to get enough heat. Any such close in planets all are unlikely to freely rotate, thereby having one side always facing the star. That would mean the dark side would get extremely cold. Assuming there was a viable atmosphere, it would circulate violently between the day and night side.
Living processes involve large complex molecular structures which only the element carbon allows. Therefore, any physical life must be based on the chemistry involving carbon. Of course, there may be nonphysical life, but that is not what we are talking about here.
....Few, if any, public servants are immune from having associated with some pretty shady characters....
So sadly true. I do find it interesting that four of these senators were democrats and McCain was the lone republican. I wonder what would happen if the majority of voters wrote in Mickey Mouse for EVERY candidate from president , congress and senate. If political office could be divorced from money, maybe some decent people would run who would be interested in and truly representing the ordinary people, rather than money-bags.
Obama promises change? In 1933 Germany was in dire economic straits, much worse than the US today. There also was a good orator who promised change. He promised that Germany would not be recognizable once he got done. He was right in that, but not the way the German people or I suppose he himself envisioned. Be careful what you wish for. You may get it and not like it even a little bit.
I think that it is safer to go with the devil you know, sort of, rather than one who seemed to arise out of nowhere. Would you hire a plumber with only 143 days experience to unclog your toilet?
So Obama's associations are not the sole reason I don't think he is presidential material. I don't want him to be in command of the biggest pile of WMDs in the world. That is scary!
...it's an extremely stupid employer who is concerned about that type of thing in the first place...
Maybe not so stupid. There is an element of truth to the premise' "If I know who you associate with, I know something about who you are". If the job requires integrity and trust, which many jobs do, how a prospective employee behaves is very important.
This is a major reason I will not vote for Obama. He has associated with questionable characters at times. Such associations may well cost someone a job also.
Anyone really wanting a bit better privacy could invent a complete "public" personality. A maybe even real name might be OK, but everything connected to that name is invented and has no bearing to any real person.
Keep that in a file on a USB drive (along with other important stuff) and use that consistently on all web-sites. Keep USB drive in a safe place. I keep mine on my house-keys chain.
Apparently a lot of consumers, especially those wanting a laptop and are not exactly church-mouse poor, are buying Apple's Macs. With virtualization they can even still run some of their favorite Windows programs.
.... If this problem is serious and widespread... then it should apply to most computers and other electronic devices. Most of these are made in factories overseas, mostly in China. The procedures and processes used are all quite similar. Therefore I smell a benzene soaked rat that Apple should be singled out as being the worst or even only offender. The report is likely an outright lie or at least a gross exaggeration. If there is a problem, it is highly unlikely that it should be confined to only one company's specific product.
... seem to recall Greenpeace going after Apple in the past as well...
When I read that Greenpeace was involved in this, accusation, the believability of the article went to essentially zero. Why is Apple singled out for this. All computers have pretty much the same stuff in them these days and are built by the same factories in China. So whatever "toxic smell" somebody accuses Apple computers of emitting would also come from other brands of computer and all kinds of electronics. The processes used to make all electronic gadgets are not all that dissimilar. If Consumer Reports had come out with such a report I might read it more carefully, but Greenpeace has a huge axe to grind against Apple which apparently is on their shitlist..
That is not true. The so called evolutionary column is found NOWHERE on earth in any single spot. "Earlier" life forms are at times wildly jumbled up with "later" ones, all in the same layer.
(...ToE is about gradual change...)
ToE is about _widely believed_ gradual change. There, fixed it for you. Nobody, anywhere has ever demonstrated sparrows giving birth to mockingbirds, but evolution teaches that "eventually", over time, a LOT of time, birds became mammals, apes evolved into humans and other magic we don't see happening. Without lots of time even evolutionists admit that ToE cannot work. The actual real evidence we have TODAY, shows that evolution doesn't happen at all, at least not the monkey to man sort. Believing that it can or did happen is OK, but it is a belief, not an observed scientific fact. I can give you the story how the magic of time helped here and there by chance, as described in public school text books, can turn not only a frog, but even rock into a handsome prince. A pretty maiden's kiss is not needed.
