I don't need to spend time reading 'real textbooks'. The real question here is why you have an animosity towards creationism in particular, and God in general. Not my god, or somebody else's god, but the concept of God. Without having been created there is no purpose in life for anything. I might as well just come kill you because then I can take your stuff, or you should come take mine.
Being created gives us as a race purpose. Being here as the process of billions of incredibly improbably mutations that happened to survive and compound upon each other does not. What is the meaning of life if we weren't placed here by a god? Your creed seems to be "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". If there's no purpose to life, there's no reason for you to defend your belief in a godless existence to me.
The fact that you defend that position means that you think there is a purpose to life. Please tell me what that purpose is, without any form of god being involved.
Shouldn't we instead work on ways to store the electricity directly, using batteries or whatever?
This is a great point. It's how diesel-electric locomotives operate: the diesel engines are merely generators for electric motors, and use the compression of the engines to slow the train down by flipping the 'mode' of the motors from motors to generators (which pushes back on the engine).
Electricity is a pretty efficient means of transporting energy (and we know how to convert it into a variety of other forms simply). The only drawback is that you have to generate the electricity to use it. This is why great amounts of research are going into battery efficiency, and other ways of converting mechanical and chemical forms into electricity.
More correctly, evolution is not a theory, it's a philosophy. Evolution requires an enormous amount of faith. Just as much as believing in creation.
Your point about lions and tigers being the same except for trivial differences, and even the opportunity to interbreed them is close to the mark. What you neglected to point out is that when they are bred together, the offspring is infertile.
The only reason there are different breeds of cats and dogs and pigeons, etc, is that humans have looked for specific traits, and then selectively mated only parents who had those traits, over and over again. However, if you stuck 15 different dog breeds together for a few generations, you would see, not continued exclusivity in breeding, but a return to the basic dog.
Macro evolution is just a meaningless creationist term to wave away the mountain of scientific evidence that they can no longer deny.
Your point dies here. There is no mountain of evidence supporting macro evolution. If anything, the mountain supports creation by a supreme being. Too many simultaneous changes must happen in multiple specimens that then decide to interbreed in order to achieve evolution.
Every true species (and German Shepherds are not a different species from Chihuahuas) has unique aspects to it that do not line up with other species, even though overall they share similar traits. An extreme example is the similarities between hummingbirds and emus. They're both birds. But hummingbirds are a definite, separate species. Getting an emu and a hummingbirds out of the same original bird doesn't make any sense. Just like getting housecats and lions out of the same original cat is irrational.
And what about all the animals out there that serve no purpose, like the hippopotamus? Hippopotami eat vegetation, the males fight for control of the pod, and a few parasitic animals live off of them. But they serve no purpose in life. Certain fish glom on and eat the dead skin off their hides, and others follow them to consume their dung. Another example is the rhinocerous. Rhinos are in the business of eating and making new rhino babies. Occasionally they fight some other animal away from their territory, but they serve no purpose beyond that. They're not food for anything but the eventual carion eaters like buzzards and hyenas.
There are far too many holes in the naturalistic philosophy of evolution to believe without tubs of faith poured in. There are no holes in creationism. While we can't determine why the hippo exists, we know an intelligent being put it there.
All Mac-branded desktops since then were just too loud for my taste (that included both iMac G4 and G5, they just changed from loud to even louder).
I've used several G5's, and they were all whisper quiet. NOt as quiet as the original iMacs, since those had NO fans, but I don't even notice the G5's fan (and now liquid) cooling system.
If applications correctly draw their current time from the OS, then Apple and MS will update their time routines and push them out in a simple service pack/update. Many systems are set up to check in periodically can get their time from a central server, and those boxes (while perhaps running something custom) will just get a simple update, and then everybody will be happy. Cell phones will update just fine because they check with the tower often to get their current time (unless you go and turn the feature off).
