"In modern biological "language" everything that is classified as X evolved from a common ancestor that also was X."
This (a) doesn't answer the quoted question, and (b) requires a link or two, because it's equivalent to saying that immediate subsets of a set are their superset, which is nonsense. I know biologists aren't particularly renowned for their mathematical prowess, but I find it extremely hard to believe that they're bad enough to have come up with a "modern biological language" based on such a ludicrous assertion.
"And everything that evolved from that common ancestor will be X, in addition to whatever else it is."
X +/- n != X. If it has attributes that aren't present in X, or lacks attributes that are definitive of X, then it isn't an X, but is a member of a superset which includes X.
"Last common ancestor of all great apes was, by defintion, a great ape."
The last common ancestor of all great apes (including the orang-utan, which diverged from the others over 12 million years ago) was an animal with certain attributes in common with great apes (and others they don't have), i.e. it was a member of a superset that _includes_ great apes, not the set _of_ great apes.
"There's no way humans could evolve to not be vertebrates or tetrapods or amniotes or mammals or great apes. "
Indeed they cannot, but that has nothing to do with your assertion that the ancestor of X is an X, because that would imply that tetrapods are mammals, vertebrates are tetrapods, etc., which they clearly are not.
"It's of course a type of evolution (like eg. stellar evolution is also type of evolution). But it's very distinct from biological evolution and advances under very different "laws""
You're missing the point, because I didn't claim that technology itself evolved, but that humans evolved the capacity to develop and use it, so any technologies that emerge as a consequence of this are as much a part of the human evolutionary process as our other genetic attributes.
"If it's not coded in the genes, it's not developed by biological evolution."
Humans _evolved_ a different mechanism for passing technological information on to other humans: it's called language, and the capacity to use it is present in our genetic code, as indeed are all the other attributes that contribute to our (as far as we know) unique level of technological prowess, together with some notable limitations that make it difficult for us to survive in any environment without some sort of technology.
"I find the whole concept of "species" to be flawed in this respect."
It is, like all human classifications of things in nature, an attempt to quantise and label a continuum, hence the fact that the boundaries are so fuzzy (many so-called species can for example interbreed and produce viable non-sterile offspring, some of which occur in nature when similar species have intersecting habitats).
"That's because there's no such thing as speciation. It's an artificial term that represents the false concept of species!"
All human labels for things are artificial terms -- that's why their definitions change over time. The ancients for example classified the sun and moon as planets because they move relative to the stars just like other planets such as Jupiter and Venus, but the definitions of "sun", "star", "planet", and "moon" have changed since then, and are still changing today, e.g. the recent decision to exclude Pluto from the list of (our sun's) planets.
"All we have is variance of alleles within different populations. We don't have "species." Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele occurrence in a populations over time."
This connection with populations is something which isn't stressed enough, especially with fossil records, where a single fragmentary example is accepted as evidence for the existence of entire populations of organisms, when it actually only proves that one of them was around at some point in the past. It kind of makes one wonder what sort of trees of life palaeontologists from the far future would build if they found a fossil of a two-headed calf or one of those frogs with lots of legs that are being born in polluted lakes!
"And to get back to the stupid-head article, that is still happening in humanity."
One only has to look at the number of people who have problems with impacted wisdom teeth to see the fact that we're still changing physically, but the rate of that change is pretty low in animals whose generations are two decades apart. The entire history of civilisation from the invention of agriculture to the present day happened in only 500 generations, which is around the same number that a colony of bacteria will go through in a week, so the fact that we haven't changed much in chronicled history isn't particularly surprising.
"The next time selection pressure shifts (and it will -- it always does), we'll have a *lot* of genetic variation ready to meet the challenge."
And we may well find that certain traits which are disadvantages in current (Western) society become vital to our survival as a species when such changes do occur.
"I have no idea how long donkeys have been around - probably a long time "
The entire modern equus branch only appeared 4 million years ago (the equus simplicidens group), and wild asses didn't exist until much later. African fossils with mixed ape / human characteristic are almost twice as old (7 million years), and animals with some great ape characteristics existed in Eurasia 13 million years ago, but nobody seems to be able to agree on whether these were or were not ancestors of African great apes.
"For the benefit of any other pedantic twats, read that as closest common ancestor"
The earliest known African great ape fossils have various human characteristics in addition to ones associated with other African great apes (they may well have been bipeds, and their teeth were much more more like ours than those of chimps or gorillas). One could therefore claim that fossil evidence points to African great apes having evolved from primitive humans without being any less truthful than those who say both evolved from a common ape ancestor.
"It is entirely possible that plants started from a different pool of genetic goo than the animals did."
But unlikely, because all eukaryotes (organisms with nucleated cells) share enough DNA (and a whole bunch of mechanisms, some of which are specific to multi-cellular eukaryotes) to indicate that they all evolved from a common ancestor. Note also that there are currently five branches in the tree, not two, and some of these branches may not be monophylectic:
Archaeoplastidae (plants) Unikonts (animals, fungi, and various others) Chromalveolates Rhizaria Excavates
There are also a fair number of eukaryotes which have yet to be placed in the tree because there's uncertainty as to where they belong.
"given that the brain is so malleable at birth, it seems perfectly reasonable that the environment can influence one's ability to learn and reason"
The story of Hellen Keller indicates that the role environment plays in childhood is probably quite minor (or more correctly, isn't a necessary component of intelligence). She was blind, deaf, unstimulated in an intellectual sense for most of her first eight years of life, and lived in a society that had very few provisions for severely handicapped people, yet she managed to achieve far more than 99.9% of people today, let alone her contemporaries.
"By treating those with genetic defects that "should" have been selected out of our gene pool, the next generation requires more treatment on average than the previous."
The problem with this line of argument lies in defining the "should have been selected out" part, especially when most of the really severe problems that nature would have killed off shortly after birth make the sufferer so unlikely to reproduce and therefore carry their genes on to the next generation that their effect on the racial pool is negligible. It should also be noted that the cost to society of treating genetically transmitted conditions is far smaller than that incurred by treating sufferers of non-genetic birth defects, which significantly outnumber them, and would also in many cases result in infant death without the assistance of our technology.
