The meaning of the word "Macroevolution" has not remained constant over the years, but more significantly it's not generally used except by people debunking it. Religious people want to split evolutionary theory into "small change" and "big change" as the latter is harder to prove, while there's plenty of proof for the former.
As for evolving new abilities. We have diseases evolving resistance to cures, new species of insect, and enough fossil records to see the evolutionary history of a number of creatures. In today's environment evolving entirely new abilities, not based on existing genes or abilities, is very very unlikely. It's too bad we can't collect genetic samples from back when trilobites ruled the shores.
"Macro" evolution is a ridiculous term. It's like saying you can walk from NY to LA in a single step. Stop using it.
I thoroughly disagree with theory of common descent
99.99..% of all living things use the same "genetic language" a.k.a. they can exchange genes and be affected by similar viruses and such. There are alternate ways to encode genes in use so it's possible that a few bacterial life forms comes from a different "first ancestor", though it's equally likely (if not more so) that they hark back to before our genetic encoding stabilized in its current form.
In any case evolutionary theory makes predictions and can be tested. Religion is something that pop up in every human culture and cannot be tested. Believe in God and a fluffy afterlife if you want, but don't call us deluded for choosing differently.
I think you misunderstood me. Building height maps is just a means to an end; the end being figuring out just what you're doing with those limbs of yours. The Kinect wasn't created/built for the purpose of measuring objects, even if it's better at this than us humans.
But I wrote this in reply to a poster that seemed to believe we humans are actually better than Kinect at the specific vision tasks it's built to do.
But we are better. Kinect is built to recognize faces and body postures, it’s not built to estimate the distance from you to the TV even if it can do that more accurately than we can.
It's amusing how Kinect needs four microphones + calibration to replicate a feat we humans only need one ear for. To see 3D it apparently have to send out infrared dots, and even then it probably does a worse job than the good ol' brain.
Actually, that was in 1985 but while had all that it lacked worthwhile copy & paste and printer support. Also I have to question the "true multitasking" bit as even the last version (OS 3.9) freeze animations while accessing menus.
I've seen others note that though Amiga OS has preemptive multitasking, it's effectively cooperative since one regularly has to "call a routine" so that other apps can run UI workloads.
As European the Imperial system is pretty Greek to me. For length we do indeed use those "unwieldy" meters/centimeters, but for the few measurements (like a person's height) where it doesn't quite fit we use fractions of a meter. Before today I had never rely thought about it so I don't think it's much of a problem.
My exposure to imperial units is entirely through movies. I honestly can't say how far 5 feet are, or how heavy 5 stones are. I can guess that five feet is 1.2 meters and that five stones is half a kilogram, but while that would make sense to me it's probably very wrong.
I think it simply comes down to what you grew up with.
Had a math teacher that could do stuff like that in his head. It was a little eerie when we struggled to get the result out of our fancy $150 programmable Casio calculators with color screens.
Do we have any idea how the brain goes about calculating stuff, and at what precision?
I would be surprised if it has a general purpose math unit. It's more likely that there are some operations that has to be done, and it can do those very fast - e.g. sin(x)*y - but it can't suddenly switch to using another formula without major rewiring... and it might even be using table lookups instead of proper math.
In this case it was the benchmark software that was buggy, not the OS. The interesting bit, as noted by the article, was: Why did Windows perform better on small workloads compared to Linux?
Wrong. I don't want to know how Caprica's "grim dark" ending came about. Had I not seen nBSG I may have been inclined to give Caprica a chance, but knowing that it's just grim dark emo bullshit I'm just not interested.
And no, I would not have guessed the ending had I not known about nBSG.
Slashdot Mirror
The meaning of the word "Macroevolution" has not remained constant over the years, but more significantly it's not generally used except by people debunking it. Religious people want to split evolutionary theory into "small change" and "big change" as the latter is harder to prove, while there's plenty of proof for the former.
As for evolving new abilities. We have diseases evolving resistance to cures, new species of insect, and enough fossil records to see the evolutionary history of a number of creatures. In today's environment evolving entirely new abilities, not based on existing genes or abilities, is very very unlikely. It's too bad we can't collect genetic samples from back when trilobites ruled the shores.
"macro" evolutionists
"Macro" evolution is a ridiculous term. It's like saying you can walk from NY to LA in a single step. Stop using it.
I thoroughly disagree with theory of common descent
99.99..% of all living things use the same "genetic language" a.k.a. they can exchange genes and be affected by similar viruses and such. There are alternate ways to encode genes in use so it's possible that a few bacterial life forms comes from a different "first ancestor", though it's equally likely (if not more so) that they hark back to before our genetic encoding stabilized in its current form.