What's really going to be hard will be things like watches that change for you. Embedded devices that have been built to automatically adjust for DST: VCRs, DVRs, thermostats, etc. Not all of them do, and many don't care what time it is, or you set it yourself, but the ones that do it on their own will need a major system flash, or the user to be aware of the issue and fix it themselves.
that sounds like a config issue. My default install of Windows didn't put the whole path in the title, in fact I had the chance to choose to add that, but didn't.
and then throw copies of your hard drive into the pool, they'll be able to ride out any storm:)
Seriously, though, I haven't had much experience with the online data backup solutions, but depending on the sensitivity of the data involved, I would be more likely to do local backups to an external USB drive that you can just unplug and take with you, rather than one of these 100% off-site, online backup services. That being said, if you're not too worried about the privacy of the data, then the offsite guys are probably a really good deal. They have a much higher incentive to keep your data secure (along with their other customers' data) than even you do, because it's their business. Your business is being a club. Security and data protection aren't necessarily supposed to be your bailiwick.
Ok, I know that's not gonna happen. But if we quit trading with the countries that were involved in the majority of piracy, it might not disappear, but we wouldn't notice it. Of course, that could lead to the problem of having other countries do the same thing, and pretty soon we've deglobalized, and we're all in a world-wide free for all again.
If he went to any major competitor, Google, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, RedHat, etc. But since he's going to China what does a lawsuit in California or Washington really matter?
You know, I don't mind people arguing for or against certain things. I do mind when I need to reread almost every sentence to figure out what was said. If you're going to write something long and involved like this, please use a spelling and grammar check. I routinely write long email messages, blog entries, and Slashdot posts, but always go through them with at least a spell checker before I click 'send' or 'submit'.
I'd like to point out some minor points that you may do well to revise in your thinking, too.
In just a few years Apple has changed computer architecture 2 times, and completely rewritten the OS 1 time. - the transition to PowerPC happened quite a while ago, being introduced in 1997. Eight years and running is quite a while to stick with one architecture. Has x86 been used longer? Yes. But, unlike Apple's use of the Motorola 680x0 line (32-bit from the start), they kept reengineering it to move to eventual 32-bit support, which is a primary reason for Macs costing more for a long time.
To many people it just doesn't look professinal the way windows 2000 or Gnome do - well, I suppose this depends on what you think 'professional' looks like. If you're a Windows user, I imagine that your understanding of 'professional look' would be Win3.1, 2k, XP, etc. If you're a Linux user, Gnome, KDE, etc. If you're a Mac user, there's not a whole lot you can change about the interface (just as there isn't a huge amount you can in Windows out of the box (and yes, I know all about the Accessibility control panel)), but you're understanding of 'professional' is what you use. Professional media types think of Mac OS X as professional looking, and so do I.
As to the G4 Cube and Mac mini - I happen to think they were (and are) both very good examples of design. The G4 Cube had cooling issues, and probably should have been more of a design showpiece than a production computer (or have added a large, slow-turning fan). The Mac mini should be compared with low-end laptops, in my mind. Yes, laptops come with the screen, keyboard, and mouse built-in, but it also means that they can't be replaced as easily.
The Newton, try to convince the Apple user this never was a very good PDA and by todays standard - ok, there's a problem right away: "by today's standard". You can't compare the Newton of 1993-99 with today's standard. It doesn't work. Compare the Newton to other PDAs of 12-6 years ago. For an early example of a budding industry that hadn't figured out what it was doing yet, the Newton was good. Is it as good as something available today? No. Was it better than most of its contemporaries, I never used one, so can't say from personal experience, but it was well known, and fairly successfully marketed for over 6 years. Perhaps Apple should have done more to market the Newton as an add-on to your computer rather than a replacement for the computer, much like they are now marketing the iPod as an accessory, not a replacement for much beyond portable CD and tape players.
Now ask the same Apple user why the iPod is much better then a Creative Zen. The Zen is to heavy, by 0.1 pounds. - I like the look and operation of the iPod. There are other players out there that play more formats, have bigger drives, or are smaller (though not many smaller than the Shuffle). However, as a total package, of the MP3 player (which is the only format people care about that I've talked to), interface (that thumbwheel is really nice, and very intuitive), and the iTunes store (of the online music stores, the easiest to use, in my opinion), the iPod pretty much earns a best overall title in my book, and lots of other people's books, too.
