amino acids aren't the program in this instance, though - they're merely the instructions for the building blocks to create the entity that runs the program.
it's one thing to say "we are defined by dna", and quite another to say "our brains are just a computer running a complex program", and just because one statement may be true doesn't mean that the other one is
apart from all the answers by other ppl here, you're also conveniently forgetting that all sentient creatures (that we know of) have physical bodies, and their (conscious) acts are all physical acts. This is a critically important piece of the puzzle- all life that we know of is based around 2 simple directives (for want of a better word):
Survive (keep the physical body functioning)
Reproduce (replicate the physical body)
Furthermore, all sentient life makes all conscious decisions based on physical stimuli: light, sound, heat, etc etc.
Comparing known physical life to conjectural non-physical life is like comparing apples to, well, a jpg apple.
"There is no wrong answer for that test, and their answer is recorded. Soon, that same question will be asked for that same picture. As soon as its confirmed 2 times, it gets classified as having n people."
How do you know that those 2 confirmed times weren't bots, and that you've just allowed those bots to effectively choose the answer to your question?
we don't even know what 'life' is, fundamentally - much less how our brains work on a 'sentient' level. How can we develop machines which are sentient if we don't even know how we are!?
the general public still seems to think that there's a threshold of power (computational power, that is) above which any computer would immediately become self-aware; this misconception about the fundamental concept of sentience is still being fed by the media... last week i heard the same old rubbish about "computers eventually becoming so powerful that they become self aware". it just won't work like that
AI has come on in leaps and bounds - it's in use every day in thousands of places in the western world. the fact that we don't have our own personal 'AI' computer wishing us a good morning and musing about the meaning of life with us, doesn't mean the field is failing. it's just not succeeding in the way that certain (very midsguided, and very misinformed) people expected.
The thing that annoys me is when articles in the press or TV programmes refer to how parts of animals or plants were 'designed' by evolution. As if Evolution sat back at some point and thought "hmmm... if i want some animals to end up flying, i could use their upper limbs and change them into wings." I think mis-representations like this have a lot to answer for - the whole point of evolution is that design never comes into it, in fact it's a process about as far away from design as it's possible to get. A lot of TV programmes, especially, leave you with the impression that evolution is some amazing, intelligent entity capable of thought, rather than just a name we have applied to a completely natural - and essentially random - process.
I see this comment a lot, and it is a fair point, but it also kind of misses the point.
You could level the same accusation against most literary works pre 1800, and as Tolkien was attempting to create a mythology - more like Beowulf, less like Dickens - i'm sure he wouldn't have cared one bit. i for one prefer a good story with shallow characters than a poor story with 'deep' characters. most readers seem to share my view. which is why critics rave about Ulysses (to take the most extreme example) and hate LotR, whereas most of the book-reading public thinks LotR is great but would never even try to read Ulysses even if they knew what it was.
for most people, story is more important than characterization.
...flickr isn't a site where everyone just uploads their OMG funny!! GIF files and every crappy camera phone snap; it's more of a serious photographer's site...
You haven't spent long browsing on flickr, obviously
You not heard of the BNP (British National Party)? "Britain for the British".
They're not just against muslims (their being in Britain), but anyone who isn't ethically "British" (whatever that means - I doubt there's a more mongrel nation in the world, but anyway...).
I used to work in this field (supplying software to the Navy, for use onboard warships), and the one thing I can state from my time working with people in the Navy is that they're definitely more interested in things working than in things looking good. I don't know the background to Windows being chosen, but if it was a decision made by the type of people I used to work with/for (I worked for a Navy supplier, so HM Royal Navy was in effect our client), having fancy popup messages and nice-looking GUIs won't have been anywhere near their top priority. This isn't the sort of thing that gets rushed - it's likely to have taken months if not years to come to this decision. The article's mention of outdated technology is pretty accurate - and it is because that technology has a history of doing the job well. Of course, if the decision to use Windows was made by politicians or economists...
Having said that, while I worked on these projects, at the same agency the FIST project was getting under way (a project to equip infantry with personal computer/weapons systems, with HUD in-helmet). At least in our part of the business, it was a standing joke because it ran on windows (95, I think) and kept crashing (our team was using Solaris at the time).
hat's the sort of treatment that follows on to denial of a literal virgin birth, and of Jesus being the literal son of God, and being literally raised from the dead -- not on the basis of whether the text appears to be speaking literally, but because they are miraculous. At that level of non-literalism, you just don't have a literal Christ in your Christianity anymore.
