It's worthwhile to note that carpel-tunnel syndrome (CTS) predominately shows up in women. It used to be commonly held that CTS was a result of endless typing or other repetitive wrist motion, but studies in the past couple years have shown that women simply have a higher disposition to get CTS than men, and there were/are more women in pure typing roles (secretary, etc).
"The bacterial flagellum is driven by a rotary engine made up of protein (Mot complex), located at the flagellum's anchor point on the inner cell membrane. The engine is powered by proton motive force, i.e., by the flow of protons (hydrogen ions) across the bacterial cell membrane due to a concentration gradient set up by the cell's metabolism (in Vibrio species there are two kinds of flagella, lateral and polar, and some are driven by a sodium ion pump rather than a proton pump[17]). The rotor transports protons across the membrane, and is turned in the process. The rotor alone can operate at 6,000 to 17,000 rpm, but with the flagellar filament attached usually only reaches 200 to 1000 rpm."
While still a stretch from a helicopter, the ability to rotate does exist in the biological world, and at speeds that would be required. The design is even similar to current motor designs.
I worked on a project that had similar deployment requirements, and we could that using Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) as the transport mechanism took care of all these issues.
MSMQ itself only provides the transport mechanism, and there's no front end interface to send files- you'd have to code something up. However, it's the best "guaranteed delivery" system that I've seen on the Microsoft platform. Persistent across reboots, security controlled, FIFO queuing, very robust.
You may not be looking to code something up, but if you are, have a look at that.
It depends on the total bandwidth (measured in Hz) and thus the medium itself. The frequency allowed over the line, coupled with the signal encoding and speed (IIRC, roughly speed of light, although slower over copper) should give you the theoretical maximum. I don't have the formulas handy to figure this out.
However, there is a limit to how *fast* electrons can be moved- the speed of light. How many electrons (and their encoding) determine total bandwidth.
It should be noted that the only savings is in the infrastructure, not in ongoing energy costs. Power = current * volts, so whether you're using 240V or 120V, the overall power (measured in watts) is the same, and thus the overall power bill is practically the same. There will be slight differences in efficiencies, but you really won't gain all that much.
The biggest difference is, yes, you could get away with less overall wiring costs to carry the same amount of power.
I lived and worked in the UK for three years and had some exposure (and a number of conversations) with the Brits about this.
One of my coworkers had a common cold at one point. He called up the NHS, and they scheduled him an appointment - 9 months in the future. Naturally, he got over his cold within a couple weeks. I asked him if he had cancelled his appointment. His answer "No way! I've got an appointment, and I'm keeping it. What if something happens between now and then?" I was astounded, but his response was mirrored by others there.
The thing that most bothers me about the NHS is that it's a 9% (or is it 11%?) tax right off the top. I fully understand the reasoning behind the flat rate, but what concerns me is that most higher-income people also had private health insurance so they didn't have to use the NHS hospitals. So they are forced to subsidize a failing system while they're getting better care out of pocket. I think I'll just keep my own health insurance as is, rather than adding 10% to my tax bill.
I recently bought one for my home office after having trouble with inbound port mapping for static IPs couple with outbound GRE packets for VPN - the netgear I was using before just wasn't able to keep up. QoS, both inbound and outbound, and scheduled based on bandwidth or percentage is allowed. DMZ, virtual networks, and other stuff as well are included as well.
Some of us "stupid people" like to work in the real world. I would challenge you to be a developer in my current place of employment, which is an all Microsoft shop. All development is done in C# /.net, and we're dealing with 50+ Tb datasets - not just simple web sites. By any measure, I have a very good job there, with good pay, good management, good projects, and a good work environment. Using Microsoft products just comes with the territory.
Open formats are great, but the Microsoft world pays the bills. Until that reality changes, open source will be left to the niche markets.
Maybe nice for government or accountability work, but that's all I can think of. Medical imaging archiving is a huge issue these days. According to HIPAA regulations, CT, MRI, and most other studies must be kept for 7 years. Digital mamograms for 20 years. In some states, certain scans must be kept until the patient's death. With the advent of 64, 128, and 256 slice CT's, studies are becoming exponentially larger and thus the data is growing to match.