The iPod Shuffle - does exactly what it's supposed to, and is relatively cheap. Yes, I would like it to have an SD or similar slot that
I hate to break it you, but several states do require the officer to show you the radar readout if you ask (NY being one of them). Also in some states, if the radar has not been recalibrated within X days, the ticket is invalidated (this varies per jurisdiction, in some it's as often as once a day).
And I'm not blindly repeating urban legends, I have used this in the past the couple times I've been pulled over.
Also, one thing that I've found scores lots of brownie points is to shut your car off if you get pulled. The officer is far less likely to think you're a threat to run if your car is off (and plus then you're not idling for 3-15 minutes on the side of the road).
the concept of 'hacking' astronomy seems weak. Wouldn't just tips and ideas for getting a better experience be a better way to title it?
Hacking implies the ability to alter something, which astronomy doesn't really lend it self to, much. I couldn't alter Tempel-1's path to avoid Deep Impact (just kidding), and I don't think I could 'hack' anything else in astronomy.
and not because I'm an Apple fan (though I am). It means that people are starting to decide on the machine they are going to buy, not merely on price, but on capability (or incapability when it comes to virii). I presume that the majority aren't the so-called media pros that Apple normally markets to, but rather 'typical Joe' computer buyers who have decided that the benefits of a less-attacked platform far outweigh the higher cost. They're also not being put off by the lack of applications often cited for the Mac platform, which makes sense considering most people only want to send and receive email, chat online, surf the web, and do homework (papers etc).
The real test of this switching will, of course, have to be seen to continue over the next couple quarters, which would also show that most people are not caring about the processor used in the machines, so long as they work well.
if this were an actual news story, and not just another rumor posting. Yes, Thinksecret has gotten stuff right in the past, they've also blown it a couple times. As opposed to the recent items about the video iPod, which at least have backing in terms of talks between different companies, and multiple reports, citing not all the same sources, this item, while fun to think about, isn't news. It's a rumor, out of one of the more famous rumor mills.
yep, reinventing the wheel is a bad thing, until you get people thinking that maybe a wooden wheel with steel wrapped around it isn't the best way to go. Or the folks at Michelin who come up with a tire that needs no air (see here).
BeOS fully supported all of GCC, so any applications could be ported quickly (for command-line stuff, it was generally just a change to the makefile). The Be engineers did their homework. Several came out of Apple's OS group to found Be Inc just so they could explore new ways of doing things. Metadata attached to every file, fast searching, native TCP/IP message passing in the OS (which made network applications simpler to write). They were working on a multiuser version when they got sidetracked into internet appliances, which haven't really gone anywhere in the intervening time since.
Also, I don't know if you ever used the Be command line, but the arrangement of files and commands all pretty much matched what you'd expect to see in a Unix/Linux/BSD environment.
New APIs come around all the time (Qt, Win16, OWL, Win32,.NET, POSIX (which isn't even an API), Carbon, MFC, Cocoa, etc). And every time a new one shows up, people bitch and moan about how everybody already knows the other ones inside and out, and why move to something new? Maybe the new one is better. Maybe not. Some are better, but don't catch on due to weird licensing (Borland's OWL pops to mind).
Some folks play with 'alternative' OSes because they can. There are some playing with them to see what could be. The typical/. poster seems to only want to hear stuff about BSD, Linux, Windows, and OS X. (One of which is fully commercial, another mostly commercial.) I loved running BeOS 4, 4.5, and 5. I didn't run it because it supported butt loads of applications, nor because developing for it wasn't horribly difficult (though I would've personally liked an IDE for GUI stuff). I ran it because it worked really really well. It ran almost everything I needed it to (Gobe Productive wasn't to the level of compatibility with Office I had to maintain at the time), and almost never crashed. It didn't matter what I did to it, the OS kept on humming. Applications could go nuts and croak, but they never took out anything else.