"If we're removing natural selection from our evolution, we have to assume that responsibility for ourselves."
My argument is that technology is part of natural selection, not a way around it, i.e. that fitness to survive ceased to be a purely biological matter when the first human ancestor shaped a stone tool, and has steadily moved further from being a biological matter until we've reached a point where we're actively having to intervene to prevent many other organisms, some of which have been around a _lot_ longer than us (and have therefore amply demonstrated their fitness to survive in a biological sense) from being driven to extinction by our success.
"Intelligence can be and is affected by environment."
The "nature versus nurture" debate is still ongoing, so we're both right and both wrong at the same time, although this may of course change in the future.
"Intelligence is not a raw potential, its a form of utilizing raw potential"
Intelligence is the ability to understand and solve problems even when one has little prior information to use. How much of this comes from nature or nurture is again a matter of considerable debate.
"Almost all humans have the raw capability to achieve what we would call genius."
If that's the case, then please explain why they're (a) so rare, (b) often come from families that are neither wealthy or well-educated, and were therefore only at best partially educated themselves (e.g. Isaac Newton), and (c) why the best educated and wealthiest people who send their children to the best schools and universities don't regularly churn them out.
"Far fewer people reached 70 or 80 in the days gone by because almost all wounds and illnesses were fatal."
This is of course very true, but it's as much of a misrepresentation as my statement, because it overlooks the fact that most Western people who'd passed the age of 12 had extremely robust immune systems due to already having contracted and survived a wide variety of illnesses, including smallpox, which nearly every adult who wasn't a milk maid in mediaeval and Renaissance Europe carried scars from (milk maids got cow pox in early childhood, which gave them an immunity to smallpox, and a consequent reputation for being extremely beautiful).
"An inflamed appendix was certain death."
That sort of thing had less of an effect on average life expectancy than modern factors such as diseases relating to obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, transport-related deaths, and severe allergies (the latter of which is pretty much unknown in environments where immune systems are busy fighting diseases and infections from the moment one is born). A far more important cause of early adult death was malnutrition-based illnesses combined with poorly heated, damp dwellings, hence the fact that far more people died during the night in winter than at any other time.
"I think its safe to say our common Ancestor was also a Great Ape [wikipedia.org] too."
Where does the article say that the great apes evolved from great apes? Furthermore, why are you citing Wikipedia, which is not exactly renowned for its accuracy?
As to it not being questionable, I would categorically state that it's extremely questionable, hence the fact that there's so much scientific debate:
The first known fossil evidence of what could tentatively be described as a "great ape" is Dryopithecus, which lived in Europe and Asia around 13 million years ago. These animals had brain cases comparable in size to a chimpanzee, and various great ape morphological characteristics such as fully extensible elbows and short snouts, but they also differ in several ways from modern great apes, having some features which are closer to monkeys, so there is a good deal of controversy as to whether they should be classed as great apes in and of themselves, and while nobody doubts that they were ancestors of at least some of today's great apes (e.g. the orang-utan), there is still a lot of debate as to whether the line of apes that evolved from these and other extinct Eurasian ancestors was also the one that produced African great apes.
And it is the above which leads to problems with the assertion that humans evolved from apes, because there's no fossil evidence of African great ape ancestors existing earlier than very earliest human ancestors. The oldest we know of is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which lived between 6 and 7 million years ago in Chad, and that has a mosaic of human and chimp-like features (its teeth and the cranial hole at the base of the skull are human-like, and may indicate a bipedal posture, but most other attributes are closer to chimps). Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba are both about six million years old, and like Sahelanthropus, also exhibit a mix of human and chimp-like features. All have been described by their discoverers as human ancestors, but all could also be described as ape ancestors too, so the African side of the fossil record is ambiguous at best.
We are this faced with two conflicting possibilities:
1) The ancestors of all great apes (including humans) evolved in Eurasia and migrated to Africa some time between 10 million and 8 million years ago. This is a distinct possibility, and would support your assertion that both humans and other great apes evolved from prior great apes, although they would probably be more correctly described as animals that resembled great apes in many, but not all ways.
2) Eurasian great ape ancestors only gave rise to a variety of Eurasian species whose sole living representative is the orang-utan, and African great apes (including humans) evolved separately from an ancestor that had enough human characteristics for the claim that (African) great apes evolved from humans to be no less true than the claim that humans evolved from great apes.
NB: the controversies are caused by the extremely fragmentary nature of the fossil evidence, with many species being represented by a few teeth or fragments of jaw bone that tell us nothing about their posture, brain size, or general morphology.
"Also, Its pretty common for evolution to stop for some species, crocodiles and sharks being cases where very little has changed for millions of years."
Neither sharks nor crocodillians stopped evolving. Contrary to the commonly heard assertion that sharks haven't changed for over 300 million years, the direct ancestors of modern sharks appeared around 100 million years ago, and the hammerhead group is relatively recent (20 million years or so).
What people say about crocodilians being "living fossils" is also tripe, because while there are certain gross morphological similarities between modern species and some early ones, there are also notable physical differences such as bony palettes in modern animals, internal changes to nostr
"I would say that the common ancestor we shared with the other apes (Chimp, bonobo, gorilla, orang) would be described by most taxonomists as an ape."
Taxonomists seldom if ever use the word "ape" because it's poorly defined, and isn't usually applied to humans, so they would actually describe such creatures as hominids or hominoids (which are not the same thing; gibbons for example are hominoids, but not hominids).
"It would have probably shared the common characteristics by which we group its descendants - tailless, grasping hands and feet, relatively large brain etc."
A description which also fits the Barbary Ape and Sulawesi Black Ape, which despite their names, are macaques, not apes. This is the reason that taxonomists now use genetic information rather than morphology, as the latter can lead to erroneous classifications (something that's happened quite a lot in the past).
"There was a time where the life expectancy was my current age"
There was a time when _average_ life expectancy was your current age, because average life expectancy is calculated on figures that include infant mortality, which was (and still is in some parts of the world) around 90% for much of our history. Those who survived to the age of twelve years did however live just as long as people do today.
