The Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 distinct phases. So do most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science.
What 6 phases are those? Cos i'm pretty sure most biologists would take issue with the claim that plants were created before the sun, and most cosmologists would not agree with the idea that the earth was created after space but before anything else like the stars.
You really need to read more than just creationist propaganda in order to have an accurate understanding of what science does and doesn't say. As it stands your remarks are the equivalent of saying "science say the sun revolves around the earth". That's how totally out of whack your comments are.
For you to say evolution hasn't kept current and has been discredited is just so totally divorced from reality it's not funny. For you're own sake open your eyes. Read something about evolution that isn't a piece of creationist propaganda. You are being lied to by people with an agenda. All these things that anti-evolutionists accuse science of, being blinkered zealots and using intellectual dishonesty to support an agenda, is just a total lie, and a total hypocrisy.
I suggest you start by looking at http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html
If after seeing both sides of the story you still aren't convinced, fair enough, but don't do yourself the disservice of relying one side of the story.
You mean no conclusive proof, rather than no evidence. Miller's experiment proved nothing of the sort. You are equivocating proof with evidence in order to mislead people.
100% conclusive proof is an impossible target for anything. There is simply a sliding scale of certitude that every scientific claims falls upon. You are using this technicality to give the impression that anything that is not 100% certain must be false.
From the AI stuff I read, I got the impression that in order for the entire evolutionary process to occur at all, you need a pre-existing set of heuristics (the "genetic algorithm") that define what "evolutionary fitness" means for a given species.
Hence, a chicken-and-egg problem. Once you've got the GA, the whole process can go along just fine, working according to the rules of the GA. However, the burning question is, how did the GA itself get there? I've never heard of any scenario where a GA itself can evolve via an atheistic process, but if anyone knows of one, please share.
In the context of natural evolution, the heuristic is physical survival. As opposed to a simulation, where the heuristic is whatever characteristic the programmer is trying to induce.
I'm not sure I entirely understand the point you are making but if you are saying how can a computer simulation evolve naturally, all I can say is GAs are designed by humans. Humans evolved naturally. So such simulations are ultimately the product of natural processes.
If on the other hand you are likening biological evolution to a GA, and then saying since GAs are designed, so must biological evolution be, then you are making a rather confused point. GAs were originally inspired by the natural process of biological evolution. We stole the idea from nature. Mutation with natural selection and heredity are self evidently intrinsic to the logic of our physical universe. Your question implies circularity but only by implying its own answer.
Thus, when I think about it at all, at least at the moment I'm inclined towards a hybrid theory of how we got here, which actually includes elements of both creationism and evolutionary thinking. My own perspective is that yes, evolution happens. We see the end products of it all the time, and yes, to a degree the process has been successfully simulated (with some interesting results) in the AI field.
However, where God steps into the picture for me in this context is as the provider of the initial GA, after which organisms can themselves take over the process from there. I'm not claiming (at least in this context) to have any definite idea of what God actually is or was, either...but I do think that there are at least a couple of areas, (such as the GA question) which atheistic evolutionary theory alone can't really account for.
You're talking about aspects of the universe outside of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory describes how biological organisms change over generations. The gap you are filling with god is the creation of the physical laws of the universe. This has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. It's an important distinction to make, as a lot of anti-evolution crackpots use the tactic of lumping the stupendously well established theory of evolution in with a bunch of questions that have yet to be satisfactorily answered, such as abiogenesis and the source of the universe, in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the theory of evolution in a kind of guilt-by-association.
Your position regarding the creation of the universe is covered here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument
The other thing I'd like to have an atheist tell me is how they believe water got here initially, and more specifically, why the water cycle starts on some planets and not on others. From what I was reading a while back, water actually initially gets produced in a closed-circuit chemical reaction, with the three elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Once it gets started, the loop can keep going as long as those three elements are all present; my question is, how did those three elements become present here on Earth, especially when oxygen in particular seems to be rare almost to the point of being entirely unique in the universe, from what I've seen?
All I can say about that is that you really need to do some reading.
Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE are distributions not operating systems.
Linux is an operating system kernel. The kernel combined with some low level utilities, the majority of which if not all are GNU originated, comprises the operating system. So Linux is part of the operating system.
Anything else on top is not part of the operating system. Gnome / KDE / Xfce are desktop environments. Because people are used to Windows, they often mistakenly think GUI = OS.
Ubuntu et al. are even more than an OS/DE combo because they include a massive library of applications too. They are distributions.
