Your analogy of a freak accident isn't far wrong. It is a mistake to think of evolution as a planned process. That's where a lot of creationists try to poke holes in it by saying "what's the use of half an eye" The argument makes the assumption that an eye was the intended goal, but there was no intention.
It goes like this. Animal A and animal B are attacked by animal C. Animal A has some cells on its skin that are light sensitive, even if only a tiny bit. Neither A B or C have eyes, so animal A escapes because it gets spooked by s small change it the minimal light level it detects, but C catches B because it hasn't managed to get away (leaving out the means by which C is able to hunt).
So Animal A gets to breed, the light sensitive cell patch mutation is reinforced. Random changes to it that improve its detection of predators mean that favorable mutations survive, and eventually you have a whole eye.
Simplified, but you get the point? It's very much random
As for the survival of Mammals, well we're generalists, or were at the time, like rats, we could live off anything. That meant a dead dino was as good a meal as anything, and we could eat worms, bugs, absolutely anything, so we lived.
Then we speciated, and became the wide variety that exists today.
It is not that we are warm blooded that helped us spread. It is that we are able to adapt without waiting for evolution. Need a thicker coat? Go get one of that animal over there and wear it. Need to live in this area that is dominated by another species? Kill them off and take over. We have the bigger brain, we were capable of abstract thought and planning for the future. That was the deciding factor.
Incidentally, there is a theory that crocs and alligators survived the CT event because they were able to survive in the delta's on dead animals washed down the rivers. scavenger's are at an advantage when there is a mass die off, especially when they can go for very long periods between meals and actually prefer putrid meat.
Our young are not born fully developed because humans have much bigger brains, and these cannot be pre programmed to know what to do with the body from birth beyond the autonomic nervous systemm without a far longer gestation period. Its a consequence of evolving as a creature that lives in packs/groups, we can afford to birth our young in a weak state, which gives the advantage that our adults are back to the essentials of pack survival fast while the young are able to be cared for We do not have the ability to walk away after being born. Strangely though, newborns can swim, I have no idea why this might be, unless the aquatuic ape theory is correct.
Some mammals are specialised now (Panda's are an easy to research example), if there was another mass extinction, most mammals, likely including us, would die, unless we had some far more impressive technology, certainly the human species would be drastically hit. Rats and so on would probably make it, for the same reason we managed to survive the CT event, since we were that size at the time.
I'm not closed minded. I'm open minded, willing to debate a thing and be proven wrong.
The new testament is absurd with most of its claims, although before I actually studied it in detail I didn't think this. I will never believe that someone was able to do all those miracles. Why? Because even though it was supposedly so very impressive, there is not a single written account outside of the bible. Writing was very popular, and yet no one else recorded this supposedly godlike individual. We have written documents from before, during and after that time, but not a one mentions him walking on water, or bringing the dead back to life. The only documents that seem to mention him talk about a strong and radical political leader.
Oh yes, and I read a book about St Francis of Assisi, written by a Roman catholic priest that said most of his miracles weren't miracles at all, he was likely mentally unstable, and his visions were the result of being starved half to death. You see, there were other accounts of St Francis, and they reveal that he was indeed most likely a loon.
Just because a thing is accepted by many millions does not make it true, most of those believers are trained from birth not to question the facts. Someone I know was almost institutionalised in the fifties at seven years old because her uncle was a Jesuit and she tried to question him about the miracles. That is not evidence of an arena for honest debate.
I thought it was about six million years, could be wrong though.
The big thing was grass, it hadn't been around for most of the time the dinosours had existed. The domination of grasses after the CT event really helped the spread of species
20,000 - 30,000 generations in just a few seconds. That same number of generations took humans 800,000 - 900,000 years.
Yes? You know how trivial that is? I make a living by coding EAs, and that is an insignificant piece of information. An EA I ran this morning took less that ten seconds to run 100,000 iterations on a 32 bit box. It's all down to the hardware you use and the design of the chromosome to be evolved.