"We are getting older"
We're getting older _on average_ because birth rates in nearly all Western countries (and some Eastern ones such as Japan) have dropped below the levels required to maintain historic age ratios, so their "native" populations are declining. This does not however mean that our typical maximum ages are longer than they were historically, hence the Old Testament passage which says that men (no figures are given for women) live 70 years, and some reach 80 or more, "but they have little joy of it", i.e. men who live more than 70 years were likely to suffer from age-related health problems, just as they do today.
"Also, our collective cognitive skill (as measured by IQ) is steadily increasing."
IQ tests only measure the ability to pass IQ tests. There is a correlation between that ability and intelligence, but it's nothing more than a correlation, so an increased IQ in a population over time could just as easily be due to changes in the tests themselves as changes in those being tested.
"IQ is influenced by environment to some degree"
But intelligence isn't, otherwise we'd be able to produce environments that turned every child into a genius (note here that I'm referring to true geniuses such as Newton and Einstein, not those who fall into an arbitrary statistical IQ region).
"I'd rather we go along with slow evolution until we can do some genetic engineering on ourselves."
There's no such thing as "slow" or "fast" evolution, because organisms only change permanently when doing so makes them better at surviving in their environment than those without the new traits. There's a distinct body of evolutionary theory (based on evidence) which suggests that it actually happens in distinct spurts rather than by the slow accumulation of changes, which if true, would mean that the next phase in human evolution will be a distinct "jump" whose nature cannot be predicted by our current knowledge of genetics.
"by using our hands and frontal lobes, we have this great ability to adapt our environment to us instead of the other way around."
And this may be the ultimate result of evolution, whose only goal is after all to perpetuate a bunch of genes. What better way of doing this is there than by evolving an organism that can first make its environment suit it, and later come up with ways of changing itself at will to suit new environments? So perhaps it's time for geneticists to consider human technology as being a part of evolution just like our genes are, because it's those genes which produced our technological capability, including the emerging science of genetic engineering which will eventually allow us to modify our genetic makeup in a single generation in ways that would take millions of years otherwise.
So perhaps we should stop thinking of human technology and evolution as being separate things, something that's IMO hypocritical when we treat the technology of other animals such as species of ant that farm crops or livestock as being an evolutionary adaptation.
Neither donkeys nor apes existed when humans and apes took divergent paths from the common human / ape ancestor, so your attempt at sarcasm would have been far better if you knew what you were talking about.
Darwin didn't claim humans evolved from apes. Modern evolution theory doesn't claim that humans evolved from apes. And apes, humans, and donkeys do indeed have a common ancestor, just like frogs and elephants have a common ancestor, and sharks and redwood trees have a common ancestor.
"For every Radiohead there are countless small bands."
This has always been the case, though. The most profitable years of the recording industry were the four decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but the vast bulk of their artists during that period earned just about enough to get their contracts renewed, but didn't make large sums for either themselves or the companies individually, although the amount earned from all of them put together was significant. You won't find artists of this type getting contracts today because they were the first ones against the wall when profits started to fall, but there were plenty of them around until fairly recently.
"So, while I am happy that the RIAA may be getting it stuck to them with this new organization, I do not anticipate that this is going to suddenly make it possible for 'the little guy' to succeed any more than they could before, and may in fact keep some of the truly talented little folk from being catapulted into the mainstream"
It's currently worse for the "little guys" than it used to be, because the industry is far more reluctant to sign people who they don't think are "star material" than they were when their income was significantly higher. The sad part of this is that the chances of professionally made recordings of interesting and distinctive acts being preserved for future generations is far smaller than it's been for nearly a century, despite the fact that the technology for doing so is more widespread than ever.
"I don't believe most people's support, having talked to musicians locally, and looked into it elsewhere, is enough to keep them fed--- if they are not a big name, unless they play gigs."
It's pretty hard to make any sort of living playing gigs unless an act is well known enough to fill reasonably sized venues and get some sort of sponsorship to at least cover their costs. Even big internationally known artists largely rely on sponsorship and selling memorabilia to make any actual money from touring, because audience expectations, and therefore costs tend to increase drastically as one's fame grows.
"The thing is, there is a HUGE oversupply of "artists". There are way, way, way more people who want to be stars than there is a need for stars."
Most artists have no desire to be "stars", they simply want to earn enough from their art to spend all their time on it instead of having to do something else so they can eat.
"The actual music is only one small part of the final product, and it's the most readily available."
And that product wouldn't exist without lots of other artists who often have much more talent than the "star" and a team of highly skilled technicians, plus image consultants, PR specialists, commercial artists, composers, writers, and countless others whose jobs depend on the ability of said star to earn money for its owners.
""Pirates" are also some of the biggest spenders. They buy collections just to have them, they download them when the works are 'not released yet', they buy concert tickets, they buy auxiliary materials like DVDs and tshirts."
A small minority of non-commercial "pirates" do these things, but the vast majority of them don't, just like the vast majority of those who buy CDs and legal Internet downloads don't buy collections just to have them, or buy concert tickets, auxiliary materials, or T-shirts.
Most music "consumers" aren't fans of particular artists who lap up everything from them, they're casual listeners who want certain specific pieces they've heard and like. They were catered for by singles in the days when vinyl ruled, made their own mix tapes when cassettes were the "DIY" medium of choice, and are now served by the "a la carte" music options offered by both legal and illegal download sites.
When some of these vast numbers of casual consumers opt for a free "pirate" download, they do so for one, and only one reason: to avoid paying for it. They don't know about, and therefore don't care about the issues that Slashdotters regularly bring up in these threads -- all they know is that there are places where they can find music, movies, electronic books, and software without having to pay anything for them, and because nothing physical is taken away from anyone, even those who know it's illegal (which is a long way from being all of them) don't see it as being immoral.
So the only real question that needs to be answered is whether such casual consumers (i.e. the majority) would have actually paid for any of the content they obtained for nothing if the free services didn't exist. And I reckon it's fair to say that most who have the funds to do so would pay a reasonable amount for a small percentage of the stuff they "pirate", but pass on the rest unless it was extremely cheap, because they don't really want it enough to be prepared to pay very much for it.