So if you want to be precise about terminology the OS is GNU/Linux. Just "Linux" is easier to say, and since the Linux kernel is generally only used in conjunction with the GNU OS components just saying Linux is for the most part unambiguous.
in my experience during the 80's and early to mid nineties (in britain at least) everyone used the verb "program". The verb to "code" was a kind of web-era americanism that has since taken over, at least from my perspective. A lot of nerds my age that I encounter still say program.
it will make a difference to the writeable data media market, where it seems a no-brainer that BluRay will win. It's bigger; Game over. But that doesn't impact the home video market where other factors will matter, so that question is more complex. I think its very difficult to predict what will happen there.
i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it? Weren't the US government going to restrict exports on them as they were considered munitions or something daft like that. Same thing for old Mac G5 as i recall. Might be a stupid urban myth though.
The irony and hypocrisy of your complaints is absolutely off the chart. Let me spell everything out to you step by step so you don't embarrass yourself further.
You make this claim: It's because all Linux distributors are pig-headed and stupid and believe that once you see Linux for the very first time you'll never ever ever be interested in Windows again. and this claim: Childishness is the root cause.
I point out you are making a generalisation and a childish one at that. It's rather infantile to accuse all linux distrubutors of being pig-headed and stupid. Do you actually believe that is the case? Every single one of them? Or even the vast majority? Only a childish mind would think in such absurd terms. Hence the irony of your second claim.
You then reply, obviously missing the point of my response, and i can only imagine, think the generalisation i am referring to is the technical point about open source migration tools being one way only. For some bizarre reason your response to this is a staggeringly babyish remark about "my gods the linux distributors" then some nonsensical strawman about a linux distribution that modifies your windows installation.
Because you had misunderstood what i meant by generalisation, my next remark, whilst being extremely sarcastic, as you are shrill little ass who needs putting in his place, was an attempt to clarify exactly what my original comments meant, as the subtlety was obviously too much for you to fathom. Sadly, it seems I was still too subtle.
Now i'll address your previous post sentence by sentence so you having no reason to think i am evading any of your points:
Do you suffer from Alzheimer's or have some kind of brain damage which precludes you from reading what I just wrote. The fact you failed to address those assertions in the original message doesn't excuse you from making a point.
Lots of irony here. You hadn't paid any attention to what I wrote in the second post, hence your confusion. Your assertions regarding availability of migration tools weren't what I was addressing.
Why is it childish to expect Linux distributors to be a little more friendly to people making the transition from Windows to Linux.
Strawman. I never said it was childish to expect that. I was referring to your asinine generalisation that the reason such migration tools are scarce or non existent is because "all linux distributors are stupid and pig-headed", which is of course totally unjustified unless you personally know all linux distributors, (i doubt you know any). There could be any other number of pragmatic of technical reasons why such tools don't exist. To call every single linux distributors pigheaded, stupid and childish just because they don't provide something you want is self evidently very childish. The irony of this attitude must be apparent, even to you.
Microsoft is obviously going to behave in that fashion as they have a financial motivation to lock people into their operating system.What is the excuse of Linux developers like Ubuntu who give away their product for free. Why would they want to lock your settings into your Linux partition instead of making them available. I can't think of a legitimate reason so I put it down to childishness.
That's called the argument from ignorance, and an appeal to it almost always exposes your own attitude. The fact that all you could think of as an explanation is that they are petty and childish probably says more about you than it does about the Ubuntu distributors. What you are admitting to here is total ignorance of the motivation of linux distributors, and a completely unjustified and arbitrary blanket generalisation that you pulled out of your ass. Not very grown up is it?
I called, and continue to call on you to show me some evidence to the contrary. I wasn't planning to enter into a debate about my childishness, but since you seem intent on "proving it" fine. Here's a quotable quote f
i just read the article and it seems project indiana is just solaris adopting some linux-like features, such as a 6 monthly community version on top of the 3 yearly enterprise release (think red hat) plus a new package management system, as the solaris one is apparently rather clunky.
It has nothing to do with blending it with linux in any way. It seems they are trying to make it appeal to the linux community in order to reap the benefits of community feedback, without actually just giving in and GPL'ing solaris.
The thing you have to realise about the UK is that electronics over here just take the dollar price and put a pound sign in front of it. That's right. We pay double for everything. Fuck that shit indeed.
So it would be more like $2000 on your side of the pond.