I'm currently working on a project to store my company's medical studies for the past 8 years, and the SAN we've spec'd out is 50Tb. We have mostly older equipment - in the next 7 years, that requirement could easily quadruple.
I'm not sure why an "8 foot man" is even a consideration here... A 20ft man could probably get over a 12.5' wall, too, but I don't see too many of them walking around, either.
The tiger can do it from 35 feet away, according to the article, and it didnt' require getting just it's front paws up to the top and pulling itself up. Sure, it didn't fly over the top, but it didn't jump then scramble up, either.
To be able to use the top of the wall as a landing point, the rear feet would be item in question.
My point still stands - the equations don't show anything. It takes energy to push that tiger up in the air, and the tiger has to supply that energy effectively while going 27mph. Basic physics isn't going to be enough here. If it did, then an elephant (with a max speed of 25mph) or a giraffe (max 32mph) would be able to clear the same fence. A quarter horse (max 47.5mph) would be able to jump clear out of the zoo....
The numbers don't tell the entire story. Just because something can go 27mph doesn't mean it can necessarily project itself over the fence at a given projectory. The worlds fastest humans can go 27mph, but I'll put money against their ability to jump over a 12.5' fence; the world high jump record is 8'. Tigers and people are built differently for sure, but I'm not sure how the math applied in this document applies to animals when so many other factors are at play.
I'm in the same boat (consultant for a company that generates approximately 1million studies per year). We had developed our own PACS system from the ground up, although that was scrapped by the CEO after two years, and now we're going with an off-the-shelf system, and we're currently scoping out our internal archive solution. In either case, we've got a pretty good idea of how much storage we need.
A "typical" MR / CT scan is far less than 1 Gb of data. On some scans of our own data of 30,000 studies, I show an average of 52Mb per study. The catch here is that, due to the sheer number of machines (>300), we have a lot of older 1 and 2-slice CT's. If you're dealing with the latest and greatest 40 or 64-slice CT's, then you can approach 1Gb per study. We expect to eat up around 20-30Tb per year (with the current rate of ~2000 studies per day). A CT image is always 512x512 (unless you're on some really old equipment), and either 8 or 16 bit. The DICOM header is almost negligible compared to the image data. It takes a LOT of images to reach a 1Gb CT study, and the only way you'll see that is with the 64+ slice CT's.
My only point is to verify your numbers. IME, people don't always understand that medical imaging data can be relatively small.
The terminology "made redundant" doesn't exists in the US (and sounds a bit silly to us)- it's only being "fired" or "laid off". It doesn't have the same connotation that it does in the UK. I lived in the UK for a couple years, and took a while for me to get used to this...
I don't have any links or otherwise to show as proof, but I worked on something related to this almost 8 years ago. I was doing my undergrad senior project at Georgia Tech and was following up on previous research done in the same program.
We were working with a quadraplegic who had implants that also measured brainwave activity and crudely mapped them to mouse movements - one "thought" was for X-axis, and another was for Y-axis. I say "crude" because, IIRC, the cursor could only go one way, and when it got to the edge of the window, it just kept wrapping around.
My particular project was helping enable him to speak, using icons that he could choose to string together enough words and phrases to talk.
I would have hoped that it would have progressed from that point in 8 years...
I'm a telecommuter- I work 80-90% of my time at home; I go into the office about once every week or two. My commute (when I do go in) is 36 miles each way, and in Atlanta traffic, takes about 1.5-2hrs each way. I'm lead developer on a small (4 person) team for a private medium-sized ($300m/yr and ~2000 employees) company. I'm a contractor, but have been there for a little more than three years now, so I'm a full employee by almost any definition.
Pros:
1) I'm a lot more productive at home. Everybody has been through that - they can just get more done.
2) I'm a developer, so I really don't need to interact much beyond my own team, and through daily phone conferences, personal phone calls, IM, and email, we stay connected.
3) Traffic makes my blood boil, and the idea of losing 4hrs/day sitting in traffic just makes it sound that much worse.
4) I am less productive before noon and more productive late at night. I try to stick to a 9-10 through 5-6 schedule, but if I get an idea late at night, I can crank out some code without having to be in my office.