BeOS seemed to incorporate a lot of the ideas of Stallman's GNU HURD kernel (drivers in user space, don't reboot to load new drivers, just quit and restart that server), but actually got it working (unlike HURD which is still under development).
And that's why a lot of us are going to use YellowTab, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Being created gives us as a race purpose. Being here as the process of billions of incredibly improbably mutations that happened to survive and compound upon each other does not. What is the meaning of life if we weren't placed here by a god? Your creed seems to be "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". If there's no purpose to life, there's no reason for you to defend your belief in a godless existence to me.
The fact that you defend that position means that you think there is a purpose to life. Please tell me what that purpose is, without any form of god being involved.
This is a great point. It's how diesel-electric locomotives operate: the diesel engines are merely generators for electric motors, and use the compression of the engines to slow the train down by flipping the 'mode' of the motors from motors to generators (which pushes back on the engine).
Electricity is a pretty efficient means of transporting energy (and we know how to convert it into a variety of other forms simply). The only drawback is that you have to generate the electricity to use it. This is why great amounts of research are going into battery efficiency, and other ways of converting mechanical and chemical forms into electricity.
or to actively poll hardware like Mac OS does (and always has), and just pop the icon onto the desktop, and await for you to come use it.
Your point about lions and tigers being the same except for trivial differences, and even the opportunity to interbreed them is close to the mark. What you neglected to point out is that when they are bred together, the offspring is infertile.
The only reason there are different breeds of cats and dogs and pigeons, etc, is that humans have looked for specific traits, and then selectively mated only parents who had those traits, over and over again. However, if you stuck 15 different dog breeds together for a few generations, you would see, not continued exclusivity in breeding, but a return to the basic dog.
Macro evolution is just a meaningless creationist term to wave away the mountain of scientific evidence that they can no longer deny.
Your point dies here. There is no mountain of evidence supporting macro evolution. If anything, the mountain supports creation by a supreme being. Too many simultaneous changes must happen in multiple specimens that then decide to interbreed in order to achieve evolution.
Every true species (and German Shepherds are not a different species from Chihuahuas) has unique aspects to it that do not line up with other species, even though overall they share similar traits. An extreme example is the similarities between hummingbirds and emus. They're both birds. But hummingbirds are a definite, separate species. Getting an emu and a hummingbirds out of the same original bird doesn't make any sense. Just like getting housecats and lions out of the same original cat is irrational.
And what about all the animals out there that serve no purpose, like the hippopotamus? Hippopotami eat vegetation, the males fight for control of the pod, and a few parasitic animals live off of them. But they serve no purpose in life. Certain fish glom on and eat the dead skin off their hides, and others follow them to consume their dung. Another example is the rhinocerous. Rhinos are in the business of eating and making new rhino babies. Occasionally they fight some other animal away from their territory, but they serve no purpose beyond that. They're not food for anything but the eventual carion eaters like buzzards and hyenas.
There are far too many holes in the naturalistic philosophy of evolution to believe without tubs of faith poured in. There are no holes in creationism. While we can't determine why the hippo exists, we know an intelligent being put it there.
oh, and what are you running now that's silent, unless you're still on an iMac G3?
I've used several G5's, and they were all whisper quiet. NOt as quiet as the original iMacs, since those had NO fans, but I don't even notice the G5's fan (and now liquid) cooling system.
What's a 'MiB/sec'? Is that a millibyte per second?
What's really going to be hard will be things like watches that change for you. Embedded devices that have been built to automatically adjust for DST: VCRs, DVRs, thermostats, etc. Not all of them do, and many don't care what time it is, or you set it yourself, but the ones that do it on their own will need a major system flash, or the user to be aware of the issue and fix it themselves.
You were so close! The real title will be Director of Midget Widget Technology.
ok, it was a JOKE! I figured the smiley would've given it away.
that sounds like a config issue. My default install of Windows didn't put the whole path in the title, in fact I had the chance to choose to add that, but didn't.