And really, a vaccine, or a cure, for AIDS would be a short-lived media bonus; when was the last time you heard anything about whatever companies created various vaccines (apart from allegations of causing things like autism, or for needlessly encouraging tax-financed and uncessary vaccinations)?
When was the last time a disease that has as high a profile as AIDS had a vaccine created for it? Not in living memory. Do you really think that the company that finds the cure for the plague of the 21st century would only receive "short-lived media bonus"?
What if the company that finds the cure for AIDS doesnt have any current AIDS treaments on the market? What incentive would they have to "bury" it then? On the other hand, if you were a company that was selling AIDS treatments, you'd make damn sure to patent any cures you found and start marketing them yourself. If you didnt patent it, a competitor who has no interest in burying it, could find the cure and put you out of the AIDS treatment business. If you do patent, but then refuse to market it, third world countries who need the medicine badly will simply read your patent and produce generic knockoffs. Also, any big company that did discover and start churning out a cure for AIDS, would put every single one of their competitors out of the AIDS treatment business, and pick up all their customers. Think microsoft. A monopoly is a hell of an incentive for a big company.
This idea that in would be in their interests to bury a cure for AIDS simply doesnt make sense in any scenario.
I'm in no way trying to defend the patent system or trying to argue that big companies act in anything but their own self interest. I'm simply saying that they have no reason to bury an AIDS cure. It is a ridiculous idea.
The trouble with the line of reasoning (regarding supression of an AIDS vaccine) is the assumption there is one amorphous "big pharma". "big pharma" consists of hundreds of different companies. If one of them found a cure for AIDS they would be insane not to release it. Because if the technology and science had got to that stage, sooner or later one of their competitors is going to replicate the feat one way or another. The PR cachet for being the company that cures AIDS would be utterly priceless.
This does not require the rationale that large pharmaceutical companies have a conscience. It would still apply even if the company in question was run by a total sociopath.
i'm sure it's impossible to get an accurate figure, and of course MS will over estimate, but unless they are skewing the statistics by a factor of more than four, which would be breathtakingly mendacious, vista is still outselling XP which isnt the impression given by the article summary.
I showed up at CERN in 2002 when i happened to be on holiday in geneva. They didnt have a tour then, damn those lazy scientists, so i had to make do with the visitors centre, but it was quite interesting, and they had bits of an old accelerator on display in a courtyard outside.
if you read the article vista is outselling XP by a factor of 4:1. It's just that they expected it to be a slightly higher factor. The article summary is rather misleading. Who would've expected that on slashdot.... i'm so disillusioned...
The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide.
So you don't like the idea of producing hydrogen for energy transportation because the process doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics and create a perpetual motion machine? well... you are picky...
Yeah i wish i'd never said GPL3 fork as it was unnecessary and incorrect. A GPL2 fork would have exactly the same effect. The GPL3 was not part of my argument.
it seems that apple bought CUPS and changed the licence so that people could create proprietary derivatives on MacOS legally.
Apple has not put themselves into a position of power over the FLOSS community with this move, as a GPL3 fork could be started at the drop of a hat, from whatever the last compatible release was.
But apple wouldn't much care to see that happen as they would get no code contributed back to their CUPS, so the way I see it, either Apple will take their little concession and tread very carefully and CUPS will carry an as is, or Apple will start throwing their weight around a fork will be made, leaving apple to maintain their own code. A third option is that Apple will tread gently, but RMS will kick up a stink about the whole thing in principle (think java trap) and possibly a fork starts.
Slashdot Mirror
The Bible says the earth is a circle, i.e. flat. NASA says the earth is an oblate spheroid that is very very slightly fatter at the bottom. http://bible.cc/isaiah/40-22.htm http://regentsprep.org/Regents/earthsci/units/intr oduction/oblate.cfm
The Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 distinct phases. So do most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science.
What 6 phases are those? Cos i'm pretty sure most biologists would take issue with the claim that plants were created before the sun, and most cosmologists would not agree with the idea that the earth was created after space but before anything else like the stars.
You really need to read more than just creationist propaganda in order to have an accurate understanding of what science does and doesn't say. As it stands your remarks are the equivalent of saying "science say the sun revolves around the earth". That's how totally out of whack your comments are.
