Where does it come from? Is complexity "preprogrammed" (designed, if you will) in the universe, or do the basic rules of the universe somehow generate complex structures as a possible (or even inevitable) result of things which are very simple and uncomplicated? In other words, can something complex come from something simple? Clearly a human being, or any other living thing, is a very complex thing; an immense and fascinating assemblage of proteins and other molecules. How could something so wonderfully complicated ever be created out of or by something that was not equally if not more complex? (The old Watchmaker argument.)
An interesting but rarely appreciated fact (even by many modern scientists) is that even very simple initial conditions and rules can produce behavior that is arbitrarily complex and self-sustaining. This applies to everything from abstract logical systems to physics, computers, and everyday life. If you are interested in this phenomenon then see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science
Disregarding such common mistakes as confusing evolution of species over time with the origin of life itself and/or the Universe, I think there are a few intellectual stumbling blocks many people have with "Evolution".
One of these is that "something" (life) cannot come from "nothing" (a primordial universe of diffuse, hot gas and radiation) without a guiding hand. Of course, something did not come from nothing; the complexity of the precursors to life was slowly increasing over eons. We owe our own life here to the presence of a relatively stable rock already endowed with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and a relatively temperate and appropriately placed hydrogen fusion source in this particular place. The assumption seems to be that a guiding hand is neccesary to increase complexity over time and create these conditions.
Before Rockstar could come out with Grand Theft Auto, there had to be a previous generation of stars in this area of the galaxy, well before the birth of our own Sun. The complexity of this previous generation solar system was relatively lower, as any planetoids around early stars would have been bereft of those critical elemets such as carbon, created only (as far as we know) in the heart of stars. There was no chance for life to evolve in such a primitive solar system. Yet the seeds for our own life were nonetheless planted in there. The complexity of these earlier star systems (compared to a diffuse cloud of gas) was in turn wholy dependent on an earlier seed of complexity in the initial accretion of primitive matter and energy that later became the Milky Way (or its predecessors.)
Our galactic neighborhood may have in turn been born of a more primitive ripple or fluctuation in the primordial blast. The source code for Grand Theft Auto was in no way implanted in this local pertubation of matter and energy that developed into our corner of the universe, yet it somehow emerged anyway.
So is the universe like a computer following some kind of program? Not exactly, at least not like we think of contemporary computer programs written in C++ or Java with thousands or millions of lines of source code. One might imagine a "program of the universe" that goes something like this (paraphrased):
create swirlling primal matter, then create local star system, repeat N times, forge higher elements, create Earth-like oasis of calm areas, create primordial soup, create simple replicating molecules, create more complex structures evolving into bacteria, then into fish, then shrews, then finally into Claude Shannon, so we could have information theory and eventually, Grand Theft Auto.
Of course that is ridiculous. My point is that the "program of the universe", should we be capable of even partially comprehending it, will likely prove to be amazingly and mind bogglingly simple. It would not likely stoop to addressing the details of su
Where does it come from? Is complexity "preprogrammed" (designed, if you will) in the universe, or do the basic rules of the universe somehow generate complex structures as a possible (or even inevitable) result of things which are very simple and uncomplicated? In other words, can something complex come from something simple? Clearly a human being, or any other living thing, is a very complex thing; an immense and fascinating assemblage of proteins and other molecules. How could something so wonderfully complicated ever be created out of or by something that was not equally if not more complex? (The old Watchmaker argument.)
An interesting but rarely appreciated fact (even by many modern scientists) is that even very simple initial conditions and rules can produce behavior that is arbitrarily complex and self-sustaining. This applies to everything from abstract logical systems to physics, computers, and everyday life. If you are interested in this phenomenon then see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science
Disregarding such common mistakes as confusing evolution of species over time with the origin of life itself and/or the Universe, I think there are a few intellectual stumbling blocks many people have with "Evolution".