You've just given a good summary of what various branches of christians do actually believe (as opposed to the Roman Catholic / Protestant versions of Christianity which are prevalent in the West).
You don't have to believe in much of the stuff most western christians recognize to call yourself a christian, and in fact many christians don't; some don't even believe christ himself was divine in any way at all
Having a literal Christ-as-physical-son-of-God isn't the be-all and end-all of christianity, you know
I have a friend who used to work for the NHS, in a kind of admin role; he was responsible for collating statistics on certain things across a whole region, so that official figures could be produced which would be used by the Government (local and national). The whole setup was a joke - he relied on individual surgeries to supply their own data, but most didn't record the data he needed and those which did all did so in different ways. When his superiors were told of this, and how it was basically impossible to collate the required data, he was told, effectively, to guess. He reckoned the resulting statistics bore no relation to reality whatsoever.
When he told me this I was a bit shocked, but not that surprised; I've also worked on government contracts in the private sector (ie. for private companies supplying government) and in the last of such roles was amazed what we charged for our products, which were basically glorified searchable databases. In many cases the work could have been done in the same timeframe, with much the same results, for 1/10th or less of the cost, but we charged 6-figure sums and got away with it not because our product was so good, but because it was sold as being unique in the marketplace. It may have been unique in how it worked, but not in the results it gave - but it didn't matter. Our whole business plan was based around it, and it worked (as a business plan). I actually felt slightly ashamed to be associated with it, as a taxpayer. What amazed me was how such huge figures were never questioned by the clients - it was just assumed that it must be brilliant because it cost so much and was designed by clever people (which it was, for what that's worth).
And if you think they're isolated examples, google for the Air Traffic Control system which was supposed to be the next best thing in government IT projects.
it's pretty easy to get list-items to behave like this - a bit of a fudge but still compliant and works fine in most browsers. just set the
padding to 0, put an anchor inside whose display style is set to 'block', and do all your styling (background, hovers etc) on the anchor not the
. e.g.:
li {
padding:0; } li a {
display:block;
padding:4px;
background-color:#fff; } li a:hover {
background-color:#ccc; }...
<li> <a href="#">one</a> </li>
There's also an argument that:hover rules are actually behaviour- and not display- related, and therefore have no place in CSS (and should be done in javascript); I'm not that pedantic myself but don't consider it a bad option. You could, for instance, attach a j.s. mouseover/mouseout event to each <li> and set/unset a 'hover' class on the <li> for these events, then define styles for <li>s with and without the class. A bit more work possibly, but opens up other opportunities too.
this has been partly covered by other questions, but i figured a direct one just on this was important:
i'm a web developer, and need to test web sites for both IE7 and IE6. Buying another PC isn't an option, and running virtualization software is a lot of effort (in many different ways) just to have two browsers installed. With that in mind, how would you recommend I go about testing sites in both browsers? Most solutions I've seen involve hacks which aren't guaranteed not to break certain things.
Because of this issue, many sites are going to (visually) break in IE7 as soon as people update their browser. This isn't going to look good to most users, and could potentially send many of them running for an alternative which doesn't break the sites they like.
If this dual setup is not easily possible now, will it be in the (near) future? And was this something that you considered when developing, and planning the release of, IE7?
it's already displacing its equivalent mass in seawater.
Is it displacing its equivalent volume, though? We're not too worried about oceans becoming heavier, just bigger.
Besides which, all the ice which is resting on solid ground isn't displacing any ocean water - say, pretty much all of greenland. still think the oceans aren't going to rise?
Besides which, just because the planet used to be as warm as it is now doesn't disprove global warming theories one iota. Temperatures do go up and down, carbon dioxide levels do fluctuate... but the rate of change in recent decades is much faster than would normally be expected.
Maybe the recent changes are explainable, maybe this whole global warming stuff is bunk, maybe the oil companies, the big industries, the politicians who are sponsored by those industries, and all the westerners too fond of their SUVs are right and this is all natural and nothing to worry about. Maybe. But until I'm 100% sure, I'd want to have a contingency plan that doesn't involve sticking our collective heads in the sand and shouting "la la la I can't hear you".