Want to impress me? Talk about the chronological time to conversion and chromosome complexity.
we also still talk about parting the Red Sea even though it is now known to mean 'the sea of Reeds.
I like the old testament though, it's cool the way archaeologists went round the world, bible in hand, and found all kinds of 'mythical' places were real. Mind you, I read it as a very old book, not as a guide to life or any such crap. Tried to read it in the Hebrew once, but I wasn't patient enough to learn all of the language.
The new testaments a crock, it reads like a comic book.
Meme 2983KL99: (All bullies are also cowards)(The only way to stop bullies is to beat them.)(When you draw blood they run away because of Rule Number 1.)
If a particular song becomes popular, it will get pirated. There's no way to get popularity while also avoiding pirates.
Going out on a limb here (and possibly preaching to the converted), I'd say that the way to avoid pirates is to release, on day 1, a lower quality (64 perhaps) version of your song for people to stick on their mobies and play for their mates on the way to/from school or at work.
Then sell a better quality version.
Ok it might not go well, but being able to get a slightly lower quality version risk free for nothing is likely to reduce the instance of people who just pirate. The trick would be to come up with a business model that uses this as free advertising and still makes the required money.
Source code from other products/groups was available before 'open source' came into existence. Microsoft have, in the past, always been against the distribution of source code.
OK pepes, I want a -5 off topic here, to add to my collection of comments. I've had 'excellent karma for over a year, I can cope with a tiny reduction....
Here's an off topic comment to make it easier.
'The hypermotif is an excellent means to identify novel motifs in nucleotide sequences'.
What is a hypermotif? The last three years of my research career, that has to be worth something.
Come on, I know you can do it.
Please?
Don't make me beg.
I've yet to see a -5 off topic on slashdot, together we can do it. If I fail then I'll be back to try again next Friday...
I didn't know either, and I rather like this whole video site thing.
For one thing, it brought about http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ which is somewhat more convenient then torrents.
Its rather sad that Microsoft have yet again only come up with a service because other people thought of it first, and they are so concerned with retaining their conjugal rights with the media companies that they are willing to kill it.
Turning it off is just a PR move anyway, I'd be willing to bet they only started it so they could do this. That might be a paranoid thing to say, but they are so rich they honestly could afford to do just that, sad to say.
How could you possibly know that? Are you and alien-contactee yourself?
Well there was this one time during my Nurse Training many years ago when I was sideways motivated on old speckled hen and got all confused as to the date, does that count?
I assume that the distances are so large that any race capable of devising a means to cover that distance, or bypass it, would be advanced enough to not crash in the Arizona desert and leave nothing but a few fragments of sticky take and some balsa wood as evidence.
also, what 'common reports' are those of which you speak?
Nice try at a point. However the error that caused the problem in appollo 13 had already happened before the mission was even started.
And I am not saying in any way that we are equivalent to a race that could travel between star systems. We aren't.
Nor would I say they are better. As Picasso observed in first viewing the Lascaux paintings 'we have invented nothing'. I say not that they might be better then us, only that they couldn't cover the unbelievable distances involved without knowing far more and being a lot better at not failing.
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy of a freak accident isn't far wrong. It is a mistake to think of evolution as a planned process. That's where a lot of creationists try to poke holes in it by saying "what's the use of half an eye" The argument makes the assumption that an eye was the intended goal, but there was no intention.
It goes like this. Animal A and animal B are attacked by animal C. Animal A has some cells on its skin that are light sensitive, even if only a tiny bit. Neither A B or C have eyes, so animal A escapes because it gets spooked by s small change it the minimal light level it detects, but C catches B because it hasn't managed to get away (leaving out the means by which C is able to hunt).
So Animal A gets to breed, the light sensitive cell patch mutation is reinforced. Random changes to it that improve its detection of predators mean that favorable mutations survive, and eventually you have a whole eye.
Simplified, but you get the point? It's very much random
As for the survival of Mammals, well we're generalists, or were at the time, like rats, we could live off anything. That meant a dead dino was as good a meal as anything, and we could eat worms, bugs, absolutely anything, so we lived.