5) I have my own office at home. It has dedicated computers for work, a desk, and all the "comforts" of work, plus a radio and a decent view. When I'm done for the day, I can shut the door and leave it behind. I have a separate work phone number, and after a certain time, I don't answer it.
6) Fuel savings - $3/g @ 25mpg * 72miles * 5days => $43/week on gas. Not horrible, but that's assuming I'm not sitting in traffic. $43/week ~= $2100/yr. This easily makes up for my extra expenses I bring on myself from working at home.
7) I can visit out-of-town friends and family and work from there as if I'm still in the office. This takes a LOT more discipline, though, and I only do it rarely.
8) My business wardrobe is hardly anything. Most of my days are spent in shorts and a t-shirt.
9) I can listen to whatever damn station I want and turn up the radio as loud as I want (although always just barely on).:)
Cons:
1) I can "get stuck" at home for days or even a week at a time, with no real reason to leave the house. I have to look for reasons to get out. You can start to miss the normal, everyday interactions with other people. This is probably the biggest disadvantage to me.
2) Motivation is sometimes a factor, but it is in the office sometimes as well. Granted, I have the freedom (as an hourly contractor) to take off half an afternoon and not bill for it, and working at home makes this easier.
3) Working at home does take a lot of motivation and self-discipline. I find that I don't have too much trouble, esp. if I set goals for the day/week/month and stick to them. This should be true in any job situation, though.
I've telecommuted for other companies in the past ~6 years (small startups, side gigs, and worked for a London-based company for 18 months). All the above points all still hold true. Yes, you may miss things like working with the team, the team interaction, etc, but I find that we all do just fine; this is partly to do with the fact that I've always worked on small teams of very competenent people.
To address the points in the above poster:
1) I agree- disipline differs for everyone. Some people can work remotely effectively; others cannot.
2) I agree with being able to talk to people, but using IM and email can work wonders as long as you're verbose. Plus, you have a papertrail for everything.
3) Physically seeing the team is not a prerequisite for team spirit. The guys on my team all feel that we're part of the team and work as a team. And when the product fails or succeeds, we feel it as a team.
4) I have an office at home; I shut the door when I leave. If you have any 40+ hr/week job + commute, it's going to eat up your weekly life anyway. I find I get more personal time when working at home.
Check out Adaptec's Snap Servers. They used to be made by Quantum until Adaptec took them over. I have an older one I got off of ebay, added 4x 120Gb in a RAID5, and can get to the same shares via SMB, NFS, and allows from a host of other protocols. User-friendly, plug and play, and fast.
I never said that I had any of the answers, only that I am willing to entertain the possibilities. Likewise, any decent scientist should be willing to accept that evolution can be proven wrong; if it couldn't, then it wouldn't be a theory. I'm not saying that either is correct or incorrect - only that a theory should be stated as such. (Although everybody seems to be ready to jump on the opportunity to tell me how much I'm wrong.)
Scientists currently explain the moment of the Big Bang as a gravitational singularity in which current physics cannot model (by definition). Under your argument, because the Big Bang must have originated from somewhere/something that cannot be explained, is must (eventually) also equate to creationism. Obviously, this is not what scientists are implying; only that we don't have the mathematical models to understand it. Yet this mathematical unknown is a perfectly valid and accepted proposition in the scientific world.
Does the fact that nobody can fully explain ID also mean that it is creationism? No. It means that the process cannot be fully explained. In constrast, creationism makes the assumption that there must be a supreme being, and thus anything can happen.
So if I went through and replaced all the "evolution" words in this thread to "flat earth" or whatever, then it'd automatically change the meaning?
Creationists can believe whatever they want to believe. For a more in depth and non-Christian view of ID, have a read through "Darwin's Black Box". And before someone points out that science has superceded that book, note that the concept of ID still stands.
ID only says that the world was created/seeded/planted in some way by an intelligent source outside of our current knowledge. It could be aliens that sent out a probe for a last-chance survival or another human race that existed far before we know - I have no idea. I only support the fact that there may be a valid alternative.
I get so frustrated when creationists simply assume that something is not true, especially when the facts are only a few clicks away (google).