One of these is that "something" (life) cannot come from "nothing" (a primordial universe of diffuse, hot gas and radiation) without a guiding hand. Of course, something did not come from nothing; the complexity of the precursors to life was slowly increasing over eons. We owe our own life here to the presence of a relatively stable rock already endowed with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and a relatively temperate and appropriately placed hydrogen fusion source in this particular place. The assumption seems to be that a guiding hand is neccesary to increase complexity over time and create these conditions.
Before Rockstar could come out with Grand Theft Auto, there had to be a previous generation of stars in this area of the galaxy, well before the birth of our own Sun. The complexity of this previous generation solar system was relatively lower, as any planetoids around early stars would have been bereft of those critical elemets such as carbon, created only (as far as we know) in the heart of stars. There was no chance for life to evolve in such a primitive solar system. Yet the seeds for our own life were nonetheless planted in there. The complexity of these earlier star systems (compared to a diffuse cloud of gas) was in turn wholy dependent on an earlier seed of complexity in the initial accretion of primitive matter and energy that later became the Milky Way (or its predecessors.)
Our galactic neighborhood may have in turn been born of a more primitive ripple or fluctuation in the primordial blast. The source code for Grand Theft Auto was in no way implanted in this local pertubation of matter and energy that developed into our corner of the universe, yet it somehow emerged anyway.
So is the universe like a computer following some kind of program? Not exactly, at least not like we think of contemporary computer programs written in C++ or Java with thousands or millions of lines of source code. One might imagine a "program of the universe" that goes something like this (paraphrased):
create swirlling primal matter, then create local star system, repeat N times, forge higher elements, create Earth-like oasis of calm areas, create primordial soup, create simple replicating molecules, create more complex structures evolving into bacteria, then into fish, then shrews, then finally into Claude Shannon, so we could have information theory and eventually, Grand Theft Auto.
Of course that is ridiculous. My point is that the "program of the universe", should we be capable of even partially comprehending it, will likely prove to be amazingly and mind bogglingly simple. It would not likely stoop to addressing the details of su
Since when does a King legitimately represent the people of the country?... When the Gulf War was over, why didn't the US Army leave? Why didn't the King have the guts to tell the armed force to leave his country? Was he afraid they'd make trouble and threaten him if he tried to remove them?
Blah blah blah blah.... just shut up.
And by the way, one person declaring Round Rock to be holy is worthless. Come back to me when you have 1.5 Billion followers and a message sent by God stating that the city is closed to non-believers.
Ohhhh... so "God" made it holy! I see. It all makes sense now. So basically what you are saying is that if I can find one other person that also says Round Rock is a holy city, then it suddenly becomes twice as holy! Amazing how that works.
I think I speak for a lot of people here when I say, fuck the "holy" city of of Mecca. We were in Saudia Arabia at the invitation of its government, such as it is.
By the way, I just declared Round Rock, Texas to be a Holy City and inviolable by any infidels.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the German President
... after the party that he lead won a plurality in the 1932 elections...
By your same definition, Tony Blair was not "voted into power" -- his party was. That's how parliamentary systems work.
Because the invisible old man in the sky told them to. He will condemn you to eternal torment if you do not snip off the end of your son's wee-wee. But remember, God is love!
I don't disagree with what you said, but you seem to be implying that you can't burn a flag in the USA. That's not the case. There may be various local ordinances to that effect but (as far as I know) the federal courts have always ruled that the 1st Amendment trumps those local laws. If anyone can point out a successful prosecution for flag burning in the USA I would be very interested to see it.
Lucas is the idiot here, but you're the one saying the interstellar warships in a children's fantasy movie aren't obeying perfectly realistic physics? I assume you never saw the original Star Wars because the thought of big, loud, and firey explosions in a vacuum bothered you so much?