Seriously, though, I haven't had much experience with the online data backup solutions, but depending on the sensitivity of the data involved, I would be more likely to do local backups to an external USB drive that you can just unplug and take with you, rather than one of these 100% off-site, online backup services. That being said, if you're not too worried about the privacy of the data, then the offsite guys are probably a really good deal. They have a much higher incentive to keep your data secure (along with their other customers' data) than even you do, because it's their business. Your business is being a club. Security and data protection aren't necessarily supposed to be your bailiwick.
Just a thought.
yes, I know he's posted this several times elsewhere on /., but I felt someone should respond to this in a calm, considered fashion.
If he went to any major competitor, Google, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, RedHat, etc. But since he's going to China what does a lawsuit in California or Washington really matter?
This should line up with their efforts with Eclipse, too. I might get into a little Java programming if the environment were open-source.
I'd like to point out some minor points that you may do well to revise in your thinking, too.
And I'm not blindly repeating urban legends, I have used this in the past the couple times I've been pulled over.
Also, one thing that I've found scores lots of brownie points is to shut your car off if you get pulled. The officer is far less likely to think you're a threat to run if your car is off (and plus then you're not idling for 3-15 minutes on the side of the road).
Hacking implies the ability to alter something, which astronomy doesn't really lend it self to, much. I couldn't alter Tempel-1's path to avoid Deep Impact (just kidding), and I don't think I could 'hack' anything else in astronomy.
200,000 * 2 = 400,000
The real test of this switching will, of course, have to be seen to continue over the next couple quarters, which would also show that most people are not caring about the processor used in the machines, so long as they work well.
if this were an actual news story, and not just another rumor posting. Yes, Thinksecret has gotten stuff right in the past, they've also blown it a couple times. As opposed to the recent items about the video iPod, which at least have backing in terms of talks between different companies, and multiple reports, citing not all the same sources, this item, while fun to think about, isn't news. It's a rumor, out of one of the more famous rumor mills.
I saw the parent and just had to post, didn't botherto check the bird first (doh!)
What is your name?
What is your quest?
What is the airspeed velocity of a sparrow?
BeOS fully supported all of GCC, so any applications could be ported quickly (for command-line stuff, it was generally just a change to the makefile). The Be engineers did their homework. Several came out of Apple's OS group to found Be Inc just so they could explore new ways of doing things. Metadata attached to every file, fast searching, native TCP/IP message passing in the OS (which made network applications simpler to write). They were working on a multiuser version when they got sidetracked into internet appliances, which haven't really gone anywhere in the intervening time since.
Also, I don't know if you ever used the Be command line, but the arrangement of files and commands all pretty much matched what you'd expect to see in a Unix/Linux/BSD environment.
New APIs come around all the time (Qt, Win16, OWL, Win32, .NET, POSIX (which isn't even an API), Carbon, MFC, Cocoa, etc). And every time a new one shows up, people bitch and moan about how everybody already knows the other ones inside and out, and why move to something new? Maybe the new one is better. Maybe not. Some are better, but don't catch on due to weird licensing (Borland's OWL pops to mind).
Some folks play with 'alternative' OSes because they can. There are some playing with them to see what could be. The typical /. poster seems to only want to hear stuff about BSD, Linux, Windows, and OS X. (One of which is fully commercial, another mostly commercial.) I loved running BeOS 4, 4.5, and 5. I didn't run it because it supported butt loads of applications, nor because developing for it wasn't horribly difficult (though I would've personally liked an IDE for GUI stuff). I ran it because it worked really really well. It ran almost everything I needed it to (Gobe Productive wasn't to the level of compatibility with Office I had to maintain at the time), and almost never crashed. It didn't matter what I did to it, the OS kept on humming. Applications could go nuts and croak, but they never took out anything else.
BeOS seemed to incorporate a lot of the ideas of Stallman's GNU HURD kernel (drivers in user space, don't reboot to load new drivers, just quit and restart that server), but actually got it working (unlike HURD which is still under development).
And that's why a lot of us are going to use YellowTab, too.