Can you not understand that science is what we observe happening TODAY and _history_ is what happened in the past? Nobody can do experiments or observe past history. We have to rely on human or natural witnesses. Fossils are nature's witnesses as are radioactive rocks and light from outer space. Pyramids, cuneiform tablets, papyrus and animal skin scrolls, such as the dead sea scrolls and the books of the Bible are witnesses of human history. ALL witnesses, natural or human NEVER prove anything, but must be BELIEVED or not.
You believe, have faith, that natural witnesses are testifying that monkeys eventually, over lots of time, became human. I believe, have faith in what God had written in the witness of a historic book. There He tells us that He created monkeys, men and all other creatures distinct and only able to each reproduce their own kind. We STILL see this and only this happening today. That makes the biblical interpretation far more believable than the evolutionary conjecture. Even so, we are both stuck with belief as far as the past goes.
....you look at this guess and then ask "what else would we expect to see if the guess is correct?"...
The problem is that when the evolutionists guesses do NOT accord with observations TODAY, they resort to telling everybody that evolutionary processes are very SLOW and take so much TIME, so of course we don't see them taking place today.
Everybody, not just highly educated scientists, observes and has observed for centuries that living things do NOT evolve the way evolution preaches. Dogs forever produce ONLY more dogs, cats make more cats, birds lay eggs which only hatch into more birds of a certain kind. Woodpeckers don't produce sparrows or ostriches. This holds true in more "primitive" life forms also. One celled algae produce only more algae. Your mother would have been very upset and unbelieving if the doctors or nurses had brought a chimpanzee to her instead of you and told her that she just had experienced evolution happening backwards. After all, evolutionists preach that evolution can happen the other way also and might be called devolution.
The Creator simply tells us in the Bible that is what He did. He made each kind reproduce after their own kind. Birch trees don't make Pine or Fir seedlings, only more Birch trees. This is ALL we observe. Creationists don't HAVE to make guesses about the past, because they are TOLD what happened by the one that made it happen. We all see it STILL happening every day of our lives as corroborating evidence that what God has said about this subject is true.
When evolutionists are confronted with this undeniable FACT of nature, they dismiss all that everyday fact with: "It takes millions of years for that sort of evolution" and so we can't expect to see this in our life time".
I say that is BS and a cop out into the magic land of time. If it can't be seen or duplicated TODAY, it didn't happen. You can go visit the pyramids and if someone really wanted to build one today, they could, even though they were made thousands of years ago. All history, including natural history cannot be scientifically tested, but must be believed by whatever records we have. There is no way to experimentally or observationally determine that Julius Caesar ever lived. You have to BELIEVE the written records of historians.
We find fossils all over, but WHO has ever made a fossil? Make me a fossil and explain how you did it. Take an e-coli bacteria and evolve it into a streptococcus or spirochete or the other way round and explain how you did that in an experimental report. You'd win a Nobel prize for sure. Experiments and observations is what REAL science is all about, not speculations and conjectures of what might have taken place millions of years ago, but cannot be duplicated or observed today.
(..what else would we expect to see..)
The current interpretation of the observed red-shift of distant starlight is the doppler effect. Another interpretation of it is that it is caused by the slowing of the speed of light. Not the "tired light" interpretation, but the changing nature of space itself. This change must also change the energies of the atomic orbits. Since atomic phenomena are quantized, the red shift should also be quantized. This is indeed what scientists have observed. The red-shift is not smooth, but occurs in tiny jumps. If you are interested look here:
This is credible evidence that allows calculation of exactly how much the speed of light has changed. It also gives us a basis for correcting radiometric time bases into the past, because Planck's "constant" is inversely related to c. Planck's constant has been _measured_ to be increasing still today.
Evolution is NOT science, but a philosophy dependent on the magic of time. If any scientists who believes in evolution could ever make it happen now, in the lab or observe it in nature, there would be screaming headlines everywhere.
Worse, if the connection goes down, you can't even type a letter or contract for printing if a program requires that connection in order to work. Maybe, when the Internet is as reliable as good old POTS, that objection will no longer hold. Even cell phones are not anywhere near as reliable as the old fashioned land line.