You think a little thing like endianness would be a real obstacle for the boys at MSFT? No. The obstacle here is legal. I imagine they face the choice of either a very expensive agreement with nvidia or a reverse-engineering effort which may or may not be ready in time for xbox360 launch (and may or may not work 100% perfectly.) My guess is that eventually there will be both official and unofficial ways to play xbox games on xbox360, but probably not at product launch date. I would like to be proven wrong on that.
iTunes does support OGG, but last time I checked the primitive FLAC plugin didn't work at all for me. However, that may have been the result of Quicktime updates released after the FLAC plugin was written.
Hopefully like you say the Quicktime plugins will get out there eventually. If iTunes could play FLAC and SHN I'd be very happy. Hell, if I could get WinAmp to play Apple Lossless files, I'd also be happy. Now if Apple would just understand of the concept of pre-track gaps, I might start taking their music stuff seriously!
Ignore what the other guy said who replied to your message. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
The reason the name for "Germany" varies so much in different languages mainly has to do with which Germanic tribe the country in question had the most contact with (but not always.)
The French knew them mainly through the "Allemanic" tribes of Western Germany. (Keep in mind that "France" comes from "Franks", another tribe of western Germans.)
The Finns call Germany "Saksa", related to the "Saxon" tribe. The Scottish word for Germany is similar.
The local Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas was stretching their 4:3 SD programs out to the 16:9 frame on their Time Warner Cable HD channel. They were doing this for several months after I got my HD set. They finally fixed it about a month ago. It was nutty.
I'll presume you're just trolling and not really that ignorant. The very point of the Maginot Line was to channel an invasion through Belgium, which was conveniently placed as a buffer. It was thought that any German invasion would be more easily contained if routed through Belgium. The plan probably would have worked too if not for the dispersal of Allied armor and the suprise German advance through the Ardennes, previously thought to be unsuitable terrain for armor.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a lot of words just to say that you don't know anything either.
You're right. IT Management should be totally ignorant of the details of how IT works. Naturally.
They tried that. It's called Britannica. You may have noticed it doesn't make very much money.
It's all about complexity.
Where does it come from? Is complexity "preprogrammed" (designed, if you will) in the universe, or do the basic rules of the universe somehow generate complex structures as a possible (or even inevitable) result of things which are very simple and uncomplicated? In other words, can something complex come from something simple? Clearly a human being, or any other living thing, is a very complex thing; an immense and fascinating assemblage of proteins and other molecules. How could something so wonderfully complicated ever be created out of or by something that was not equally if not more complex? (The old Watchmaker argument.)
An interesting but rarely appreciated fact (even by many modern scientists) is that even very simple initial conditions and rules can produce behavior that is arbitrarily complex and self-sustaining. This applies to everything from abstract logical systems to physics, computers, and everyday life. If you are interested in this phenomenon then see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science
Disregarding such common mistakes as confusing evolution of species over time with the origin of life itself and/or the Universe, I think there are a few intellectual stumbling blocks many people have with "Evolution".
One of these is that "something" (life) cannot come from "nothing" (a primordial universe of diffuse, hot gas and radiation) without a guiding hand. Of course, something did not come from nothing; the complexity of the precursors to life was slowly increasing over eons. We owe our own life here to the presence of a relatively stable rock already endowed with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and a relatively temperate and appropriately placed hydrogen fusion source in this particular place. The assumption seems to be that a guiding hand is neccesary to increase complexity over time and create these conditions.
Before Rockstar could come out with Grand Theft Auto, there had to be a previous generation of stars in this area of the galaxy, well before the birth of our own Sun. The complexity of this previous generation solar system was relatively lower, as any planetoids around early stars would have been bereft of those critical elemets such as carbon, created only (as far as we know) in the heart of stars. There was no chance for life to evolve in such a primitive solar system. Yet the seeds for our own life were nonetheless planted in there. The complexity of these earlier star systems (compared to a diffuse cloud of gas) was in turn wholy dependent on an earlier seed of complexity in the initial accretion of primitive matter and energy that later became the Milky Way (or its predecessors.)