For you to say evolution hasn't kept current and has been discredited is just so totally divorced from reality it's not funny. For you're own sake open your eyes. Read something about evolution that isn't a piece of creationist propaganda. You are being lied to by people with an agenda. All these things that anti-evolutionists accuse science of, being blinkered zealots and using intellectual dishonesty to support an agenda, is just a total lie, and a total hypocrisy. I suggest you start by looking at http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html
If after seeing both sides of the story you still aren't convinced, fair enough, but don't do yourself the disservice of relying one side of the story.
100% conclusive proof is an impossible target for anything. There is simply a sliding scale of certitude that every scientific claims falls upon. You are using this technicality to give the impression that anything that is not 100% certain must be false.
Hence, a chicken-and-egg problem. Once you've got the GA, the whole process can go along just fine, working according to the rules of the GA. However, the burning question is, how did the GA itself get there? I've never heard of any scenario where a GA itself can evolve via an atheistic process, but if anyone knows of one, please share.
In the context of natural evolution, the heuristic is physical survival. As opposed to a simulation, where the heuristic is whatever characteristic the programmer is trying to induce.
I'm not sure I entirely understand the point you are making but if you are saying how can a computer simulation evolve naturally, all I can say is GAs are designed by humans. Humans evolved naturally. So such simulations are ultimately the product of natural processes.
If on the other hand you are likening biological evolution to a GA, and then saying since GAs are designed, so must biological evolution be, then you are making a rather confused point. GAs were originally inspired by the natural process of biological evolution. We stole the idea from nature. Mutation with natural selection and heredity are self evidently intrinsic to the logic of our physical universe. Your question implies circularity but only by implying its own answer.
Thus, when I think about it at all, at least at the moment I'm inclined towards a hybrid theory of how we got here, which actually includes elements of both creationism and evolutionary thinking. My own perspective is that yes, evolution happens. We see the end products of it all the time, and yes, to a degree the process has been successfully simulated (with some interesting results) in the AI field.
However, where God steps into the picture for me in this context is as the provider of the initial GA, after which organisms can themselves take over the process from there. I'm not claiming (at least in this context) to have any definite idea of what God actually is or was, either...but I do think that there are at least a couple of areas, (such as the GA question) which atheistic evolutionary theory alone can't really account for.
You're talking about aspects of the universe outside of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory describes how biological organisms change over generations. The gap you are filling with god is the creation of the physical laws of the universe. This has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. It's an important distinction to make, as a lot of anti-evolution crackpots use the tactic of lumping the stupendously well established theory of evolution in with a bunch of questions that have yet to be satisfactorily answered, such as abiogenesis and the source of the universe, in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the theory of evolution in a kind of guilt-by-association. Your position regarding the creation of the universe is covered here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument
The other thing I'd like to have an atheist tell me is how they believe water got here initially, and more specifically, why the water cycle starts on some planets and not on others. From what I was reading a while back, water actually initially gets produced in a closed-circuit chemical reaction, with the three elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Once it gets started, the loop can keep going as long as those three elements are all present; my question is, how did those three elements become present here on Earth, especially when oxygen in particular seems to be rare almost to the point of being entirely unique in the universe, from what I've seen?
All I can say about that is that you really need to do some reading.
Linux is an operating system kernel. The kernel combined with some low level utilities, the majority of which if not all are GNU originated, comprises the operating system. So Linux is part of the operating system.
Anything else on top is not part of the operating system. Gnome / KDE / Xfce are desktop environments. Because people are used to Windows, they often mistakenly think GUI = OS.
Ubuntu et al. are even more than an OS/DE combo because they include a massive library of applications too. They are distributions.
So if you want to be precise about terminology the OS is GNU/Linux. Just "Linux" is easier to say, and since the Linux kernel is generally only used in conjunction with the GNU OS components just saying Linux is for the most part unambiguous.
why? because they might get flamed on slashdot? woooooooo..... scary shit....
in my experience during the 80's and early to mid nineties (in britain at least) everyone used the verb "program". The verb to "code" was a kind of web-era americanism that has since taken over, at least from my perspective. A lot of nerds my age that I encounter still say program.
yeah i didnt mean that the large storage space had no impact on the video market, just that other factors come into play so it isnt so cut and dried.
maybe its a british thing. i'm british and i think as a child i learnt treble long before triple, to mean three times something.
it will make a difference to the writeable data media market, where it seems a no-brainer that BluRay will win. It's bigger; Game over. But that doesn't impact the home video market where other factors will matter, so that question is more complex. I think its very difficult to predict what will happen there.
i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it? Weren't the US government going to restrict exports on them as they were considered munitions or something daft like that. Same thing for old Mac G5 as i recall. Might be a stupid urban myth though.