It seems like some IT professionals never got over the fact that the PC took away the iron clad control they had over all computing back in the days of the mainframe. Now they have figured out a way to wrest control back from the users to themselves. Back then the users were subservient to the high priests of computing. The computer priesthood now sees cloud computing as an opportunity to regain the control they had before the PC was invented and gave the users that control instead.
If the government wants to snoop on the data on your local HD, they still have to get a warrant and physically come to your location. That is how it used to be when they wanted to tap your phone line. Now all they have to do is jiggle a mouse and all your phone conversations come right into the office of whatever government official has a whim to listen. If your data resides on some servers run by some big company, they will automatically give the authorities what they want and neither you nor any judge will ever even know about it. These big companies have no incentive to protect your data from prying eyes, especially governments. It's not like that sort of thing has not happened already. Big companies are only interested in ONE thing: money.
...If you CHANGE those numbers, you CHANGE a lot of things...
Not so. For example, take the famous equation e=mc^2.
Atomic rest masses "m" are proportional to 1/(c^2). Thus when c was higher, rest masses were lower. If the rest mass does down as c goes up then energy will be conserved.
(...It is the change of c in vacuum that I have a problem with...)
What makes you think the medium you call vacuum has not changed? Space and the vacuum are not an empty nothing, but have definite electromagnetic properties. Antenna designers have to deal with these. As space expanded, its properties changed.
(.. but a secondary effect is that we would see stars and galaxies orbiting slower than we would expect...)
Orbits of any sort have nothing to do with red-shifts. Orbits are controlled by he force of gravity. The red-shift is of atomic origin, controlled by the electric force.
..Science at the very least has the advantage of having some system to the guesswork..
Actually science is NOT t all guesswork. It is based on present observations and experiments, done in real time, TODAY! The guesswork is in the interpretation of the data so gathered. We measure the speed of light today and it is a certain speed. That tells us nothing about what it was a million or even a thousand years ago. We assume the stars are a certain distance away and try to match brightnesses assuming that the other stars are equally far away and equally bright.
In 1968, the scientific community changed Planck's constant from 0.0014350 to 0.0014388. Why, just for fun or is it because it indeed is not truly constant?
(...Besides, how would this change in atomic clocks not be detected by comparing it to other potential sources of time...)
The only other source of time is orbital time which is dependent on gravity. Gravity equations do not contain a time element such as c or h. The atomic clocks indeed have lost a few seconds since 1967 against orbital clocks. In 1967 the time standard was changed from an orbital definition to an atomic definition.
If light can be slowed down, then its speed is not a constant.
Since when is the speed of light a LAW? It just happens to be parameter no different than the mass of the earth or any other number. There is no LAW of physics that demands ALL such numbers should remain absolutely constant throughout all time. It has been firmly established that the speed of light is a variable, not a constant. It can be slowed down and sped up in the laboratory at will. The speed of light clearly depends on the medium through which travels. As the universe expanded, the medium of space through which to light travels changed dramatically. Therefore, the speed of light _cannot_ remain constant throughout all time.
(...Wolves have become dogs...)
Yes, they can be thought of as a "kind" of dog, but they have never become cats or rabbits or anything else.
(...The time required makes it nigh impossible to recreate the Grand Canyon in the lab...)
If it cannot be tested in the lab were observed in nature, it is not science, but history. The element of time, the magic of evolution, is always the final retreat of evolutionists. Whenever evolutionists do not have a here and now explanation, or the here and now observed evidence contradicts their theory, the invoke the magic of time, millions or billions of years.
We do have indeed a recent example of a canyon made on a small scale, not over millions of years, but over days. It can be found at the foot of Mount Saint Helens. The river that runs through it is named the Toutle river.
(...Do you really believe that man is not capable of being good and moral...)
I think that if you study history or read your local newspaper you can answer that one. Yes, I believe that humans are capable of loving and doing the right thing. Just having the capability and actually doing it are two very different things.
Most likely, you know that it is wrong to lie and steal. If you have done so, even once, that makes you a liar and a thief. You do not have to murder a dozen people to be a murderer. Just once is enough. There is a law that demands death for such activities, therefore anyone who does any of the above could be executed. We are all sitting on death row right now.