You shouldn't believe everything you read on the web - not that I'm saying the info is definitely incorrect, but just because it's there doesn't mean it's not -incorrect-.
I could find plenty of websites stating that the earth is only 5000 years old if i wanted to - and many of them would link to other sources - it wouldn't mean they're reliable.
So, in essence, you're asking us to compare data provided by a large, scientific organisation (NASA, grandparent) to that posted on someone's personal homepage - a homepage which has a (bad) Star Wars -esque scrolling introduction on the front page, it's own theme music, and was last updated 3 years ago.
If we ignore all other hypothesis and we turn out to be wrong with the whole CO2 thing, then we're going to spend some incomprehensible number of dollars reducing our CO2 output over the next 100 years for no gain.
So, we stand to lose billions, or trillians, of dollars. On the other hand, if the theories are correct but we don't take them seriously, we stand to lose... life on earth (as we know it).
Dollars/Life on earth. Life on earth/Dollars. Hmmm. Tough one.
both fit into a trouser/shirt pocket easily and without causing discomfort; both are light enough that they're unnoticeable while walking around. to me, that's not much difference.
40 hours versus 14 hours is significant, for me; i can take my MD player on a week's holiday without having to take a charger. i can leave it in my bag for weeks at a time without having to remember to charge it, and without ending up with no music on my journey home.
there comes a point where smaller is not necessarily better. my MD player is already too small for me (and my large hands) to comfortably use - having an ipod nano would make no difference to how noticeable it is to carry around, but would make me notice when the battery runs out halfway through a journey.
there are smaller MP3 players than the nano, but none is as popular, because the nano offers something those players don't. likewise, my MD offers me something the nano cannot - just because that offering wouldn't justify it to you, doesn't mean it doesn't justify to me or anyone else.
my main priorities, in descending order, for portable music are 1. sound quality, 2. size, and 3. battery life, in that order. MD wins out (IMO) on the first and third, and is more than acceptable in the second category.
that's not my point. i'm not saying that MD is "better" than MP3 in any real way: i'm saying it suits some people more - even if those people are outnumbered 100 to 1 - because the few strengths it does have, for some, are far more important than the many strengths MP3 as a format has.
i'm not interested in which is "better" in absolute terms - i merely responded to a "MD is rubbish" post that I thought misrepresented the format.
Slashdot Mirror
how much credence do i give to the information on this (sffmedia) site?
I don't even know what the name for that kind of sentence is. Apart from "stupid".
amino acids aren't the program in this instance, though - they're merely the instructions for the building blocks to create the entity that runs the program.
it's one thing to say "we are defined by dna", and quite another to say "our brains are just a computer running a complex program", and just because one statement may be true doesn't mean that the other one is
apart from all the answers by other ppl here, you're also conveniently forgetting that all sentient creatures (that we know of) have physical bodies, and their (conscious) acts are all physical acts. This is a critically important piece of the puzzle- all life that we know of is based around 2 simple directives (for want of a better word):
Furthermore, all sentient life makes all conscious decisions based on physical stimuli: light, sound, heat, etc etc.
Comparing known physical life to conjectural non-physical life is like comparing apples to, well, a jpg apple.
"There is no wrong answer for that test, and their answer is recorded. Soon, that same question will be asked for that same picture. As soon as its confirmed 2 times, it gets classified as having n people."
How do you know that those 2 confirmed times weren't bots, and that you've just allowed those bots to effectively choose the answer to your question?
we don't even know what 'life' is, fundamentally - much less how our brains work on a 'sentient' level. How can we develop machines which are sentient if we don't even know how we are!?
the general public still seems to think that there's a threshold of power (computational power, that is) above which any computer would immediately become self-aware; this misconception about the fundamental concept of sentience is still being fed by the media... last week i heard the same old rubbish about "computers eventually becoming so powerful that they become self aware". it just won't work like that
AI has come on in leaps and bounds - it's in use every day in thousands of places in the western world. the fact that we don't have our own personal 'AI' computer wishing us a good morning and musing about the meaning of life with us, doesn't mean the field is failing. it's just not succeeding in the way that certain (very midsguided, and very misinformed) people expected.