Our galactic neighborhood may have in turn been born of a more primitive ripple or fluctuation in the primordial blast. The source code for Grand Theft Auto was in no way implanted in this local pertubation of matter and energy that developed into our corner of the universe, yet it somehow emerged anyway.
So is the universe like a computer following some kind of program? Not exactly, at least not like we think of contemporary computer programs written in C++ or Java with thousands or millions of lines of source code. One might imagine a "program of the universe" that goes something like this (paraphrased):
create swirlling primal matter, then create local star system, repeat N times, forge higher elements, create Earth-like oasis of calm areas, create primordial soup, create simple replicating molecules, create more complex structures evolving into bacteria, then into fish, then shrews, then finally into Claude Shannon, so we could have information theory and eventually, Grand Theft Auto.
Of course that is ridiculous. My point is that the "program of the universe", should we be capable of even partially comprehending it, will likely prove to be amazingly and mind bogglingly simple. It would not likely stoop to addressing the details of su
It's all about complexity.
Where does it come from? Is complexity "preprogrammed" (designed, if you will) in the universe, or do the basic rules of the universe somehow generate complex structures as a possible (or even inevitable) result of things which are very simple and uncomplicated? In other words, can something complex come from something simple? Clearly a human being, or any other living thing, is a very complex thing; an immense and fascinating assemblage of proteins and other molecules. How could something so wonderfully complicated ever be created out of or by something that was not equally if not more complex? (The old Watchmaker argument.)
An interesting but rarely appreciated fact (even by many modern scientists) is that even very simple initial conditions and rules can produce behavior that is arbitrarily complex and self-sustaining. This applies to everything from abstract logical systems to physics, computers, and everyday life. If you are interested in this phenomenon then see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science
Disregarding such common mistakes as confusing evolution of species over time with the origin of life itself and/or the Universe, I think there are a few intellectual stumbling blocks many people have with "Evolution".
One of these is that "something" (life) cannot come from "nothing" (a primordial universe of diffuse, hot gas and radiation) without a guiding hand. Of course, something did not come from nothing; the complexity of the precursors to life was slowly increasing over eons. We owe our own life here to the presence of a relatively stable rock already endowed with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and a relatively temperate and appropriately placed hydrogen fusion source in this particular place. The assumption seems to be that a guiding hand is neccesary to increase complexity over time and create these conditions.
Before Rockstar could come out with Grand Theft Auto, there had to be a previous generation of stars in this area of the galaxy, well before the birth of our own Sun. The complexity of this previous generation solar system was relatively lower, as any planetoids around early stars would have been bereft of those critical elemets such as carbon, created only (as far as we know) in the heart of stars. There was no chance for life to evolve in such a primitive solar system. Yet the seeds for our own life were nonetheless planted in there. The complexity of these earlier star systems (compared to a diffuse cloud of gas) was in turn wholy dependent on an earlier seed of complexity in the initial accretion of primitive matter and energy that later became the Milky Way (or its predecessors.)
Our galactic neighborhood may have in turn been born of a more primitive ripple or fluctuation in the primordial blast. The source code for Grand Theft Auto was in no way implanted in this local pertubation of matter and energy that developed into our corner of the universe, yet it somehow emerged anyway.
So is the universe like a computer following some kind of program? Not exactly, at least not like we think of contemporary computer programs written in C++ or Java with thousands or millions of lines of source code. One might imagine a "program of the universe" that goes something like this (paraphrased):
create swirlling primal matter, then create local star system, repeat N times, forge higher elements, create Earth-like oasis of calm areas, create primordial soup, create simple replicating molecules, create more complex structures evolving into bacteria, then into fish, then shrews, then finally into Claude Shannon, so we could have information theory and eventually, Grand Theft Auto.
Of course that is ridiculous. My point is that the "program of the universe", should we be capable of even partially comprehending it, will likely prove to be amazingly and mind bogglingly simple. It would not likely stoop to addressing the details of su
The Muslims ain't got shiat. Oh sure, I know they think they do, but they don't. They're as full of shiat as any other religion.