Nobody will ever go to hell for being a thief, a liar, a murderer an adulterer and such. People are going to go to hell for calling God a liar. You don't like to be labeled a liar, so why should God. If you tell someone something and they tell you that they do not believe you, that is what you are really doing, calling them a liar.
God offers every death row inmate on this planet a free pardon. The conditions of this pardon are to believe God and then decide to WANT to no longer break God's laws. You can begin to find out what God wants and how he wants you to live by first reading the Gospel of John in your Bible.
Slashdot Mirror
....My experiences with Apple product support have been no better than the product support from other major laptop manufacturers....
Apparently Consumer Reports does NOT agree with you on that. They pegged Apple at the top of the heap for service and quality. Their opinion may still only be an opinion, but it is worth more to most people than your opinion on the matter.
...There's plenty of Linux software that won't run on OS X and vice versa...
Oh really? Care to name some? On the other hand there is plenty of hardware, such as scanners and printers that will not work with Linux.
...If they were closer in price to the pc laptops people might opt for them. ...
So then all the cheapskates buy PC and those who want quality buy a Mac. There are those who are happy with a Yugo and then are those who want a Mercedes. Apple is selling plenty of computers at the prices they charge and BMW is selling a lot of cars also. If you can't afford a Mac, don't whine, get a cheap Dell and be happy.
...Applying that to make a laptop chassis is NOT innovative....
Maybe that is your opinion, but I suspect it will be a long while, if ever, before you'll be able to buy a cheap Dell made that way. Apple didn't invent the portable music player or cell phone either. Still their iPods and iPhones are selling by the millions and Apple is laughing all the way to the bank. If you have some extra money, buy some Apple stock, because it WILL go up again. They have good products and many people will pay extra for good design.
....Now you take the best-selling Mac ever and remove its ability to import video?..
Don't good camcorders still use firewire? So then start up iMovie, plug in camcorder and and import the video.
...there will always be things that having a individual machine is better suited for...
Indeed, is that not why PCs took over from the old centralized mainframe days 30 years ago? The thin clients of today are a little better than the old Wyse or VT100 terminals, but the limitations are the same. If the mainframe dies, everybody can only twiddle their thumbs until it comes back up. Redundant decentralized systems using full fledged PCs are more reliable, but have administration and security issues. In perusing all the posts here, most of them are from the perspective of the IT workers who laud the easier administration of mainframe networks.
Back in the mainframe days, the techno-priests who ran the "big computers" behind the glass walls in the air-conditioned "holy place" of computing felt very important. When the age of the PC dawned, these high priests were quite dismayed by their loss of authority over users. Now, with buzz-words such as "thin clients", "cloud computing" and in the name of security, they are trying to regain the kingdom of computing that they lost to the users through the mechanism of a completely functional autonomous personal computer. It is not surprising to see that most /. posts sing the praises of going back to the old centralized ways of doing things, since many here are indeed members of the computing priesthood.
It will be difficult to stuff the genie of user independence given by the PERSONAL computer back into the bottle, but the priests are surely trying. Bill Gates and Co. made an attempt at "secure computing". Fortunately, that went nowhere. The security mantra got us the PATRIOT act and will likely also go a long ways in re-establishing the central authority of the computing priesthood. For the sake computing freedom, I hope their efforts at killing the personal computer fails miserably.
....it's actually a citeable moving violation to be in neutral...
How would a cop or anyone else outside of the car know whether or not a car is coasting in neutral or not?
....why is it assumed that life has to develop on a planet by current definitions...
It does not really matter what you call the environment where life may exist or develop. It could be a spaceship such as Hollywood's death Star. The point is, that the environmental requirements for physical life are quite narrow. Even a single cell is far more complicated than a large city. On the atomic and molecular level, the process of life is extremely complicated and intricate. More complex systems generally have stricter environmental requirements than simpler ones.