The thing that annoys me is when articles in the press or TV programmes refer to how parts of animals or plants were 'designed' by evolution. As if Evolution sat back at some point and thought "hmmm... if i want some animals to end up flying, i could use their upper limbs and change them into wings." I think mis-representations like this have a lot to answer for - the whole point of evolution is that design never comes into it, in fact it's a process about as far away from design as it's possible to get. A lot of TV programmes, especially, leave you with the impression that evolution is some amazing, intelligent entity capable of thought, rather than just a name we have applied to a completely natural - and essentially random - process.
I see this comment a lot, and it is a fair point, but it also kind of misses the point.
You could level the same accusation against most literary works pre 1800, and as Tolkien was attempting to create a mythology - more like Beowulf, less like Dickens - i'm sure he wouldn't have cared one bit. i for one prefer a good story with shallow characters than a poor story with 'deep' characters. most readers seem to share my view. which is why critics rave about Ulysses (to take the most extreme example) and hate LotR, whereas most of the book-reading public thinks LotR is great but would never even try to read Ulysses even if they knew what it was.
for most people, story is more important than characterization.
in answer to your question: yes, you are the only one.
but thanks: i didn't think such a drastically bad understanding of how HTML/CSS works was possible. i stand corrected.
You haven't spent long browsing on flickr, obviously
You not heard of the BNP (British National Party)? "Britain for the British".
They're not just against muslims (their being in Britain), but anyone who isn't ethically "British" (whatever that means - I doubt there's a more mongrel nation in the world, but anyway...).
I used to work in this field (supplying software to the Navy, for use onboard warships), and the one thing I can state from my time working with people in the Navy is that they're definitely more interested in things working than in things looking good. I don't know the background to Windows being chosen, but if it was a decision made by the type of people I used to work with/for (I worked for a Navy supplier, so HM Royal Navy was in effect our client), having fancy popup messages and nice-looking GUIs won't have been anywhere near their top priority. This isn't the sort of thing that gets rushed - it's likely to have taken months if not years to come to this decision. The article's mention of outdated technology is pretty accurate - and it is because that technology has a history of doing the job well. Of course, if the decision to use Windows was made by politicians or economists...
Having said that, while I worked on these projects, at the same agency the FIST project was getting under way (a project to equip infantry with personal computer/weapons systems, with HUD in-helmet). At least in our part of the business, it was a standing joke because it ran on windows (95, I think) and kept crashing (our team was using Solaris at the time).
You've just given a good summary of what various branches of christians do actually believe (as opposed to the Roman Catholic / Protestant versions of Christianity which are prevalent in the West).
You don't have to believe in much of the stuff most western christians recognize to call yourself a christian, and in fact many christians don't; some don't even believe christ himself was divine in any way at all
Having a literal Christ-as-physical-son-of-God isn't the be-all and end-all of christianity, you know
I have a friend who used to work for the NHS, in a kind of admin role; he was responsible for collating statistics on certain things across a whole region, so that official figures could be produced which would be used by the Government (local and national). The whole setup was a joke - he relied on individual surgeries to supply their own data, but most didn't record the data he needed and those which did all did so in different ways. When his superiors were told of this, and how it was basically impossible to collate the required data, he was told, effectively, to guess. He reckoned the resulting statistics bore no relation to reality whatsoever.
When he told me this I was a bit shocked, but not that surprised; I've also worked on government contracts in the private sector (ie. for private companies supplying government) and in the last of such roles was amazed what we charged for our products, which were basically glorified searchable databases. In many cases the work could have been done in the same timeframe, with much the same results, for 1/10th or less of the cost, but we charged 6-figure sums and got away with it not because our product was so good, but because it was sold as being unique in the marketplace. It may have been unique in how it worked, but not in the results it gave - but it didn't matter. Our whole business plan was based around it, and it worked (as a business plan). I actually felt slightly ashamed to be associated with it, as a taxpayer. What amazed me was how such huge figures were never questioned by the clients - it was just assumed that it must be brilliant because it cost so much and was designed by clever people (which it was, for what that's worth).