And I get so frustrated with people that lump ID in with creationism and bible thumpers, and with people that are called "stupid" or "blind" because they question a theory. Also- the "facts" in your link are still speculation on the scientists' parts.
I never "assumed" that something was not true - I personally question evolution because I have not seen (or read or googled or otherwise) anything that provides more than circumstantial evidence, at least none that convince me 100%. You can explain the theory of electricity and turn on a light or 1000 other things, give mathematical evidence, and sure, there's little room for argument. But I personally can't accept the same with evolution - at least not with the evidence that has been presented- there is simply too much room for question. If science produces undisputable proof to support evolution, then yes, it would be fact.
I'd like to point out also that survival of the fittest could probably be considered "fact" - by definition, only those adapted to the environment will survive. I question the gene mutation and adaptation on a large scale.
Sigh... My original point, about the Theory of Evolution (not to be confused with lower case evolution, as was in a previous post) being a theory and not fact, seems to be completely lost. I think it's interesting that the same people that argue that ID is not a scientific theory because it cannot stand up to the scientific process (which is 100% true) also argue that Evolution is an accepted fact, and is somehow outside the realm of scientific theory itself and cannot be disproven.
I don't dispute the fact that they are extremely well founded theories.
Chemistry and physics are also very well founded theories. The difference between these theories and evolution is that we have little way of testing evolution, and only circumstantial evidence. With the other theories, we can do test after test after test to show the process from beginning to end. We can setup experiments to show "given x and y, we get z". Thus, as I said, they are extremely well founded and impossible to dispute by any reasonable argument.
But evolution doesn't work the same way - show me one repeatable experiment where an animal actually independantly mutates to a genetic advantage. I understand that evolution supposedly takes thousands if not millions of years for this to happen, and so this experiment may not be possible. However, without repeatable experiments (instead of just circumstantial evidence), we can only make educated guesses as to what happened (whether that result is ID, evolution, FSM, or whatever).
I will also submit that ID is not a valid scientific theory (by definition!), and thus cannot be called such. I'm just arguing that evolution is a theory, and shouldn't be presented as fact. I would argue the same with chemistry, physics, etc, but no one is challenging them.:)
"You never hear real scientists saying "Evolution is fact!" because it isn't."
Even as a supporter of ID as an alternative idea, I understand 100% that it is not a theory- you are 100% correct.
However, I was floored when I was listening to Richard Dawkins (a leader on evolution theory) on an NPR segment, who said several times in the interview - "No one can dispute this - evolution is FACT!" (paraphrased, although emphasis is not mind).
I'm all for hearing all valid sides, but I certainly also want it to be said that evolution is simply a Theory - it may be strongly supported, but still a theory, and should be presented as one.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worthwhile to note that carpel-tunnel syndrome (CTS) predominately shows up in women. It used to be commonly held that CTS was a result of endless typing or other repetitive wrist motion, but studies in the past couple years have shown that women simply have a higher disposition to get CTS than men, and there were/are more women in pure typing roles (secretary, etc).
References:
http://www.rsi-relief.com/2008/05/carpal-tunnel-syndrome-and-women/
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS102819+08-Apr-2009+BW20090408
Take a look at the wikipedia article on flagellum, used by bacteria and sperm, among others, for locomotion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum
"The bacterial flagellum is driven by a rotary engine made up of protein (Mot complex), located at the flagellum's anchor point on the inner cell membrane. The engine is powered by proton motive force, i.e., by the flow of protons (hydrogen ions) across the bacterial cell membrane due to a concentration gradient set up by the cell's metabolism (in Vibrio species there are two kinds of flagella, lateral and polar, and some are driven by a sodium ion pump rather than a proton pump[17]). The rotor transports protons across the membrane, and is turned in the process. The rotor alone can operate at 6,000 to 17,000 rpm, but with the flagellar filament attached usually only reaches 200 to 1000 rpm."
While still a stretch from a helicopter, the ability to rotate does exist in the biological world, and at speeds that would be required. The design is even similar to current motor designs.
I worked on a project that had similar deployment requirements, and we could that using Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) as the transport mechanism took care of all these issues.
MSMQ itself only provides the transport mechanism, and there's no front end interface to send files- you'd have to code something up. However, it's the best "guaranteed delivery" system that I've seen on the Microsoft platform. Persistent across reboots, security controlled, FIFO queuing, very robust.