Then we speciated, and became the wide variety that exists today.
It is not that we are warm blooded that helped us spread. It is that we are able to adapt without waiting for evolution. Need a thicker coat? Go get one of that animal over there and wear it. Need to live in this area that is dominated by another species? Kill them off and take over. We have the bigger brain, we were capable of abstract thought and planning for the future. That was the deciding factor.
Incidentally, there is a theory that crocs and alligators survived the CT event because they were able to survive in the delta's on dead animals washed down the rivers. scavenger's are at an advantage when there is a mass die off, especially when they can go for very long periods between meals and actually prefer putrid meat.
Our young are not born fully developed because humans have much bigger brains, and these cannot be pre programmed to know what to do with the body from birth beyond the autonomic nervous systemm without a far longer gestation period. Its a consequence of evolving as a creature that lives in packs/groups, we can afford to birth our young in a weak state, which gives the advantage that our adults are back to the essentials of pack survival fast while the young are able to be cared for We do not have the ability to walk away after being born. Strangely though, newborns can swim, I have no idea why this might be, unless the aquatuic ape theory is correct.
Some mammals are specialised now (Panda's are an easy to research example), if there was another mass extinction, most mammals, likely including us, would die, unless we had some far more impressive technology, certainly the human species would be drastically hit. Rats and so on would probably make it, for the same reason we managed to survive the CT event, since we were that size at the time.
Hope that helps with some of your questions
I tried to learn hebrew about 20 years ago.
I'm not closed minded. I'm open minded, willing to debate a thing and be proven wrong.
The new testament is absurd with most of its claims, although before I actually studied it in detail I didn't think this. I will never believe that someone was able to do all those miracles. Why? Because even though it was supposedly so very impressive, there is not a single written account outside of the bible. Writing was very popular, and yet no one else recorded this supposedly godlike individual. We have written documents from before, during and after that time, but not a one mentions him walking on water, or bringing the dead back to life. The only documents that seem to mention him talk about a strong and radical political leader.
Oh yes, and I read a book about St Francis of Assisi, written by a Roman catholic priest that said most of his miracles weren't miracles at all, he was likely mentally unstable, and his visions were the result of being starved half to death. You see, there were other accounts of St Francis, and they reveal that he was indeed most likely a loon.
Just because a thing is accepted by many millions does not make it true, most of those believers are trained from birth not to question the facts. Someone I know was almost institutionalised in the fifties at seven years old because her uncle was a Jesuit and she tried to question him about the miracles. That is not evidence of an arena for honest debate.
I thought it was about six million years, could be wrong though.
The big thing was grass, it hadn't been around for most of the time the dinosours had existed. The domination of grasses after the CT event really helped the spread of species
Delphi six is the best release of the IDE so far as I'm concerned.
all these years and it's still my preferred instance of delphi.
20,000 - 30,000 generations in just a few seconds. That same number of generations took humans 800,000 - 900,000 years.
Yes? You know how trivial that is? I make a living by coding EAs, and that is an insignificant piece of information. An EA I ran this morning took less that ten seconds to run 100,000 iterations on a 32 bit box. It's all down to the hardware you use and the design of the chromosome to be evolved.
Want to impress me? Talk about the chronological time to conversion and chromosome complexity.
I saw the title and thought "at last! David Braben's going to make the game!".
I am so disappointed..
(How he could do it well without Ian Bell is anyones guess however)
we also still talk about parting the Red Sea even though it is now known to mean 'the sea of Reeds.
I like the old testament though, it's cool the way archaeologists went round the world, bible in hand, and found all kinds of 'mythical' places were real. Mind you, I read it as a very old book, not as a guide to life or any such crap. Tried to read it in the Hebrew once, but I wasn't patient enough to learn all of the language.
The new testaments a crock, it reads like a comic book.
Isn't that:
Meme 2983KL99: (All bullies are also cowards)(The only way to stop bullies is to beat them.)(When you draw blood they run away because of Rule Number 1.)