It's therefore reasonable to assume that "piracy" does result in (possibly significantly) less sales for the media and software industries, but its impact is a lot smaller than they like to make out, and is in some ways offset by services such as YouTube and FaceBook, which offer new marketing opportunities that are much cheaper and can reach potentially far bigger audiences than more traditional avenues.
"Are people now saying that they will in fact stop pirating music if the RIAA isn't a factor?"
I have no trouble believing that many people will _say_ they'll stop if the big media companies are out of the picture. Whether they'll actually do so is of course another matter entirely.
"How much decent Net software is there out there anyway?"
There's very little if anything for desktops. As is the case with java, most.NET programming jobs are for server-side stuff, with much of that being ASP.NET (i.e. web apps).
"Is it all in-house so we never see it?"
There is indeed a lot of in-house stuff, but it's generally even worse than what you see from ISVs.
"I've only seen VB shareware quality stuff no matter what I've had to pay for it."
That's because a lot of it is written by VB programmers who (a) aren't vastly experienced with VB.NET, and (b) dislike what they have learned because it requires more effort to produce slower, uglier, and bulkier software.
NB: I'm not a VB programmer, but I know several, so I'm not speaking from experience, but repeating what I've been told.
Doctors were earning lots of money prior to the invention of computers - check.
Lawyers were earning lots of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
Businesses were earning lots of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
Judges were earning a lot of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
"As for the programmers... last time I checked they make a FUCK of a lot more than ditch diggers, bus drivers, shoe salesmen, etc, etc, etc."
They actually earn somewhat more than the jobs you cite, not a "FUCK of a lot more", and unlike those jobs, programmers have to study for years to practise their profession. Most other fields that require similar amounts of study are significantly better paid on average than programmers are.
NB: I notice that, as is usual for smug purveyors of tripe, you predictably managed to avoid dealing with PC support people _despite the fact that I specifically mentioned them_.
"Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the Woz, that guy that made Ubuntu and went to space"
Steve Jobs is a businessman who's never written a line of code in his life; the Woz is a hardware engineer; Mark Shuttleworth is an entrepreneur, not a programmer; and Bill Gates became rich because his mother was on the board of IBM when they were looking for a PC OS, so he was in the ideal position to sell them one that somebody else had written.
"Thank you for making my point for me again.""
And thank you for spouting enough BS to fertilise Bangladesh.
"It's been a while since I've seen someone work so hard to miss, evade, ignore and otherwise dodge the point of a submission"
And it's been a long time since I've seen someone make such a lame attempt to defend a point. If I was in your position, I'd have come up with list of people who actually earned significant amounts of money from their own programming efforts, e.g. Dan Bricklyn, Peter Norton, Anders Hjeslberg, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux, and many, many others, so I'm vastly underwhelmed by your pathetic inability to produce a single example of your own.
"Please STFU for me."
If you promise not to inflict any more smug, easily refuted shite masquerading as (albeit pathetically weak) arguments on us, then it will be a pleasure to STFU.
"I think those who predicted years ago that computers would create two opposing classes; a cast of technologically savy, highly enabled upper class with wealth and power; and another sub class of non-computer literate, non-empowered workers without authority or means, effectively predicted this sort of event."
Because the computer literati are obviously so much more wealthy and powerful than people who chose to become experts in medicine, law, politics, or business. That's why so many PC tech. support people and programmers are buying up mansions and driving around in Lambourghinis while plastic surgeons, judges, and politicians are forced to work 80 hour weeks for $50K a year unless they also know lost and lots and lots about computers.
Re:Did you read what I wrote?
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C# In-Depth
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· Score: 1
"Turbo Pascal might have been great for a DOS-only programmer"
Turbo Pascal versions 1, 2, and 3 were available for CP/M-80 and CP/M-86 as well as DOS. That's why produced.COM files and were therefore limited to a single 64K segment on MS/PC-DOS.
"I would say the first IDE was Smalltalk"
Only if you count research versions and pre-release evaluation versions that only made available to a select set of very large OEMs. The first generally available Smalltalk came out in 1983, the same year as Turbo-Pascal (Smalltalk-80 version 2).
"Interlisp-D"
That had an integrated tool-set which were written in and ran under the Interlisp environment. They were however individually invoked with commands, so by that reckoning, Vi, GCC, and Gnu Make are also an IDE.
"and UCSD Pascal"
The UCSD P-System was a menu-driven OS, not an IDE (it had text-based pull-down menus). The editor, filer, and other applications could be invoked from OS menus, and the editor would auto-start when the compilers (there were several languages, not just Pascal) detected an error, but the latter behaviour was supplied by the OS, not the editor.
If you really want to cite IDEs that significantly pre-date TP, you need look no further than the wide variety of interpreters that appeared during the 1960s and 1970s that provided environments from within which programs were loaded, saved, edited, debugged, and run.
Re:Oh, well, that explains everything...
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"the OOP model in Object Pascal/Delphi is exactly the same as in C++"
It's the same in _Borland's C++_, which has language extensions (__property, __published, and __closure) to handle the fact that Delphi's object model isn't the same as the standard C++ one.
Re:amazing what doesnt get asked
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C# In-Depth
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"C# has really just replaced C++ on the Windows client side, where Java never had a foothold to begin with."
It's actually replaced VB, Delphi, and a bunch of proprietary 4GLs that were previously used for corporate development and specialist low volume third-party stuff -- shrink-wrap software (including Microsoft's offerings) is still written in C++ or one of the now very small number of other compiled languages for Windows.
"I see c# as an improved version of java. The designers of c# learned from their mistakes."
The designers of C# actually learned from Delphi, which had properties in 1995:
type Foo = class private
FdontTouch : integer;
function GetDontTouch : integer;
procedure SetDontTouch(const NewVal : integer);
public
property DontTouch : integer read GetDontTouch write SetDontTouch;
end;
Hjelsberg wrote the original Turbo Pascal compiler, and was chief architect of the first three Delphi versions before leaving Borland to work at MS, so there's a lot of Delphi in C#.
Slashdot Mirror
"In modern biological "language" everything that is classified as X evolved from a common ancestor that also was X."