You may not be looking to code something up, but if you are, have a look at that.
It depends on the total bandwidth (measured in Hz) and thus the medium itself. The frequency allowed over the line, coupled with the signal encoding and speed (IIRC, roughly speed of light, although slower over copper) should give you the theoretical maximum. I don't have the formulas handy to figure this out.
However, there is a limit to how *fast* electrons can be moved- the speed of light. How many electrons (and their encoding) determine total bandwidth.
"Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds"
Actually, their weight in space is pretty close to 0. Their mass is still relevant, and even more relevant is their velocity.
It should be noted that the only savings is in the infrastructure, not in ongoing energy costs. Power = current * volts, so whether you're using 240V or 120V, the overall power (measured in watts) is the same, and thus the overall power bill is practically the same. There will be slight differences in efficiencies, but you really won't gain all that much.
The biggest difference is, yes, you could get away with less overall wiring costs to carry the same amount of power.
I lived and worked in the UK for three years and had some exposure (and a number of conversations) with the Brits about this.
One of my coworkers had a common cold at one point. He called up the NHS, and they scheduled him an appointment - 9 months in the future. Naturally, he got over his cold within a couple weeks. I asked him if he had cancelled his appointment. His answer "No way! I've got an appointment, and I'm keeping it. What if something happens between now and then?" I was astounded, but his response was mirrored by others there.
The thing that most bothers me about the NHS is that it's a 9% (or is it 11%?) tax right off the top. I fully understand the reasoning behind the flat rate, but what concerns me is that most higher-income people also had private health insurance so they didn't have to use the NHS hospitals. So they are forced to subsidize a failing system while they're getting better care out of pocket. I think I'll just keep my own health insurance as is, rather than adding 10% to my tax bill.
Oh - that part is easy - we can just combine them and store it as water.
I recently bought one for my home office after having trouble with inbound port mapping for static IPs couple with outbound GRE packets for VPN - the netgear I was using before just wasn't able to keep up. QoS, both inbound and outbound, and scheduled based on bandwidth or percentage is allowed. DMZ, virtual networks, and other stuff as well are included as well.
Open formats are great, but the Microsoft world pays the bills. Until that reality changes, open source will be left to the niche markets.
I'm not sure why an "8 foot man" is even a consideration here... A 20ft man could probably get over a 12.5' wall, too, but I don't see too many of them walking around, either. The tiger can do it from 35 feet away, according to the article, and it didnt' require getting just it's front paws up to the top and pulling itself up. Sure, it didn't fly over the top, but it didn't jump then scramble up, either. To be able to use the top of the wall as a landing point, the rear feet would be item in question. My point still stands - the equations don't show anything. It takes energy to push that tiger up in the air, and the tiger has to supply that energy effectively while going 27mph. Basic physics isn't going to be enough here. If it did, then an elephant (with a max speed of 25mph) or a giraffe (max 32mph) would be able to clear the same fence. A quarter horse (max 47.5mph) would be able to jump clear out of the zoo....
The numbers don't tell the entire story. Just because something can go 27mph doesn't mean it can necessarily project itself over the fence at a given projectory. The worlds fastest humans can go 27mph, but I'll put money against their ability to jump over a 12.5' fence; the world high jump record is 8'. Tigers and people are built differently for sure, but I'm not sure how the math applied in this document applies to animals when so many other factors are at play.
I'm in the same boat (consultant for a company that generates approximately 1million studies per year). We had developed our own PACS system from the ground up, although that was scrapped by the CEO after two years, and now we're going with an off-the-shelf system, and we're currently scoping out our internal archive solution. In either case, we've got a pretty good idea of how much storage we need.
A "typical" MR / CT scan is far less than 1 Gb of data. On some scans of our own data of 30,000 studies, I show an average of 52Mb per study. The catch here is that, due to the sheer number of machines (>300), we have a lot of older 1 and 2-slice CT's. If you're dealing with the latest and greatest 40 or 64-slice CT's, then you can approach 1Gb per study. We expect to eat up around 20-30Tb per year (with the current rate of ~2000 studies per day). A CT image is always 512x512 (unless you're on some really old equipment), and either 8 or 16 bit. The DICOM header is almost negligible compared to the image data. It takes a LOT of images to reach a 1Gb CT study, and the only way you'll see that is with the 64+ slice CT's.
