Stop thinking in species, silly people. There is no such thing as species but a name we give to a certain group of creatures at a certain time of which most share some common characteristics, to make some sense from the world. It's an invention, no more, no less: what you call 'human' or 'sheep' now, might be something completely different in a few thousand years.
Nature has no actual concept of species, the only thing that matters is: can these animals interbreed or not? And I very much doubt a sheep with a human heart can breed with a human.
That would be.. Douglas Adams' logic, actually. It's a quote from his 'Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy', where this text is an entry from the 'Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy'.
"There are only two kinds of math books: those you can't read past the first page, and those you can't read past the first sentence."
CN Yang, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1957
Watch out: even in infinite time, you cannot count an uncountable set. It doesn't matter how much you count by, an uncountable infinite set cannot be counted.
There's a pretty neat way of showing how this works exactly, with the set of real numbers. Let's say you have composed a list with what you think is *all* the real numbers between 0 and 1 on it, every number starting with 0. and stretching out to infinity with decimals. Then you take a new piece of paper and write "0.". Now you take the first number of your list. Take the first decimal of that number and add one. Write it down on the piece of paper after the point. Then take the second number of your list, take the second decimal, add one and write down. Take the third decimal of the third number, add one, write down, and so on till you have had all the numbers on your list.
What you have now on the new piece of paper, is a real number that is not included in your list! It can't be the same as the first number on your list, because the first decimal is different. Second decimal is different from the second number on your list, same for the third and fourth.. and all the numbers on your list! That means the list was incomplete! But there's still another real number that's not on the list... Just add the number you just produced to your list and start the procedure over. This way, you see that you can never compose a list with all real numbers, which means you can never count all real numbers even in infinite time, thus the set is uncountable. This in contrast with the set of integers, of which you *can* make a list (apart from little things like not having a big enough universe for such a list, and it taking infinite time to compose the list =)
Generic CEO: "What is this 'in the long run' you speak of?" Nowadays there seems to be a tendency for make-money-now-clean-up-our-mistakes-later. If there is a 'later', ofcourse. Alas, this is completely off-topic so please ignore =)
Slashdot Mirror
Stop thinking in species, silly people. There is no such thing as species but a name we give to a certain group of creatures at a certain time of which most share some common characteristics, to make some sense from the world. It's an invention, no more, no less: what you call 'human' or 'sheep' now, might be something completely different in a few thousand years.
Nature has no actual concept of species, the only thing that matters is: can these animals interbreed or not? And I very much doubt a sheep with a human heart can breed with a human.
That would be.. Douglas Adams' logic, actually. It's a quote from his 'Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy', where this text is an entry from the 'Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy'.
*coding away in the Google Code Jam practice arena*
My god... I am a Google whore o_o
Me!
Thus, the population of the world is about 10 (base 6000000000).
Now what is all this talk of new color schemes about? I still have the plain old dark green and gray scheme.
We need a +1 (-1?) Sad tag...
It's sad because it's true.
I'd say the flames coming out of the computer's case would a reasonable indicator.
I was just about to reply mentioning the Finglonger, but you beat me to it.
I downloaded it just because of the DRM. Turned out I don't even like the album.
For an example of what suicide attacks in the biblical days were like, watch Monty Python's "Life of Brian" =)
Hell, I liked Zoolander. Even have a copy on my harddrive somewhere.
If you mean the infinite set of integers, and the infinite set of (integers * 10): no, both sets are the exact same size. See Hilbert.
Watch out: even in infinite time, you cannot count an uncountable set. It doesn't matter how much you count by, an uncountable infinite set cannot be counted.
There's a pretty neat way of showing how this works exactly, with the set of real numbers. Let's say you have composed a list with what you think is *all* the real numbers between 0 and 1 on it, every number starting with 0. and stretching out to infinity with decimals.
Then you take a new piece of paper and write "0.". Now you take the first number of your list. Take the first decimal of that number and add one. Write it down on the piece of paper after the point. Then take the second number of your list, take the second decimal, add one and write down. Take the third decimal of the third number, add one, write down, and so on till you have had all the numbers on your list.
What you have now on the new piece of paper, is a real number that is not included in your list! It can't be the same as the first number on your list, because the first decimal is different. Second decimal is different from the second number on your list, same for the third and fourth.. and all the numbers on your list! That means the list was incomplete! But there's still another real number that's not on the list... Just add the number you just produced to your list and start the procedure over.
This way, you see that you can never compose a list with all real numbers, which means you can never count all real numbers even in infinite time, thus the set is uncountable. This in contrast with the set of integers, of which you *can* make a list (apart from little things like not having a big enough universe for such a list, and it taking infinite time to compose the list =)
Mmm... Toast.
It's disgusting and it's wrong.
Your opinion? That depends on your definition of 'is'.
It's way too easy (and fun!) to make 'non-artificial' humans already, no sense in trying to make artificial ones =)
Shouldn't you call it a lan party?
Oehh let's start a war on nouns! It'll never work ofcourse, but just think of all the naughty nouns we can stop with this war o'ours!
Only if you're really bad at aiming.
That's the funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in days! Good thing I don't drink coffee or I'd need a new keyboard.
Generic CEO: "What is this 'in the long run' you speak of?"
Nowadays there seems to be a tendency for make-money-now-clean-up-our-mistakes-later. If there is a 'later', ofcourse. Alas, this is completely off-topic so please ignore =)
You ofcourse misunderstand what they mean with "downloadable"... You won't have a say in whether it will be downloaded ;)
I loved Akira, but the bike really doesn't look that well in real life... This Suzuki is sooo much cooler =D
Now I just need a driver's license...