Lots of irony here. You hadn't paid any attention to what I wrote in the second post, hence your confusion. Your assertions regarding availability of migration tools weren't what I was addressing.
Strawman. I never said it was childish to expect that. I was referring to your asinine generalisation that the reason such migration tools are scarce or non existent is because "all linux distributors are stupid and pig-headed", which is of course totally unjustified unless you personally know all linux distributors, (i doubt you know any). There could be any other number of pragmatic of technical reasons why such tools don't exist. To call every single linux distributors pigheaded, stupid and childish just because they don't provide something you want is self evidently very childish. The irony of this attitude must be apparent, even to you.
That's called the argument from ignorance, and an appeal to it almost always exposes your own attitude. The fact that all you could think of as an explanation is that they are petty and childish probably says more about you than it does about the Ubuntu distributors. What you are admitting to here is total ignorance of the motivation of linux distributors, and a completely unjustified and arbitrary blanket generalisation that you pulled out of your ass. Not very grown up is it?
It has nothing to do with blending it with linux in any way. It seems they are trying to make it appeal to the linux community in order to reap the benefits of community feedback, without actually just giving in and GPL'ing solaris.
how does that rhetorical question support your infantile generalisation that all linux distributors are childish?
nice generalisation. i particularly like the irony of your closing statement.
So it would be more like $2000 on your side of the pond.
When was the last time a disease that has as high a profile as AIDS had a vaccine created for it? Not in living memory. Do you really think that the company that finds the cure for the plague of the 21st century would only receive "short-lived media bonus"?
What if the company that finds the cure for AIDS doesnt have any current AIDS treaments on the market? What incentive would they have to "bury" it then? On the other hand, if you were a company that was selling AIDS treatments, you'd make damn sure to patent any cures you found and start marketing them yourself. If you didnt patent it, a competitor who has no interest in burying it, could find the cure and put you out of the AIDS treatment business. If you do patent, but then refuse to market it, third world countries who need the medicine badly will simply read your patent and produce generic knockoffs. Also, any big company that did discover and start churning out a cure for AIDS, would put every single one of their competitors out of the AIDS treatment business, and pick up all their customers. Think microsoft. A monopoly is a hell of an incentive for a big company.
This idea that in would be in their interests to bury a cure for AIDS simply doesnt make sense in any scenario.
I'm in no way trying to defend the patent system or trying to argue that big companies act in anything but their own self interest. I'm simply saying that they have no reason to bury an AIDS cure. It is a ridiculous idea.
This does not require the rationale that large pharmaceutical companies have a conscience. It would still apply even if the company in question was run by a total sociopath.
http://208.69.34.230/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sour ceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=1.21+gigawatts+%2F+88+mile s+per+hour
i'm sure it's impossible to get an accurate figure, and of course MS will over estimate, but unless they are skewing the statistics by a factor of more than four, which would be breathtakingly mendacious, vista is still outselling XP which isnt the impression given by the article summary.
I showed up at CERN in 2002 when i happened to be on holiday in geneva. They didnt have a tour then, damn those lazy scientists, so i had to make do with the visitors centre, but it was quite interesting, and they had bits of an old accelerator on display in a courtyard outside.
if you read the article vista is outselling XP by a factor of 4:1. It's just that they expected it to be a slightly higher factor. The article summary is rather misleading. Who would've expected that on slashdot.... i'm so disillusioned...
So you don't like the idea of producing hydrogen for energy transportation because the process doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics and create a perpetual motion machine? well... you are picky...
Yeah i wish i'd never said GPL3 fork as it was unnecessary and incorrect. A GPL2 fork would have exactly the same effect. The GPL3 was not part of my argument.
Ah right - well, then a fork with the GPL2 license could be made. I'm not sure why is said v3. It was kind of unnecessary.
Apple has not put themselves into a position of power over the FLOSS community with this move, as a GPL3 fork could be started at the drop of a hat, from whatever the last compatible release was.
But apple wouldn't much care to see that happen as they would get no code contributed back to their CUPS, so the way I see it, either Apple will take their little concession and tread very carefully and CUPS will carry an as is, or Apple will start throwing their weight around a fork will be made, leaving apple to maintain their own code. A third option is that Apple will tread gently, but RMS will kick up a stink about the whole thing in principle (think java trap) and possibly a fork starts.