This (a) doesn't answer the quoted question, and (b) requires a link or two, because it's equivalent to saying that immediate subsets of a set are their superset, which is nonsense. I know biologists aren't particularly renowned for their mathematical prowess, but I find it extremely hard to believe that they're bad enough to have come up with a "modern biological language" based on such a ludicrous assertion.
"And everything that evolved from that common ancestor will be X, in addition to whatever else it is."
X +/- n != X. If it has attributes that aren't present in X, or lacks attributes that are definitive of X, then it isn't an X, but is a member of a superset which includes X.
"Last common ancestor of all great apes was, by defintion, a great ape."
The last common ancestor of all great apes (including the orang-utan, which diverged from the others over 12 million years ago) was an animal with certain attributes in common with great apes (and others they don't have), i.e. it was a member of a superset that _includes_ great apes, not the set _of_ great apes.
"There's no way humans could evolve to not be vertebrates or tetrapods or amniotes or mammals or great apes. "
Indeed they cannot, but that has nothing to do with your assertion that the ancestor of X is an X, because that would imply that tetrapods are mammals, vertebrates are tetrapods, etc., which they clearly are not.
"It's of course a type of evolution (like eg. stellar evolution is also type of evolution). But it's very distinct from biological evolution and advances under very different "laws""
You're missing the point, because I didn't claim that technology itself evolved, but that humans evolved the capacity to develop and use it, so any technologies that emerge as a consequence of this are as much a part of the human evolutionary process as our other genetic attributes.
"If it's not coded in the genes, it's not developed by biological evolution."
Humans _evolved_ a different mechanism for passing technological information on to other humans: it's called language, and the capacity to use it is present in our genetic code, as indeed are all the other attributes that contribute to our (as far as we know) unique level of technological prowess, together with some notable limitations that make it difficult for us to survive in any environment without some sort of technology.
"This makes sense, and is not a new idea."
If I thought it was a new idea, I'd be doing a lot more with it than writing posts on Slashdot!
"I find the whole concept of "species" to be flawed in this respect."
It is, like all human classifications of things in nature, an attempt to quantise and label a continuum, hence the fact that the boundaries are so fuzzy (many so-called species can for example interbreed and produce viable non-sterile offspring, some of which occur in nature when similar species have intersecting habitats).
"That's because there's no such thing as speciation. It's an artificial term that represents the false concept of species!"
All human labels for things are artificial terms -- that's why their definitions change over time. The ancients for example classified the sun and moon as planets because they move relative to the stars just like other planets such as Jupiter and Venus, but the definitions of "sun", "star", "planet", and "moon" have changed since then, and are still changing today, e.g. the recent decision to exclude Pluto from the list of (our sun's) planets.
"All we have is variance of alleles within different populations. We don't have "species." Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele occurrence in a populations over time."
This connection with populations is something which isn't stressed enough, especially with fossil records, where a single fragmentary example is accepted as evidence for the existence of entire populations of organisms, when it actually only proves that one of them was around at some point in the past. It kind of makes one wonder what sort of trees of life palaeontologists from the far future would build if they found a fossil of a two-headed calf or one of those frogs with lots of legs that are being born in polluted lakes!
"And to get back to the stupid-head article, that is still happening in humanity."
One only has to look at the number of people who have problems with impacted wisdom teeth to see the fact that we're still changing physically, but the rate of that change is pretty low in animals whose generations are two decades apart. The entire history of civilisation from the invention of agriculture to the present day happened in only 500 generations, which is around the same number that a colony of bacteria will go through in a week, so the fact that we haven't changed much in chronicled history isn't particularly surprising.
"The next time selection pressure shifts (and it will -- it always does), we'll have a *lot* of genetic variation ready to meet the challenge."
And we may well find that certain traits which are disadvantages in current (Western) society become vital to our survival as a species when such changes do occur.
"I have no idea how long donkeys have been around - probably a long time "
The entire modern equus branch only appeared 4 million years ago (the equus simplicidens group), and wild asses didn't exist until much later. African fossils with mixed ape / human characteristic are almost twice as old (7 million years), and animals with some great ape characteristics existed in Eurasia 13 million years ago, but nobody seems to be able to agree on whether these were or were not ancestors of African great apes.
"For the benefit of any other pedantic twats, read that as closest common ancestor"
The earliest known African great ape fossils have various human characteristics in addition to ones associated with other African great apes (they may well have been bipeds, and their teeth were much more more like ours than those of chimps or gorillas). One could therefore claim that fossil evidence points to African great apes having evolved from primitive humans without being any less truthful than those who say both evolved from a common ape ancestor.
"It is entirely possible that plants started from a different pool of genetic goo than the animals did."
But unlikely, because all eukaryotes (organisms with nucleated cells) share enough DNA (and a whole bunch of mechanisms, some of which are specific to multi-cellular eukaryotes) to indicate that they all evolved from a common ancestor. Note also that there are currently five branches in the tree, not two, and some of these branches may not be monophylectic:
Archaeoplastidae (plants)
Unikonts (animals, fungi, and various others)
Chromalveolates
Rhizaria
Excavates
There are also a fair number of eukaryotes which have yet to be placed in the tree because there's uncertainty as to where they belong.
"given that the brain is so malleable at birth, it seems perfectly reasonable that the environment can influence one's ability to learn and reason"
The story of Hellen Keller indicates that the role environment plays in childhood is probably quite minor (or more correctly, isn't a necessary component of intelligence). She was blind, deaf, unstimulated in an intellectual sense for most of her first eight years of life, and lived in a society that had very few provisions for severely handicapped people, yet she managed to achieve far more than 99.9% of people today, let alone her contemporaries.
"By treating those with genetic defects that "should" have been selected out of our gene pool, the next generation requires more treatment on average than the previous."
The problem with this line of argument lies in defining the "should have been selected out" part, especially when most of the really severe problems that nature would have killed off shortly after birth make the sufferer so unlikely to reproduce and therefore carry their genes on to the next generation that their effect on the racial pool is negligible. It should also be noted that the cost to society of treating genetically transmitted conditions is far smaller than that incurred by treating sufferers of non-genetic birth defects, which significantly outnumber them, and would also in many cases result in infant death without the assistance of our technology.