My only point is to verify your numbers. IME, people don't always understand that medical imaging data can be relatively small.
The terminology "made redundant" doesn't exists in the US (and sounds a bit silly to us)- it's only being "fired" or "laid off". It doesn't have the same connotation that it does in the UK. I lived in the UK for a couple years, and took a while for me to get used to this...
I don't have any links or otherwise to show as proof, but I worked on something related to this almost 8 years ago. I was doing my undergrad senior project at Georgia Tech and was following up on previous research done in the same program.
We were working with a quadraplegic who had implants that also measured brainwave activity and crudely mapped them to mouse movements - one "thought" was for X-axis, and another was for Y-axis. I say "crude" because, IIRC, the cursor could only go one way, and when it got to the edge of the window, it just kept wrapping around.
My particular project was helping enable him to speak, using icons that he could choose to string together enough words and phrases to talk.
I would have hoped that it would have progressed from that point in 8 years...
I'm a telecommuter- I work 80-90% of my time at home; I go into the office about once every week or two. My commute (when I do go in) is 36 miles each way, and in Atlanta traffic, takes about 1.5-2hrs each way. I'm lead developer on a small (4 person) team for a private medium-sized ($300m/yr and ~2000 employees) company. I'm a contractor, but have been there for a little more than three years now, so I'm a full employee by almost any definition.
:)
Pros:
1) I'm a lot more productive at home. Everybody has been through that - they can just get more done.
2) I'm a developer, so I really don't need to interact much beyond my own team, and through daily phone conferences, personal phone calls, IM, and email, we stay connected.
3) Traffic makes my blood boil, and the idea of losing 4hrs/day sitting in traffic just makes it sound that much worse.
4) I am less productive before noon and more productive late at night. I try to stick to a 9-10 through 5-6 schedule, but if I get an idea late at night, I can crank out some code without having to be in my office.
5) I have my own office at home. It has dedicated computers for work, a desk, and all the "comforts" of work, plus a radio and a decent view. When I'm done for the day, I can shut the door and leave it behind. I have a separate work phone number, and after a certain time, I don't answer it.
6) Fuel savings - $3/g @ 25mpg * 72miles * 5days => $43/week on gas. Not horrible, but that's assuming I'm not sitting in traffic. $43/week ~= $2100/yr. This easily makes up for my extra expenses I bring on myself from working at home.
7) I can visit out-of-town friends and family and work from there as if I'm still in the office. This takes a LOT more discipline, though, and I only do it rarely.
8) My business wardrobe is hardly anything. Most of my days are spent in shorts and a t-shirt.
9) I can listen to whatever damn station I want and turn up the radio as loud as I want (although always just barely on).
Cons:
1) I can "get stuck" at home for days or even a week at a time, with no real reason to leave the house. I have to look for reasons to get out. You can start to miss the normal, everyday interactions with other people. This is probably the biggest disadvantage to me.
2) Motivation is sometimes a factor, but it is in the office sometimes as well. Granted, I have the freedom (as an hourly contractor) to take off half an afternoon and not bill for it, and working at home makes this easier.
3) Working at home does take a lot of motivation and self-discipline. I find that I don't have too much trouble, esp. if I set goals for the day/week/month and stick to them. This should be true in any job situation, though.
I've telecommuted for other companies in the past ~6 years (small startups, side gigs, and worked for a London-based company for 18 months). All the above points all still hold true. Yes, you may miss things like working with the team, the team interaction, etc, but I find that we all do just fine; this is partly to do with the fact that I've always worked on small teams of very competenent people.
To address the points in the above poster:
1) I agree- disipline differs for everyone. Some people can work remotely effectively; others cannot.
2) I agree with being able to talk to people, but using IM and email can work wonders as long as you're verbose. Plus, you have a papertrail for everything.
3) Physically seeing the team is not a prerequisite for team spirit. The guys on my team all feel that we're part of the team and work as a team. And when the product fails or succeeds, we feel it as a team.