Isn't it interesting, to contemplate the large amount of human effort that is expended to answer the question: "Are we alone in this great big huge universe?" The hoped for and yet also feared answer to this question apparently is a resounding "no"! We do not like the idea of being "home alone", but also fear that some alien life form coming here might have us for lunch. How is this question related to the questions of origin and purpose? Is the the fact that all humans are incurably religious also related to these questions?
If someone did come and visit us, someone from far beyond our own galaxy, how would such a living being convince us that he/she/it really did come here from a distant universe, or even more far out, some other universe? Would a few Star Trek like demonstrations of advanced technology do the trick to convince us? Is sufficiently advanced technology truly indistinguishable from the supernatural? How would such a visit have played out centuries ago, before our own modern technological age began? Is it possible or even probable that such a visit has already taken place in the history of humanity?
...You know of course that IF they find a whole bunch of earthlike planets...
That is a big IF. Over half of all known stars can never have an earth-like planet for the simple reason that half of all stars are too close to each other. To have a planet with a temperature range suitable for life, its orbit has to be very regular. Another star too close prevents such stable orbits. Other parameters such as the right elements in the proper proportions must also be right, as must be the rotation rate and gravity. The likelihood of all that coming together by sheer chance is exceedingly remote.
...If the laws of Biology are any indication...
Underlying the laws of biology are the laws of physics. In this case, specifically the electronic binding energies of atoms to each other. To have PHYSICAL life forms, requires complex molecular structures, such as proteins. One of the definitions of "life" is the ability to reproduce. This implies some way to record and pass on the structural and functional capabilities, such as DNA. We have evidence that the elements that exist here on Earth are also present in the distant reaches of the universe. It also appears that the basic laws of physics and chemistry are amazingly uniform throughout all of space we can observe.
Of all elements able to form the foundation for large complex molecules, none is better than carbon. Together with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, carbon alone is able to meet the complexity requirement of living chemistry.
The next best is silicon, but its binding energies to other atoms is too high for really complex molecular assemblies. Therefore, the conditions for life, especially intelligent? life like ours could not be too different from what we know. This essentially means a temperature range where water can exist as a liquid. Life chemistry proceeds most effectively between 32 to 42 degrees C. It is no accident that the internal temperature of warm blooded creatures lies in this range.
Conclusion: If there is physical, as opposed to some sort of spirit or mind-life, such life is likely to be not very different in its basis than ours.
... I wonder what the parameters for "earth like" should be....
Do you mean by that the conditions necessary to develop intelligent life, such as the SETI project is looking for? Assuming that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe, the molecular binding energies for living things would dictate the temperature range. For practical purposes this would mean the temperature range in which water remains liquid at least some of the time. This would require a stable orbit around a star the output of which does not fluctuate too much. Orbital mechanics show that such a star must not have a neighbor closer than about 3.8 ly. By that specification alone, about one half of all stars in the universe are disqualified from having such a planet because they are too close to each other.
Really big stars are also disqualified because their output varies too much in order for intelligent life to develop or exist. If a star is too small, a potential planet must be placed too close in order to get enough heat. Any such close in planets all are unlikely to freely rotate, thereby having one side always facing the star. That would mean the dark side would get extremely cold. Assuming there was a viable atmosphere, it would circulate violently between the day and night side.
Living processes involve large complex molecular structures which only the element carbon allows. Therefore, any physical life must be based on the chemistry involving carbon. Of course, there may be nonphysical life, but that is not what we are talking about here.
....Few, if any, public servants are immune from having associated with some pretty shady characters....
So sadly true. I do find it interesting that four of these senators were democrats and McCain was the lone republican. I wonder what would happen if the majority of voters wrote in Mickey Mouse for EVERY candidate from president , congress and senate. If political office could be divorced from money, maybe some decent people would run who would be interested in and truly representing the ordinary people, rather than money-bags.
Obama promises change? In 1933 Germany was in dire economic straits, much worse than the US today. There also was a good orator who promised change. He promised that Germany would not be recognizable once he got done. He was right in that, but not the way the German people or I suppose he himself envisioned. Be careful what you wish for. You may get it and not like it even a little bit.
I think that it is safer to go with the devil you know, sort of, rather than one who seemed to arise out of nowhere. Would you hire a plumber with only 143 days experience to unclog your toilet?
