Oops. Bad move. I don't rip CD's, but I scan images. The ones that I care about get scanned to PNG files. It's open, and lossless. Some formats are good for archives, and some are not, like mp3.
It's not a personal attack, I was just overcome by sadness that our educational system just isn't working for some people. Your comments make it quite clear that you don't understand how evolution works, and that's a problem that all of us must take responsibility for.
Twas a joke. And I prefer the term "millihertz" for confusing people. Some people don't catch it and think it's mega. Others think that milli is related to million and come out too small by a factor of 1000.
I'll sign up for the programming if it interests me. To translate for marketing executives: I want to see anything by JMS, specifically, I want to see "Crusade" finished. I want to see Star Trek Voyager, no, not the one that already exists --- I mean a GOOD version of Voyager. I want to see more episodes of Burke's "Connections". CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
If these companies can't give me what I want, then they won't get my money. Lately, I've been bitten by a camera collecting bug. I want to get information on really cool old cameras that cost less than 20 bucks. Can they "program" for that? I doubt it.
I am very sorry about your poor education. I'm not joking, I really am. As a nation we must understand that scientific literacy is as important is verbal and mathematical literacy. We've obviously let you down.
Evolution is a change in the frequency of genes in a species, and that's exactly what we saw in the moths. The dark moth gene was drastically increased in frequency in the species. The example stands quite firm as an example of evolution.
No creationist denies the validity of selection for genes *within* a kind.
Define "kind". There's no such thing. All life exists along a continuum. There is no barrier of "kind" that actually exists that would prevent small changes from accumulating over time to create large changes in how an animal looks, even to turn a dinosaur into a sparrow.
Ultimately it's *all* about worldview, as the starting premise of modern evolutionary scientists is that God must be denied at all costs, even the cost of the truth and logical consistency.
Others have posted the link to the relevant information on talkorigins, you should probably check it. Denying that speciation occurs and has been observed is like denying that the Earth rotates on its axis.
If you can define your system well enough to understand what your phase space is, you can define an entropy.
That's the exception that I mentioned above. The information system has to match the thermodynamic system. My original objection was to the generalized idea that informational entropy was exactly the same as thermodynamic entropy. In the case of dirty room vs. clean room it's not, unless you properly define the states of dirty and clean, which you did.
Evolution is the change in the frequency of genes over time. If the moths changed their colors, then the frequency of the genes controlling those colors changed. By definition, it's evolution.
I didn't say any of that at all. What I said is that the word is overloaded, and informational entropy is only the same as thermodynamic entropy when one is careful to make the states of the information system correspond to the states of the thermodynamic system.
Shannon entropy is not the same as thermodynamic entropy. As I said before, it's common to confuse the two.
Even Maxwell's demon example shows this. The demon sits in a box, decreasing entropy. But what work does the demon do to decrease that entropy? None, from a thermodynamic perspective. Any information work that the demon does has no correspondance to work in the thermodynamic system.
But evolution is a fact. It has been observed both in nature and in the laboratory. There really is no question about it.
Also, you're getting the algorithm wrong for how evolution works. It's not random like flipping a coin at all. Think of how you play the game mastermind - you don't make random plays until you get it, you keep what's good and change what's wrong. A good player can win the game in a very low number of moves.
Actually, entropy is a thermodynamic concept and really doesn't have any meaning when you apply it to books or lists that are sorted/unsorted. It's really an easy mistake to make, so easy that these sorts of examples are actually used in the classroom.
Believe me, the entropy of your bedroom is the unchanged regardless of how many socks and T-shirts you have lying on the floor vs. folded neatly in the dresser.
I know it's nitpicky but evolution is a scientific "possibility". It is still regarded as a theory after all.
Evolution is a fact - it has been observed to happen, which cannot be disputed. HOW it happens is the theory of evolution by natural selection.
BTW, a theory in science isn't anything like the commonplace notion of a theory. Theories aren't haphazard guesses, they are fully supported by fact and represent the most powerful explanation that we can devise.
Example: The theory of gravity is "only" a theory, but does anyone go around saying that it's hardly proven to exist?
It's OO, but it's the wrong abstraction, in my opinion. These things are sometimes a matter of taste, but instead of telling the system to print a string, the string should be told to print itself.
The string properly knows how to print itself. Am I null terminated or not? Am I a date string?
The system will know how to print a string, but it can't be expected to know how to print an inventory, a window, or a report.
There really is no good OO way to print in Java. How are you going to make a hello world program print? System.out.println ("foo") isn't any better than the old BASIC
10 PRINT "FOO"
It does little good to make a version of hello world that has some objects in it when in the end there will be a System.out.println call.
I think you're really arguing for a language that will let you write hello world like this:
Slashdot Mirror
But where does the quote go? Do tell someone to type "cp a b?" Or do I tell them to "cp a b"?
The one that makes sense is the one that's grammatically incorrect. Makes my head hurt.
Oops. Bad move. I don't rip CD's, but I scan images. The ones that I care about get scanned to PNG files. It's open, and lossless. Some formats are good for archives, and some are not, like mp3.
It's not a personal attack, I was just overcome by sadness that our educational system just isn't working for some people. Your comments make it quite clear that you don't understand how evolution works, and that's a problem that all of us must take responsibility for.