4) I have an office at home; I shut the door when I leave. If you have any 40+ hr/week job + commute, it's going to eat up your weekly life anyway. I find I get more personal time when working at home.
Check out Adaptec's Snap Servers. They used to be made by Quantum until Adaptec took them over. I have an older one I got off of ebay, added 4x 120Gb in a RAID5, and can get to the same shares via SMB, NFS, and allows from a host of other protocols. User-friendly, plug and play, and fast.
Scientists currently explain the moment of the Big Bang as a gravitational singularity in which current physics cannot model (by definition). Under your argument, because the Big Bang must have originated from somewhere/something that cannot be explained, is must (eventually) also equate to creationism. Obviously, this is not what scientists are implying; only that we don't have the mathematical models to understand it. Yet this mathematical unknown is a perfectly valid and accepted proposition in the scientific world.
Does the fact that nobody can fully explain ID also mean that it is creationism? No. It means that the process cannot be fully explained. In constrast, creationism makes the assumption that there must be a supreme being, and thus anything can happen.
Creationists can believe whatever they want to believe. For a more in depth and non-Christian view of ID, have a read through "Darwin's Black Box". And before someone points out that science has superceded that book, note that the concept of ID still stands.
ID only says that the world was created/seeded/planted in some way by an intelligent source outside of our current knowledge. It could be aliens that sent out a probe for a last-chance survival or another human race that existed far before we know - I have no idea. I only support the fact that there may be a valid alternative.
And I get so frustrated with people that lump ID in with creationism and bible thumpers, and with people that are called "stupid" or "blind" because they question a theory. Also- the "facts" in your link are still speculation on the scientists' parts.
I never "assumed" that something was not true - I personally question evolution because I have not seen (or read or googled or otherwise) anything that provides more than circumstantial evidence, at least none that convince me 100%. You can explain the theory of electricity and turn on a light or 1000 other things, give mathematical evidence, and sure, there's little room for argument. But I personally can't accept the same with evolution - at least not with the evidence that has been presented- there is simply too much room for question. If science produces undisputable proof to support evolution, then yes, it would be fact.
I'd like to point out also that survival of the fittest could probably be considered "fact" - by definition, only those adapted to the environment will survive. I question the gene mutation and adaptation on a large scale.
Sigh... My original point, about the Theory of Evolution (not to be confused with lower case evolution, as was in a previous post) being a theory and not fact, seems to be completely lost. I think it's interesting that the same people that argue that ID is not a scientific theory because it cannot stand up to the scientific process (which is 100% true) also argue that Evolution is an accepted fact, and is somehow outside the realm of scientific theory itself and cannot be disproven.
I don't dispute the fact that they are extremely well founded theories. :)
Chemistry and physics are also very well founded theories. The difference between these theories and evolution is that we have little way of testing evolution, and only circumstantial evidence. With the other theories, we can do test after test after test to show the process from beginning to end. We can setup experiments to show "given x and y, we get z". Thus, as I said, they are extremely well founded and impossible to dispute by any reasonable argument.
But evolution doesn't work the same way - show me one repeatable experiment where an animal actually independantly mutates to a genetic advantage. I understand that evolution supposedly takes thousands if not millions of years for this to happen, and so this experiment may not be possible. However, without repeatable experiments (instead of just circumstantial evidence), we can only make educated guesses as to what happened (whether that result is ID, evolution, FSM, or whatever).
I will also submit that ID is not a valid scientific theory (by definition!), and thus cannot be called such. I'm just arguing that evolution is a theory, and shouldn't be presented as fact. I would argue the same with chemistry, physics, etc, but no one is challenging them.
"You never hear real scientists saying "Evolution is fact!" because it isn't." Even as a supporter of ID as an alternative idea, I understand 100% that it is not a theory- you are 100% correct. However, I was floored when I was listening to Richard Dawkins (a leader on evolution theory) on an NPR segment, who said several times in the interview - "No one can dispute this - evolution is FACT!" (paraphrased, although emphasis is not mind). I'm all for hearing all valid sides, but I certainly also want it to be said that evolution is simply a Theory - it may be strongly supported, but still a theory, and should be presented as one.