So Obama's associations are not the sole reason I don't think he is presidential material. I don't want him to be in command of the biggest pile of WMDs in the world. That is scary!
...it's an extremely stupid employer who is concerned about that type of thing in the first place...
Maybe not so stupid. There is an element of truth to the premise' "If I know who you associate with, I know something about who you are". If the job requires integrity and trust, which many jobs do, how a prospective employee behaves is very important.
This is a major reason I will not vote for Obama. He has associated with questionable characters at times. Such associations may well cost someone a job also.
...I hear incendiary letters are tracked more closely....
I wonder, does that also apply to inflammatory language in emails?
...use false facts, but simply remember them...
Anyone really wanting a bit better privacy could invent a complete "public" personality. A maybe even real name might be OK, but everything connected to that name is invented and has no bearing to any real person.
Keep that in a file on a USB drive (along with other important stuff) and use that consistently on all web-sites. Keep USB drive in a safe place. I keep mine on my house-keys chain.
...google only does this if you're Chinese....
google only does this TODAY if you're Chinese.
There I fixed that for you.
Tomorrow they may do it for _fill in your favorite govt. agency of any government_ that demands it.
Besides, facetious tag on > If you have done nothing "bad" or "stupid", what are you hiding? facetious tag off.
...Consumers have no real choice,...
Apparently a lot of consumers, especially those wanting a laptop and are not exactly church-mouse poor, are buying Apple's Macs. With virtualization they can even still run some of their favorite Windows programs.
.... If this problem is serious and widespread...
then it should apply to most computers and other electronic devices. Most of these are made in factories overseas, mostly in China. The procedures and processes used are all quite similar. Therefore I smell a benzene soaked rat that Apple should be singled out as being the worst or even only offender. The report is likely an outright lie or at least a gross exaggeration. If there is a problem, it is highly unlikely that it should be confined to only one company's specific product.
... seem to recall Greenpeace going after Apple in the past as well...
When I read that Greenpeace was involved in this, accusation, the believability of the article went to essentially zero. Why is Apple singled out for this. All computers have pretty much the same stuff in them these days and are built by the same factories in China. So whatever "toxic smell" somebody accuses Apple computers of emitting would also come from other brands of computer and all kinds of electronics. The processes used to make all electronic gadgets are not all that dissimilar. If Consumer Reports had come out with such a report I might read it more carefully, but Greenpeace has a huge axe to grind against Apple which apparently is on their shitlist..
...The fossil record shows gradual change...
That is not true. The so called evolutionary column is found NOWHERE on earth in any single spot. "Earlier" life forms are at times wildly jumbled up with "later" ones, all in the same layer.
(...ToE is about gradual change...)
ToE is about _widely believed_ gradual change. There, fixed it for you. Nobody, anywhere has ever demonstrated sparrows giving birth to mockingbirds, but evolution teaches that "eventually", over time, a LOT of time, birds became mammals, apes evolved into humans and other magic we don't see happening. Without lots of time even evolutionists admit that ToE cannot work. The actual real evidence we have TODAY, shows that evolution doesn't happen at all, at least not the monkey to man sort. Believing that it can or did happen is OK, but it is a belief, not an observed scientific fact. I can give you the story how the magic of time helped here and there by chance, as described in public school text books, can turn not only a frog, but even rock into a handsome prince. A pretty maiden's kiss is not needed.
Can you not understand that science is what we observe happening TODAY and _history_ is what happened in the past? Nobody can do experiments or observe past history. We have to rely on human or natural witnesses. Fossils are nature's witnesses as are radioactive rocks and light from outer space. Pyramids, cuneiform tablets, papyrus and animal skin scrolls, such as the dead sea scrolls and the books of the Bible are witnesses of human history. ALL witnesses, natural or human NEVER prove anything, but must be BELIEVED or not.
You believe, have faith, that natural witnesses are testifying that monkeys eventually, over lots of time, became human. I believe, have faith in what God had written in the witness of a historic book. There He tells us that He created monkeys, men and all other creatures distinct and only able to each reproduce their own kind. We STILL see this and only this happening today. That makes the biblical interpretation far more believable than the evolutionary conjecture. Even so, we are both stuck with belief as far as the past goes.