Twas a joke. And I prefer the term "millihertz" for confusing people. Some people don't catch it and think it's mega. Others think that milli is related to million and come out too small by a factor of 1000.
I'll sign up for the programming if it interests me. To translate for marketing executives: I want to see anything by JMS, specifically, I want to see "Crusade" finished. I want to see Star Trek Voyager, no, not the one that already exists --- I mean a GOOD version of Voyager. I want to see more episodes of Burke's "Connections". CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
If these companies can't give me what I want, then they won't get my money. Lately, I've been bitten by a camera collecting bug. I want to get information on really cool old cameras that cost less than 20 bucks. Can they "program" for that? I doubt it.
I am very sorry about your poor education. I'm not joking, I really am. As a nation we must understand that scientific literacy is as important is verbal and mathematical literacy. We've obviously let you down.
That's simple. One GHz = 8 Ghz. Just like the difference between MB(yte) and Mb(it). See?
Folks, Louis Savain is a famous crank who's been pestering folks on the Usenet for years with his whacked ideas.
Now having said that, Welcome to Slashdot, Louis. Though you be a crank, I do enjoy reading your stuff.
Evolution is a change in the frequency of genes in a species, and that's exactly what we saw in the moths. The dark moth gene was drastically increased in frequency in the species. The example stands quite firm as an example of evolution.
No creationist denies the validity of selection for genes *within* a kind.
Define "kind". There's no such thing. All life exists along a continuum. There is no barrier of "kind" that actually exists that would prevent small changes from accumulating over time to create large changes in how an animal looks, even to turn a dinosaur into a sparrow.
Ultimately it's *all* about worldview, as the starting premise of modern evolutionary scientists is that God must be denied at all costs, even the cost of the truth and logical consistency.
What does god have to do with anything?
Not at all. The selection occurs naturally, hence the name natural selection. The selection is not directed, but it is also not random.
Well, that's not really an argument at all!
Others have posted the link to the relevant information on talkorigins, you should probably check it. Denying that speciation occurs and has been observed is like denying that the Earth rotates on its axis.
I think we're violently agreeing now.
If you can define your system well enough to understand what your phase space is, you can define an entropy.
That's the exception that I mentioned above. The information system has to match the thermodynamic system. My original objection was to the generalized idea that informational entropy was exactly the same as thermodynamic entropy. In the case of dirty room vs. clean room it's not, unless you properly define the states of dirty and clean, which you did.
Maybe Jaynes and Lambert should arm wrestle to find out who wins!
Evolution is the change in the frequency of genes over time. If the moths changed their colors, then the frequency of the genes controlling those colors changed. By definition, it's evolution.
There's no difference between micro and macro. Small changes over time can add up. It takes no imagination at all to understand how that works.
h tm l
if you think it has been observed in the lab your are borderline delusional.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.
And why do you feel the need to call people names?
I didn't say any of that at all. What I said is that the word is overloaded, and informational entropy is only the same as thermodynamic entropy when one is careful to make the states of the information system correspond to the states of the thermodynamic system.
Shannon entropy is not the same as thermodynamic entropy. As I said before, it's common to confuse the two.
Even Maxwell's demon example shows this. The demon sits in a box, decreasing entropy. But what work does the demon do to decrease that entropy? None, from a thermodynamic perspective. Any information work that the demon does has no correspondance to work in the thermodynamic system.
Speciation has been observed on several occasions, both in the lab and in nature, making it a fact.
But evolution is a fact. It has been observed both in nature and in the laboratory. There really is no question about it.
Also, you're getting the algorithm wrong for how evolution works. It's not random like flipping a coin at all. Think of how you play the game mastermind - you don't make random plays until you get it, you keep what's good and change what's wrong. A good player can win the game in a very low number of moves.
Actually, entropy is a thermodynamic concept and really doesn't have any meaning when you apply it to books or lists that are sorted/unsorted. It's really an easy mistake to make, so easy that these sorts of examples are actually used in the classroom.
Believe me, the entropy of your bedroom is the unchanged regardless of how many socks and T-shirts you have lying on the floor vs. folded neatly in the dresser.
I know it's nitpicky but evolution is a scientific "possibility". It is still regarded as a theory after all.
Evolution is a fact - it has been observed to happen, which cannot be disputed. HOW it happens is the theory of evolution by natural selection.
BTW, a theory in science isn't anything like the commonplace notion of a theory. Theories aren't haphazard guesses, they are fully supported by fact and represent the most powerful explanation that we can devise.
Example: The theory of gravity is "only" a theory, but does anyone go around saying that it's hardly proven to exist?
It's OO, but it's the wrong abstraction, in my opinion. These things are sometimes a matter of taste, but instead of telling the system to print a string, the string should be told to print itself.
The string properly knows how to print itself. Am I null terminated or not? Am I a date string?
The system will know how to print a string, but it can't be expected to know how to print an inventory, a window, or a report.
Very cool, I didn't know that.
There really is no good OO way to print in Java. How are you going to make a hello world program print? System.out.println ("foo") isn't any better than the old BASIC
10 PRINT "FOO"
It does little good to make a version of hello world that has some objects in it when in the end there will be a System.out.println call.
I think you're really arguing for a language that will let you write hello world like this:
"hello, world".print