"If we're removing natural selection from our evolution, we have to assume that responsibility for ourselves."
My argument is that technology is part of natural selection, not a way around it, i.e. that fitness to survive ceased to be a purely biological matter when the first human ancestor shaped a stone tool, and has steadily moved further from being a biological matter until we've reached a point where we're actively having to intervene to prevent many other organisms, some of which have been around a _lot_ longer than us (and have therefore amply demonstrated their fitness to survive in a biological sense) from being driven to extinction by our success.
"Intelligence can be and is affected by environment."
The "nature versus nurture" debate is still ongoing, so we're both right and both wrong at the same time, although this may of course change in the future.
"Intelligence is not a raw potential, its a form of utilizing raw potential"
Intelligence is the ability to understand and solve problems even when one has little prior information to use. How much of this comes from nature or nurture is again a matter of considerable debate.
"Almost all humans have the raw capability to achieve what we would call genius."
If that's the case, then please explain why they're (a) so rare, (b) often come from families that are neither wealthy or well-educated, and were therefore only at best partially educated themselves (e.g. Isaac Newton), and (c) why the best educated and wealthiest people who send their children to the best schools and universities don't regularly churn them out.
"Far fewer people reached 70 or 80 in the days gone by because almost all wounds and illnesses were fatal."
This is of course very true, but it's as much of a misrepresentation as my statement, because it overlooks the fact that most Western people who'd passed the age of 12 had extremely robust immune systems due to already having contracted and survived a wide variety of illnesses, including smallpox, which nearly every adult who wasn't a milk maid in mediaeval and Renaissance Europe carried scars from (milk maids got cow pox in early childhood, which gave them an immunity to smallpox, and a consequent reputation for being extremely beautiful).
"An inflamed appendix was certain death."
That sort of thing had less of an effect on average life expectancy than modern factors such as diseases relating to obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, transport-related deaths, and severe allergies (the latter of which is pretty much unknown in environments where immune systems are busy fighting diseases and infections from the moment one is born). A far more important cause of early adult death was malnutrition-based illnesses combined with poorly heated, damp dwellings, hence the fact that far more people died during the night in winter than at any other time.
"Um, Humans are 'Great Apes', family Hominidae."
Indeed we are.
"I think its safe to say our common Ancestor was also a Great Ape [wikipedia.org] too."
Where does the article say that the great apes evolved from great apes? Furthermore, why are you citing Wikipedia, which is not exactly renowned for its accuracy?
As to it not being questionable, I would categorically state that it's extremely questionable, hence the fact that there's so much scientific debate:
The first known fossil evidence of what could tentatively be described as a "great ape" is Dryopithecus, which lived in Europe and Asia around 13 million years ago. These animals had brain cases comparable in size to a chimpanzee, and various great ape morphological characteristics such as fully extensible elbows and short snouts, but they also differ in several ways from modern great apes, having some features which are closer to monkeys, so there is a good deal of controversy as to whether they should be classed as great apes in and of themselves, and while nobody doubts that they were ancestors of at least some of today's great apes (e.g. the orang-utan), there is still a lot of debate as to whether the line of apes that evolved from these and other extinct Eurasian ancestors was also the one that produced African great apes.
And it is the above which leads to problems with the assertion that humans evolved from apes, because there's no fossil evidence of African great ape ancestors existing earlier than very earliest human ancestors. The oldest we know of is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which lived between 6 and 7 million years ago in Chad, and that has a mosaic of human and chimp-like features (its teeth and the cranial hole at the base of the skull are human-like, and may indicate a bipedal posture, but most other attributes are closer to chimps). Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba are both about six million years old, and like Sahelanthropus, also exhibit a mix of human and chimp-like features. All have been described by their discoverers as human ancestors, but all could also be described as ape ancestors too, so the African side of the fossil record is ambiguous at best.
We are this faced with two conflicting possibilities:
1) The ancestors of all great apes (including humans) evolved in Eurasia and migrated to Africa some time between 10 million and 8 million years ago. This is a distinct possibility, and would support your assertion that both humans and other great apes evolved from prior great apes, although they would probably be more correctly described as animals that resembled great apes in many, but not all ways.
2) Eurasian great ape ancestors only gave rise to a variety of Eurasian species whose sole living representative is the orang-utan, and African great apes (including humans) evolved separately from an ancestor that had enough human characteristics for the claim that (African) great apes evolved from humans to be no less true than the claim that humans evolved from great apes.
NB: the controversies are caused by the extremely fragmentary nature of the fossil evidence, with many species being represented by a few teeth or fragments of jaw bone that tell us nothing about their posture, brain size, or general morphology.
"Also, Its pretty common for evolution to stop for some species, crocodiles and sharks being cases where very little has changed for millions of years."
Neither sharks nor crocodillians stopped evolving. Contrary to the commonly heard assertion that sharks haven't changed for over 300 million years, the direct ancestors of modern sharks appeared around 100 million years ago, and the hammerhead group is relatively recent (20 million years or so).
What people say about crocodilians being "living fossils" is also tripe, because while there are certain gross morphological similarities between modern species and some early ones, there are also notable physical differences such as bony palettes in modern animals, internal changes to nostr
"I would say that the common ancestor we shared with the other apes (Chimp, bonobo, gorilla, orang) would be described by most taxonomists as an ape."
Taxonomists seldom if ever use the word "ape" because it's poorly defined, and isn't usually applied to humans, so they would actually describe such creatures as hominids or hominoids (which are not the same thing; gibbons for example are hominoids, but not hominids).
"It would have probably shared the common characteristics by which we group its descendants - tailless, grasping hands and feet, relatively large brain etc."
A description which also fits the Barbary Ape and Sulawesi Black Ape, which despite their names, are macaques, not apes. This is the reason that taxonomists now use genetic information rather than morphology, as the latter can lead to erroneous classifications (something that's happened quite a lot in the past).
"There was a time where the life expectancy was my current age"
There was a time when _average_ life expectancy was your current age, because average life expectancy is calculated on figures that include infant mortality, which was (and still is in some parts of the world) around 90% for much of our history. Those who survived to the age of twelve years did however live just as long as people do today.