Ah yes, I read the memes post....
but what if nbc get a licence to allow posting of media from the major producers? They'd rake it in and be safe from lawsuits.
I think you've got to be a deliberate and constant prick to get a low rating.
Karma whoring is (I think) a term from the days when karma was a lot less organised.
it's not calculated. You make a post, people moderate it, and the result is your 'karma'
Best = 'excellent'
worst is troll I think, not sure, never been there.
If a particular song becomes popular, it will get pirated. There's no way to get popularity while also avoiding pirates.
Going out on a limb here (and possibly preaching to the converted), I'd say that the way to avoid pirates is to release, on day 1, a lower quality (64 perhaps) version of your song for people to stick on their mobies and play for their mates on the way to/from school or at work.
Then sell a better quality version.
Ok it might not go well, but being able to get a slightly lower quality version risk free for nothing is likely to reduce the instance of people who just pirate. The trick would be to come up with a business model that uses this as free advertising and still makes the required money.
You should probably follow the links from the summary before you make any claims
Microsoft would not, under any circumstances, allow one of their products to be forked and come under the control of another entity.
Source code from other products/groups was available before 'open source' came into existence. Microsoft have, in the past, always been against the distribution of source code.
It's an old method. Keep getting soundbites published that discredit the view you don't want, and the lie slowly becomes true.
I'll be willing to bet they never would have made source for ajax available had open source not existed. Once again they lead by following...
And anyway, it's not open source, because I can't take the entire source and produce a rival product using it.
of course :)
Especially the pretend mistaken typing of 1's
No No No!!!
It's not interesting! Off Topic I tell you!
Oh the injustice! [insert other things that require exclamation marks]
Slashdotters are so cruel.....
(that I would do the same thing is entirely beside the point)
OK pepes, I want a -5 off topic here, to add to my collection of comments. I've had 'excellent karma for over a year, I can cope with a tiny reduction....
Here's an off topic comment to make it easier.
'The hypermotif is an excellent means to identify novel motifs in nucleotide sequences'.
What is a hypermotif? The last three years of my research career, that has to be worth something.
Come on, I know you can do it.
Please?
Don't make me beg.
I've yet to see a -5 off topic on slashdot, together we can do it. If I fail then I'll be back to try again next Friday...
I didn't know either, and I rather like this whole video site thing.
For one thing, it brought about http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ which is somewhat more convenient then torrents.
Its rather sad that Microsoft have yet again only come up with a service because other people thought of it first, and they are so concerned with retaining their conjugal rights with the media companies that they are willing to kill it.
Turning it off is just a PR move anyway, I'd be willing to bet they only started it so they could do this. That might be a paranoid thing to say, but they are so rich they honestly could afford to do just that, sad to say.
I am undone, you've beaten me, wow how could I not have thought of that :-)
but, and I want to make myself exactly clear here THERE WERE NO BLOODY ALIENS!!!!!!111one
ok?
How could you possibly know that? Are you and alien-contactee yourself?
Well there was this one time during my Nurse Training many years ago when I was sideways motivated on old speckled hen and got all confused as to the date, does that count?
Actually I don't assume a slow mode of travel.
I assume that the distances are so large that any race capable of devising a means to cover that distance, or bypass it, would be advanced enough to not crash in the Arizona desert and leave nothing but a few fragments of sticky take and some balsa wood as evidence.
also, what 'common reports' are those of which you speak?
Nice try at a point. However the error that caused the problem in appollo 13 had already happened before the mission was even started.
And I am not saying in any way that we are equivalent to a race that could travel between star systems. We aren't.
Nor would I say they are better. As Picasso observed in first viewing the Lascaux paintings 'we have invented nothing'. I say not that they might be better then us, only that they couldn't cover the unbelievable distances involved without knowing far more and being a lot better at not failing.
Let me call you attention to the distances involved my friend.
Think fucking vast, then multiply up a bunch....
Seriously, unless their error rate was almost non existent, they couldn't reach us in the first place.
Not that I think they have.