Blah blah blah blah.... just shut up.
And by the way, one person declaring Round Rock to be holy is worthless. Come back to me when you have 1.5 Billion followers and a message sent by God stating that the city is closed to non-believers.
Ohhhh... so "God" made it holy! I see. It all makes sense now. So basically what you are saying is that if I can find one other person that also says Round Rock is a holy city, then it suddenly becomes twice as holy! Amazing how that works.
I think I speak for a lot of people here when I say, fuck the "holy" city of of Mecca. We were in Saudia Arabia at the invitation of its government, such as it is. By the way, I just declared Round Rock, Texas to be a Holy City and inviolable by any infidels.
Ummm, so each mom & pop repair shop is supposed to reverse-engineer the software for every model of car? You don't forsee any problems with that?
Because the invisible old man in the sky told them to. He will condemn you to eternal torment if you do not snip off the end of your son's wee-wee. But remember, God is love!
I don't disagree with what you said, but you seem to be implying that you can't burn a flag in the USA. That's not the case. There may be various local ordinances to that effect but (as far as I know) the federal courts have always ruled that the 1st Amendment trumps those local laws. If anyone can point out a successful prosecution for flag burning in the USA I would be very interested to see it.
Lucas is the idiot here, but you're the one saying the interstellar warships in a children's fantasy movie aren't obeying perfectly realistic physics? I assume you never saw the original Star Wars because the thought of big, loud, and firey explosions in a vacuum bothered you so much?
You think a little thing like endianness would be a real obstacle for the boys at MSFT? No. The obstacle here is legal. I imagine they face the choice of either a very expensive agreement with nvidia or a reverse-engineering effort which may or may not be ready in time for xbox360 launch (and may or may not work 100% perfectly.) My guess is that eventually there will be both official and unofficial ways to play xbox games on xbox360, but probably not at product launch date. I would like to be proven wrong on that.
No. It absolutely did not have to be said.
Is it just me or does zipping a compressed WMV file make no sense?
Probably because the smokers were outside smoking (and networking) with the CEO.
iTunes does support OGG, but last time I checked the primitive FLAC plugin didn't work at all for me. However, that may have been the result of Quicktime updates released after the FLAC plugin was written.
Hopefully like you say the Quicktime plugins will get out there eventually. If iTunes could play FLAC and SHN I'd be very happy. Hell, if I could get WinAmp to play Apple Lossless files, I'd also be happy. Now if Apple would just understand of the concept of pre-track gaps, I might start taking their music stuff seriously!
Ignore what the other guy said who replied to your message. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
The reason the name for "Germany" varies so much in different languages mainly has to do with which Germanic tribe the country in question had the most contact with (but not always.)
The French knew them mainly through the "Allemanic" tribes of Western Germany. (Keep in mind that "France" comes from "Franks", another tribe of western Germans.)
The Finns call Germany "Saksa", related to the "Saxon" tribe. The Scottish word for Germany is similar.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_162.html
The local Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas was stretching their 4:3 SD programs out to the 16:9 frame on their Time Warner Cable HD channel. They were doing this for several months after I got my HD set. They finally fixed it about a month ago. It was nutty.
You could make an argument that business documents don't really need that stuff either. Of course people will want it anyway.
It's free (as in beer) for 10 users or less. It's not open-source itself, but it's built on open-source stuff such as Python, Apache, and Postgresql.
A new version is coming out soon which has a much prettier CSS interface than the current version.
And yeah, I am biased because I am the senior developer at the company.
I'll presume you're just trolling and not really that ignorant. The very point of the Maginot Line was to channel an invasion through Belgium, which was conveniently placed as a buffer. It was thought that any German invasion would be more easily contained if routed through Belgium. The plan probably would have worked too if not for the dispersal of Allied armor and the suprise German advance through the Ardennes, previously thought to be unsuitable terrain for armor.
Try Mac OS X.
Hesh wants married sex! -- mcheshpants420