In any case evolutionary theory makes predictions and can be tested. Religion is something that pop up in every human culture and cannot be tested. Believe in God and a fluffy afterlife if you want, but don't call us deluded for choosing differently.
I simply disagree with everything you said
So you believe that Kinect is superior to humans at recognizing faces and body postures?
I think you misunderstood me. Building height maps is just a means to an end; the end being figuring out just what you're doing with those limbs of yours. The Kinect wasn't created/built for the purpose of measuring objects, even if it's better at this than us humans.
girl was recently arrested for burning a Koran in the UK, and I remember some kids getting arrested for flying a certain flag.
Burning the Koran would only be relevant if they weren't allowed to report it as it's an index for the "freedom of the press".
But I wrote this in reply to a poster that seemed to believe we humans are actually better than Kinect at the specific vision tasks it's built to do.
But we are better. Kinect is built to recognize faces and body postures, it’s not built to estimate the distance from you to the TV even if it can do that more accurately than we can.
I wonder what the class of "optical illusions" for the Kinect's vision system and algorithms is
I'm guessing kinect makes assumptions based on common human bone structure, e.g. something like a dog might freak it out and make it explode.
What feat would that be that one stationary ear could do as well as kinect?
Recognize your voice from the kitchen
It's amusing how Kinect needs four microphones + calibration to replicate a feat we humans only need one ear for. To see 3D it apparently have to send out infrared dots, and even then it probably does a worse job than the good ol' brain.
And here I was thinking I'd get flamed by a hardcore Amiga Zulu. :-)
Actually, that was in 1985 but while had all that it lacked worthwhile copy & paste and printer support. Also I have to question the "true multitasking" bit as even the last version (OS 3.9) freeze animations while accessing menus.
I've seen others note that though Amiga OS has preemptive multitasking, it's effectively cooperative since one regularly has to "call a routine" so that other apps can run UI workloads.
Strange. I'm pretty sure I've seen people on the internet write "I'm x stones" when stating their weight.
As European the Imperial system is pretty Greek to me. For length we do indeed use those "unwieldy" meters/centimeters, but for the few measurements (like a person's height) where it doesn't quite fit we use fractions of a meter. Before today I had never rely thought about it so I don't think it's much of a problem.
My exposure to imperial units is entirely through movies. I honestly can't say how far 5 feet are, or how heavy 5 stones are. I can guess that five feet is 1.2 meters and that five stones is half a kilogram, but while that would make sense to me it's probably very wrong.
I think it simply comes down to what you grew up with.
Had a math teacher that could do stuff like that in his head. It was a little eerie when we struggled to get the result out of our fancy $150 programmable Casio calculators with color screens.
And USSR let women join the army?
Do we have any idea how the brain goes about calculating stuff, and at what precision?
I would be surprised if it has a general purpose math unit. It's more likely that there are some operations that has to be done, and it can do those very fast - e.g. sin(x)*y - but it can't suddenly switch to using another formula without major rewiring... and it might even be using table lookups instead of proper math.
103173
I don't see what so hard about opening a calculator and typing some numbers.
Kids these days!
In this case it was the benchmark software that was buggy, not the OS. The interesting bit, as noted by the article, was: Why did Windows perform better on small workloads compared to Linux?
I've seen some BIOS versions that can write-protect the MBR. Perhaps this should be more widely used.
AFAIK, the BIOS protection is only good against apps that use BIOS calls to write the MBR.
Why not? They know they'll never get the blame.
Lies, damn lies and speculation.
Yeah. Both F.E.A.R 2 and Bioshock 2 had DLC worth the cost to me. I don't see what the complaining is about; don't like it, don't buy it.
Of course, if the $5 gives you an unfair advantage in multiplayer it's another matter.
Does this mean that we can use the source code to port F# to other platform such as GCC and LLVM?
If the Apache 2.0 license is GPL compatible, yes, if not you can still use the sources for learning how to write a F# compiler.
My touch phone stops working long before it gets that cold.
Annoying since I use it as my watch.
Does slashdot work any better in IE9?
HAHA. You missed the point however. It's not "because I know the ending" but "because I don't care for how Caprica is going to end."
There is a difference.
Wrong. I don't want to know how Caprica's "grim dark" ending came about. Had I not seen nBSG I may have been inclined to give Caprica a chance, but knowing that it's just grim dark emo bullshit I'm just not interested.
And no, I would not have guessed the ending had I not known about nBSG.