....you look at this guess and then ask "what else would we expect to see if the guess is correct?"...
The problem is that when the evolutionists guesses do NOT accord with observations TODAY, they resort to telling everybody that evolutionary processes are very SLOW and take so much TIME, so of course we don't see them taking place today.
Everybody, not just highly educated scientists, observes and has observed for centuries that living things do NOT evolve the way evolution preaches. Dogs forever produce ONLY more dogs, cats make more cats, birds lay eggs which only hatch into more birds of a certain kind. Woodpeckers don't produce sparrows or ostriches. This holds true in more "primitive" life forms also. One celled algae produce only more algae. Your mother would have been very upset and unbelieving if the doctors or nurses had brought a chimpanzee to her instead of you and told her that she just had experienced evolution happening backwards. After all, evolutionists preach that evolution can happen the other way also and might be called devolution.
The Creator simply tells us in the Bible that is what He did. He made each kind reproduce after their own kind. Birch trees don't make Pine or Fir seedlings, only more Birch trees. This is ALL we observe. Creationists don't HAVE to make guesses about the past, because they are TOLD what happened by the one that made it happen. We all see it STILL happening every day of our lives as corroborating evidence that what God has said about this subject is true.
When evolutionists are confronted with this undeniable FACT of nature, they dismiss all that everyday fact with: "It takes millions of years for that sort of evolution" and so we can't expect to see this in our life time".
I say that is BS and a cop out into the magic land of time. If it can't be seen or duplicated TODAY, it didn't happen. You can go visit the pyramids and if someone really wanted to build one today, they could, even though they were made thousands of years ago. All history, including natural history cannot be scientifically tested, but must be believed by whatever records we have. There is no way to experimentally or observationally determine that Julius Caesar ever lived. You have to BELIEVE the written records of historians.
We find fossils all over, but WHO has ever made a fossil? Make me a fossil and explain how you did it. Take an e-coli bacteria and evolve it into a streptococcus or spirochete or the other way round and explain how you did that in an experimental report. You'd win a Nobel prize for sure. Experiments and observations is what REAL science is all about, not speculations and conjectures of what might have taken place millions of years ago, but cannot be duplicated or observed today.
(..what else would we expect to see..)
The current interpretation of the observed red-shift of distant starlight is the doppler effect. Another interpretation of it is that it is caused by the slowing of the speed of light. Not the "tired light" interpretation, but the changing nature of space itself. This change must also change the energies of the atomic orbits. Since atomic phenomena are quantized, the red shift should also be quantized. This is indeed what scientists have observed. The red-shift is not smooth, but occurs in tiny jumps. If you are interested look here:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html
This is credible evidence that allows calculation of exactly how much the speed of light has changed. It also gives us a basis for correcting radiometric time bases into the past, because Planck's "constant" is inversely related to c. Planck's constant has been _measured_ to be increasing still today.
Evolution is NOT science, but a philosophy dependent on the magic of time. If any scientists who believes in evolution could ever make it happen now, in the lab or observe it in nature, there would be screaming headlines everywhere.
...Now I have to pay Internet bills...
Worse, if the connection goes down, you can't even type a letter or contract for printing if a program requires that connection in order to work. Maybe, when the Internet is as reliable as good old POTS, that objection will no longer hold. Even cell phones are not anywhere near as reliable as the old fashioned land line.
It seems like some IT professionals never got over the fact that the PC took away the iron clad control they had over all computing back in the days of the mainframe. Now they have figured out a way to wrest control back from the users to themselves. Back then the users were subservient to the high priests of computing. The computer priesthood now sees cloud computing as an opportunity to regain the control they had before the PC was invented and gave the users that control instead.
If the government wants to snoop on the data on your local HD, they still have to get a warrant and physically come to your location. That is how it used to be when they wanted to tap your phone line. Now all they have to do is jiggle a mouse and all your phone conversations come right into the office of whatever government official has a whim to listen. If your data resides on some servers run by some big company, they will automatically give the authorities what they want and neither you nor any judge will ever even know about it. These big companies have no incentive to protect your data from prying eyes, especially governments. It's not like that sort of thing has not happened already. Big companies are only interested in ONE thing: money.