"We are getting older"
We're getting older _on average_ because birth rates in nearly all Western countries (and some Eastern ones such as Japan) have dropped below the levels required to maintain historic age ratios, so their "native" populations are declining. This does not however mean that our typical maximum ages are longer than they were historically, hence the Old Testament passage which says that men (no figures are given for women) live 70 years, and some reach 80 or more, "but they have little joy of it", i.e. men who live more than 70 years were likely to suffer from age-related health problems, just as they do today.
"Also, our collective cognitive skill (as measured by IQ) is steadily increasing."
IQ tests only measure the ability to pass IQ tests. There is a correlation between that ability and intelligence, but it's nothing more than a correlation, so an increased IQ in a population over time could just as easily be due to changes in the tests themselves as changes in those being tested.
"IQ is influenced by environment to some degree"
But intelligence isn't, otherwise we'd be able to produce environments that turned every child into a genius (note here that I'm referring to true geniuses such as Newton and Einstein, not those who fall into an arbitrary statistical IQ region).
"I'd rather we go along with slow evolution until we can do some genetic engineering on ourselves."
There's no such thing as "slow" or "fast" evolution, because organisms only change permanently when doing so makes them better at surviving in their environment than those without the new traits. There's a distinct body of evolutionary theory (based on evidence) which suggests that it actually happens in distinct spurts rather than by the slow accumulation of changes, which if true, would mean that the next phase in human evolution will be a distinct "jump" whose nature cannot be predicted by our current knowledge of genetics.
"by using our hands and frontal lobes, we have this great ability to adapt our environment to us instead of the other way around."
And this may be the ultimate result of evolution, whose only goal is after all to perpetuate a bunch of genes. What better way of doing this is there than by evolving an organism that can first make its environment suit it, and later come up with ways of changing itself at will to suit new environments? So perhaps it's time for geneticists to consider human technology as being a part of evolution just like our genes are, because it's those genes which produced our technological capability, including the emerging science of genetic engineering which will eventually allow us to modify our genetic makeup in a single generation in ways that would take millions of years otherwise.
So perhaps we should stop thinking of human technology and evolution as being separate things, something that's IMO hypocritical when we treat the technology of other animals such as species of ant that farm crops or livestock as being an evolutionary adaptation.
"And that common ancestor was what, a donkey?"
Neither donkeys nor apes existed when humans and apes took divergent paths from the common human / ape ancestor, so your attempt at sarcasm would have been far better if you knew what you were talking about.
Darwin didn't claim humans evolved from apes. Modern evolution theory doesn't claim that humans evolved from apes. And apes, humans, and donkeys do indeed have a common ancestor, just like frogs and elephants have a common ancestor, and sharks and redwood trees have a common ancestor.
Artistes is the French spelling of the word "artists" that's only used in English by speakers of a dialect known as "Pretentious".
"For every Radiohead there are countless small bands."
This has always been the case, though. The most profitable years of the recording industry were the four decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but the vast bulk of their artists during that period earned just about enough to get their contracts renewed, but didn't make large sums for either themselves or the companies individually, although the amount earned from all of them put together was significant. You won't find artists of this type getting contracts today because they were the first ones against the wall when profits started to fall, but there were plenty of them around until fairly recently.
"So, while I am happy that the RIAA may be getting it stuck to them with this new organization, I do not anticipate that this is going to suddenly make it possible for 'the little guy' to succeed any more than they could before, and may in fact keep some of the truly talented little folk from being catapulted into the mainstream"
It's currently worse for the "little guys" than it used to be, because the industry is far more reluctant to sign people who they don't think are "star material" than they were when their income was significantly higher. The sad part of this is that the chances of professionally made recordings of interesting and distinctive acts being preserved for future generations is far smaller than it's been for nearly a century, despite the fact that the technology for doing so is more widespread than ever.
"I don't believe most people's support, having talked to musicians locally, and looked into it elsewhere, is enough to keep them fed--- if they are not a big name, unless they play gigs."
It's pretty hard to make any sort of living playing gigs unless an act is well known enough to fill reasonably sized venues and get some sort of sponsorship to at least cover their costs. Even big internationally known artists largely rely on sponsorship and selling memorabilia to make any actual money from touring, because audience expectations, and therefore costs tend to increase drastically as one's fame grows.
"The thing is, there is a HUGE oversupply of "artists". There are way, way, way more people who want to be stars than there is a need for stars."
Most artists have no desire to be "stars", they simply want to earn enough from their art to spend all their time on it instead of having to do something else so they can eat.
"The actual music is only one small part of the final product, and it's the most readily available."
And that product wouldn't exist without lots of other artists who often have much more talent than the "star" and a team of highly skilled technicians, plus image consultants, PR specialists, commercial artists, composers, writers, and countless others whose jobs depend on the ability of said star to earn money for its owners.
""Pirates" are also some of the biggest spenders. They buy collections just to have them, they download them when the works are 'not released yet', they buy concert tickets, they buy auxiliary materials like DVDs and tshirts."
A small minority of non-commercial "pirates" do these things, but the vast majority of them don't, just like the vast majority of those who buy CDs and legal Internet downloads don't buy collections just to have them, or buy concert tickets, auxiliary materials, or T-shirts.
Most music "consumers" aren't fans of particular artists who lap up everything from them, they're casual listeners who want certain specific pieces they've heard and like. They were catered for by singles in the days when vinyl ruled, made their own mix tapes when cassettes were the "DIY" medium of choice, and are now served by the "a la carte" music options offered by both legal and illegal download sites.
When some of these vast numbers of casual consumers opt for a free "pirate" download, they do so for one, and only one reason: to avoid paying for it. They don't know about, and therefore don't care about the issues that Slashdotters regularly bring up in these threads -- all they know is that there are places where they can find music, movies, electronic books, and software without having to pay anything for them, and because nothing physical is taken away from anyone, even those who know it's illegal (which is a long way from being all of them) don't see it as being immoral.
So the only real question that needs to be answered is whether such casual consumers (i.e. the majority) would have actually paid for any of the content they obtained for nothing if the free services didn't exist. And I reckon it's fair to say that most who have the funds to do so would pay a reasonable amount for a small percentage of the stuff they "pirate", but pass on the rest unless it was extremely cheap, because they don't really want it enough to be prepared to pay very much for it.