And if you think they're isolated examples, google for the Air Traffic Control system which was supposed to be the next best thing in government IT projects.
they're talking about portable user data, what you're talking about isn't even remotely the same thing
it's pretty easy to get list-items to behave like this - a bit of a fudge but still compliant and works fine in most browsers. just set the
li {
padding:0;
}
li a {
display:block;
padding:4px;
background-color:#fff;
}
li a:hover {
background-color:#ccc;
}
<li>
<a href="#">one</a>
</li>
There's also an argument that
this has been partly covered by other questions, but i figured a direct one just on this was important:
i'm a web developer, and need to test web sites for both IE7 and IE6. Buying another PC isn't an option, and running virtualization software is a lot of effort (in many different ways) just to have two browsers installed. With that in mind, how would you recommend I go about testing sites in both browsers? Most solutions I've seen involve hacks which aren't guaranteed not to break certain things.
Because of this issue, many sites are going to (visually) break in IE7 as soon as people update their browser. This isn't going to look good to most users, and could potentially send many of them running for an alternative which doesn't break the sites they like.
If this dual setup is not easily possible now, will it be in the (near) future? And was this something that you considered when developing, and planning the release of, IE7?
you crazy fool
Is it displacing its equivalent volume, though? We're not too worried about oceans becoming heavier, just bigger.
Besides which, all the ice which is resting on solid ground isn't displacing any ocean water - say, pretty much all of greenland. still think the oceans aren't going to rise?
There are vineyards in England today, too.
Besides which, just because the planet used to be as warm as it is now doesn't disprove global warming theories one iota. Temperatures do go up and down, carbon dioxide levels do fluctuate... but the rate of change in recent decades is much faster than would normally be expected.
Maybe the recent changes are explainable, maybe this whole global warming stuff is bunk, maybe the oil companies, the big industries, the politicians who are sponsored by those industries, and all the westerners too fond of their SUVs are right and this is all natural and nothing to worry about. Maybe. But until I'm 100% sure, I'd want to have a contingency plan that doesn't involve sticking our collective heads in the sand and shouting "la la la I can't hear you".
You shouldn't believe everything you read on the web - not that I'm saying the info is definitely incorrect, but just because it's there doesn't mean it's not -incorrect-. I could find plenty of websites stating that the earth is only 5000 years old if i wanted to - and many of them would link to other sources - it wouldn't mean they're reliable.
Whoops, typo: for "NASA" read "NOAA". My bad.
So, in essence, you're asking us to compare data provided by a large, scientific organisation (NASA, grandparent) to that posted on someone's personal homepage - a homepage which has a (bad) Star Wars -esque scrolling introduction on the front page, it's own theme music, and was last updated 3 years ago.
Riiiight...
So, we stand to lose billions, or trillians, of dollars. On the other hand, if the theories are correct but we don't take them seriously, we stand to lose... life on earth (as we know it).
Dollars/Life on earth. Life on earth/Dollars. Hmmm. Tough one.
both fit into a trouser/shirt pocket easily and without causing discomfort; both are light enough that they're unnoticeable while walking around. to me, that's not much difference.
40 hours versus 14 hours is significant, for me; i can take my MD player on a week's holiday without having to take a charger. i can leave it in my bag for weeks at a time without having to remember to charge it, and without ending up with no music on my journey home.
there comes a point where smaller is not necessarily better. my MD player is already too small for me (and my large hands) to comfortably use - having an ipod nano would make no difference to how noticeable it is to carry around, but would make me notice when the battery runs out halfway through a journey.
there are smaller MP3 players than the nano, but none is as popular, because the nano offers something those players don't. likewise, my MD offers me something the nano cannot - just because that offering wouldn't justify it to you, doesn't mean it doesn't justify to me or anyone else.
my main priorities, in descending order, for portable music are 1. sound quality, 2. size, and 3. battery life, in that order. MD wins out (IMO) on the first and third, and is more than acceptable in the second category.
that's not my point. i'm not saying that MD is "better" than MP3 in any real way: i'm saying it suits some people more - even if those people are outnumbered 100 to 1 - because the few strengths it does have, for some, are far more important than the many strengths MP3 as a format has.
i'm not interested in which is "better" in absolute terms - i merely responded to a "MD is rubbish" post that I thought misrepresented the format.