...If you CHANGE those numbers, you CHANGE a lot of things...
Not so. For example, take the famous equation e=mc^2.
Atomic rest masses "m" are proportional to 1/(c^2). Thus when c was higher, rest masses were lower. If the rest mass does down as c goes up then energy will be conserved.
(...It is the change of c in vacuum that I have a problem with...)
What makes you think the medium you call vacuum has not changed? Space and the vacuum are not an empty nothing, but have definite electromagnetic properties. Antenna designers have to deal with these. As space expanded, its properties changed.
(.. but a secondary effect is that we would see stars and galaxies orbiting slower than we would expect...)
Orbits of any sort have nothing to do with red-shifts. Orbits are controlled by he force of gravity. The red-shift is of atomic origin, controlled by the electric force.
In hat way do you believe God is deceitful?
..Science at the very least has the advantage of having some system to the guesswork..
Actually science is NOT t all guesswork. It is based on present observations and experiments, done in real time, TODAY! The guesswork is in the interpretation of the data so gathered. We measure the speed of light today and it is a certain speed. That tells us nothing about what it was a million or even a thousand years ago. We assume the stars are a certain distance away and try to match brightnesses assuming that the other stars are equally far away and equally bright.
In 1968, the scientific community changed Planck's constant from 0.0014350 to 0.0014388. Why, just for fun or is it because it indeed is not truly constant?
(...Besides, how would this change in atomic clocks not be detected by comparing it to other potential sources of time...)
The only other source of time is orbital time which is dependent on gravity. Gravity equations do not contain a time element such as c or h. The atomic clocks indeed have lost a few seconds since 1967 against orbital clocks. In 1967 the time standard was changed from an orbital definition to an atomic definition.
If light can be slowed down, then its speed is not a constant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light
If it can be slower, then why not also faster?
....Claiming that the basic laws of physics...
Since when is the speed of light a LAW? It just happens to be parameter no different than the mass of the earth or any other number. There is no LAW of physics that demands ALL such numbers should remain absolutely constant throughout all time. It has been firmly established that the speed of light is a variable, not a constant. It can be slowed down and sped up in the laboratory at will. The speed of light clearly depends on the medium through which travels. As the universe expanded, the medium of space through which to light travels changed dramatically. Therefore, the speed of light _cannot_ remain constant throughout all time.
(...Wolves have become dogs...)
Yes, they can be thought of as a "kind" of dog, but they have never become cats or rabbits or anything else.
(...The time required makes it nigh impossible to recreate the Grand Canyon in the lab...)
If it cannot be tested in the lab were observed in nature, it is not science, but history. The element of time, the magic of evolution, is always the final retreat of evolutionists. Whenever evolutionists do not have a here and now explanation, or the here and now observed evidence contradicts their theory, the invoke the magic of time, millions or billions of years.
We do have indeed a recent example of a canyon made on a small scale, not over millions of years, but over days. It can be found at the foot of Mount Saint Helens. The river that runs through it is named the Toutle river.
(...Do you really believe that man is not capable of being good and moral ...)
I think that if you study history or read your local newspaper you can answer that one. Yes, I believe that humans are capable of loving and doing the right thing. Just having the capability and actually doing it are two very different things.
Most likely, you know that it is wrong to lie and steal. If you have done so, even once, that makes you a liar and a thief. You do not have to murder a dozen people to be a murderer. Just once is enough. There is a law that demands death for such activities, therefore anyone who does any of the above could be executed. We are all sitting on death row right now.
Nobody will ever go to hell for being a thief, a liar, a murderer an adulterer and such. People are going to go to hell for calling God a liar. You don't like to be labeled a liar, so why should God. If you tell someone something and they tell you that they do not believe you, that is what you are really doing, calling them a liar.
God offers every death row inmate on this planet a free pardon. The conditions of this pardon are to believe God and then decide to WANT to no longer break God's laws. You can begin to find out what God wants and how he wants you to live by first reading the Gospel of John in your Bible.