It's therefore reasonable to assume that "piracy" does result in (possibly significantly) less sales for the media and software industries, but its impact is a lot smaller than they like to make out, and is in some ways offset by services such as YouTube and FaceBook, which offer new marketing opportunities that are much cheaper and can reach potentially far bigger audiences than more traditional avenues.
"Are people now saying that they will in fact stop pirating music if the RIAA isn't a factor?"
I have no trouble believing that many people will _say_ they'll stop if the big media companies are out of the picture. Whether they'll actually do so is of course another matter entirely.
"How much decent Net software is there out there anyway?"
There's very little if anything for desktops. As is the case with java, most .NET programming jobs are for server-side stuff, with much of that being ASP.NET (i.e. web apps).
"Is it all in-house so we never see it?"
There is indeed a lot of in-house stuff, but it's generally even worse than what you see from ISVs.
"I've only seen VB shareware quality stuff no matter what I've had to pay for it."
That's because a lot of it is written by VB programmers who (a) aren't vastly experienced with VB.NET, and (b) dislike what they have learned because it requires more effort to produce slower, uglier, and bulkier software.
NB: I'm not a VB programmer, but I know several, so I'm not speaking from experience, but repeating what I've been told.
"Doctors use computers - check.
Lawyers use computers - check.
Business People use computers - check.
Judges use computers - check.
Politicians use computers - check."
Doctors were earning lots of money prior to the invention of computers - check.
Lawyers were earning lots of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
Businesses were earning lots of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
Judges were earning a lot of money prior to the existence of computers - check.
"As for the programmers ... last time I checked they make a FUCK of a lot more than ditch diggers, bus drivers, shoe salesmen, etc, etc, etc."
They actually earn somewhat more than the jobs you cite, not a "FUCK of a lot more", and unlike those jobs, programmers have to study for years to practise their profession. Most other fields that require similar amounts of study are significantly better paid on average than programmers are.
NB: I notice that, as is usual for smug purveyors of tripe, you predictably managed to avoid dealing with PC support people _despite the fact that I specifically mentioned them_.
"Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the Woz, that guy that made Ubuntu and went to space"
Steve Jobs is a businessman who's never written a line of code in his life; the Woz is a hardware engineer; Mark Shuttleworth is an entrepreneur, not a programmer; and Bill Gates became rich because his mother was on the board of IBM when they were looking for a PC OS, so he was in the ideal position to sell them one that somebody else had written.
"Thank you for making my point for me again.""
And thank you for spouting enough BS to fertilise Bangladesh.
"It's been a while since I've seen someone work so hard to miss, evade, ignore and otherwise dodge the point of a submission"
And it's been a long time since I've seen someone make such a lame attempt to defend a point. If I was in your position, I'd have come up with list of people who actually earned significant amounts of money from their own programming efforts, e.g. Dan Bricklyn, Peter Norton, Anders Hjeslberg, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux, and many, many others, so I'm vastly underwhelmed by your pathetic inability to produce a single example of your own.
"Please STFU for me."
If you promise not to inflict any more smug, easily refuted shite masquerading as (albeit pathetically weak) arguments on us, then it will be a pleasure to STFU.
"I think those who predicted years ago that computers would create two opposing classes; a cast of technologically savy, highly enabled upper class with wealth and power; and another sub class of non-computer literate, non-empowered workers without authority or means, effectively predicted this sort of event."
Because the computer literati are obviously so much more wealthy and powerful than people who chose to become experts in medicine, law, politics, or business. That's why so many PC tech. support people and programmers are buying up mansions and driving around in Lambourghinis while plastic surgeons, judges, and politicians are forced to work 80 hour weeks for $50K a year unless they also know lost and lots and lots about computers.
"Turbo Pascal might have been great for a DOS-only programmer"
Turbo Pascal versions 1, 2, and 3 were available for CP/M-80 and CP/M-86 as well as DOS. That's why produced .COM files and were therefore limited to a single 64K segment on MS/PC-DOS.
"I would say the first IDE was Smalltalk"
Only if you count research versions and pre-release evaluation versions that only made available to a select set of very large OEMs. The first generally available Smalltalk came out in 1983, the same year as Turbo-Pascal (Smalltalk-80 version 2).
"Interlisp-D"
That had an integrated tool-set which were written in and ran under the Interlisp environment. They were however individually invoked with commands, so by that reckoning, Vi, GCC, and Gnu Make are also an IDE.
"and UCSD Pascal"
The UCSD P-System was a menu-driven OS, not an IDE (it had text-based pull-down menus). The editor, filer, and other applications could be invoked from OS menus, and the editor would auto-start when the compilers (there were several languages, not just Pascal) detected an error, but the latter behaviour was supplied by the OS, not the editor.
If you really want to cite IDEs that significantly pre-date TP, you need look no further than the wide variety of interpreters that appeared during the 1960s and 1970s that provided environments from within which programs were loaded, saved, edited, debugged, and run.
"the OOP model in Object Pascal/Delphi is exactly the same as in C++"
It's the same in _Borland's C++_, which has language extensions (__property, __published, and __closure) to handle the fact that Delphi's object model isn't the same as the standard C++ one.
"C# has really just replaced C++ on the Windows client side, where Java never had a foothold to begin with."
It's actually replaced VB, Delphi, and a bunch of proprietary 4GLs that were previously used for corporate development and specialist low volume third-party stuff -- shrink-wrap software (including Microsoft's offerings) is still written in C++ or one of the now very small number of other compiled languages for Windows.
"I see c# as an improved version of java. The designers of c# learned from their mistakes."
The designers of C# actually learned from Delphi, which had properties in 1995:
type Foo = class
private
FdontTouch : integer;
function GetDontTouch : integer;
procedure SetDontTouch(const NewVal : integer);
public
property DontTouch : integer read GetDontTouch write SetDontTouch;
end;
Hjelsberg wrote the original Turbo Pascal compiler, and was chief architect of the first three Delphi versions before leaving Borland to work at MS, so there's a lot of Delphi in C#.