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Comment Re:micro v. macro, flawed argument (Score 1) 453

....is tantamount to the belief that, inside every cell, there exists a mechanism that prevents mutations which would give rise to offspring if that offspring could not produce fertile progeny with not just its parents' generation, but its grandparents', great-grandparents', etc,....

That is not a belief, but a scientific, experimentally established FACT.

The paper you cite says nothing about speciation, it is about the likelihood of 2 or more mutations (each alone not giving an organism an advantage, but the set of them would) happening.

Besides, speciation has been observed in modern time. Here is one example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsify#The_rise_of_new_species

Comment Re:Wow, evolution (Score 1) 453

Where does it get the additional genetic information to construct feathers? Incomplete, nonfunctional feathers or other structures are useless for survival and are therefore not passed on to succeeding generations.

Please continue running down the path of entropy and irreducible complexity.

Unless a feature confers a distinct advantage on an organism, it is invisible to the natural selection mechanism.

Off the top of my head: Insulation, mating displays, gliding.

(... by choosing which wolves to mate we've managed to created teacup poodles, bulldogs and Saint Bernards in a fairly short time - don't you think similar things happen in the wild?...)

The fact is that none of these things happen in the wild, because the selective breeding of dogs is accomplished by means of the application of human intelligence. In other words there is intelligent design to produce a desired result.

No. The mechanism for evolution in the wild and directed breeding is the same, the only difference is that the selection is done on different criteria.

There is no human effort to does not involve a measure of intelligence. Why is it that otherwise highly intelligent humans credit the existence of even the existence of a single living cell to processes NOT ALSO involving intelligence and thought?

Likewise, how is it that otherwise highly intelligent humans have this desire to turn their reasoning faculties off when it comes to the topic of how life came to be?

Science is not about what was thought to have taken place an unimaginably long time ago.

Might I assume that your position is that science taught in schools should only include "facts" (by your very narrow definition of facts that say that even the fossil record is not a fact but a "witness")? If that is not your position, please clarify.

Comment Re:Windows again (Score 4, Informative) 171

From what I can remember, it was also management issues at the top.

Not to mention that the Amiga was tightly bound to the custom chips they did in-house (Paula/Agnus, etc). Commodore didn't spend (or didn't have?) enough resources on R&D to keep up with the PC, and was also too slow in changing the platform so that it could use PC components instead.

Comment Re:How, indeed. (Score 3, Interesting) 331

But it is really Steve Jobs which, paradoxically, is holding Apple in the position of being the MOST closed company out there.

But is this unhealthy to the commercial result of Apple corp and the satisfaction of most Apple customers? Being closed also means that Apple has vertical control of everything from their online services to operating system to hardware, and Apple has generally been very good at using that control to deliver products that work very well if you stay inside Apple's garden.

I suspect most of us on /. (me included) would be pleased if Apple opened up more, but how much would Apple gain by doing that and risk alienating those that are perfectly happy in Apple's garden?

Comment Re:SMB (Score 1) 517

I cant get it going faster than 10-11MB/sec when copying to/from Windows XP.

It could be something as simple as the network card in the server autoconfiguring to 100Mbps, 11MBps sounds like a saturated 100Mbps link. Check with ethtool on the server and in the management interface on the switch. Bad performance like this can also be caused by mismatched duplex on the server network card and the switch it is connected to.

Comment Re:SMB (Score 1) 517

Wow. I didn't think it was even possible to buy a gigabit hub.

Half Duplex is part of the GigE spec as far as I know, but I've never seen a GigE hub. WJSmythe, could you share the manufacturer and model number on this oddity?

Intel

Submission + - Intel reveals single-thread acceleration

SlinkySausage writes: "Even though Intel is probably the industry's biggest proponent of multi-core computing and threaded programming, it today announced a single thread acceleration technology at IDF Beijing. Mobility chief Mooly Eden revealed a type of single-core overclocking built in to its upcoming Santa Rosa platform. It seems like a tacit admission from Intel that multi-threaded apps haven't caught up with the availability of multi-core CPUs. Intel also foreshadowed a major announcement tomorrow around Universal Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) — the replacement for BIOS that has so far only been used in Intel Macs. "We have been working with Microsoft," Intel hinted."

"Market Share" "Installed Base" and Consumer Electronics 264

redrum writes "Analysts and reporters like to talk about market share statistics, but the conclusions they draw are often misleading, RDM reports. Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC takes a look at how numbers are used to paint grossly inaccurate portrayals of the market share of the Zune among iPods, and alternatively the Mac among PCs. A follow up article, Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC demonstrates how the conventional wisdom of market share reporting can be turned upside down by simply comparing what vendors actually sell. An eye opening, in depth look at the real numbers behind PCs, music players, and console games."
Biotech

Avoiding the Word "Evolution" 895

jakosc tips us to a disturbing article in PloS Biology on the avoidance of the word "Evolution" in scientific papers and grants. From the paper: "In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy."
The Internet

Submission + - Got Earthlink? Got Mail? No, They Lost it.

LandGator writes: "Robert X. Cringely, doyen compu-columnist for PBS, reports on a hidden e-mail problem at Earthlink: They're losing up to 9 messages out of 10, found as a result of a friend's testing.
He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail.
Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink's mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn't bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn't mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain. (Emphasis mine.)
Gee, you don't suppose they expect we actually want the e-mail service we paid for, eh?"
Sony

Sony Adds PS3 Support to Linux Kernel 181

mu22le writes "A few Sony patches to the Linux kernel have just been merged in the mainline tree, to be included in the 2.6.20 release. The patches add 'core platform support for the PS3 game console and other devices using the PS3 hypervisor.'" From the Linux Devices article: "Linux gained generic support for the Cell processor, on which the PS3 is based, with the 2.6.13 release in June of 2005. The new Sony-contributed patches to the 2.6.20 kernel appear to add machine-specific support for technology such as the PS3's memory architecture, DMA (direct memory access) model, and SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) model. A Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) distribution has been available for the PS3 since October, thanks to a development deal between Sony and YDL publisher TerraSoft. However, YDL so far has not been bundled with early PS3 shipments, despite earlier indications from Sony Entertainment's CEO, Ken Kuturagi."

Feed Firefly Reborn as Online Universe (wired.com)

The canceled sci-fi series enjoys a fan base as dedicated as the show's run was short. Now Firefly fanatics will be able to live in a massively multiplayer online universe carved from Joss Whedon's vision. A Wired News exclusive by Mark Wallace.


The Media

Submission + - More online media jailed

OSDNBoss writes: "According to the US Watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists a total of 134 journalists were in jail on December 1, 49 of which were Internet journalists. China leads the way with the highest number in jail. I'm sure the censors have already blocked slashdot and other news and opinion sites in the countries mentioned. It begs the question, however, as the blogosphere grows are online journalists and editors more or less protected than their print and TV counterparts?"
Music

Submission + - RIAA Mischaracterizes Letter it Received from AOL

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In Elektra v. Schwartz, an RIAA case against a Queens woman with Multiple Sclerosis who indicates that she had never even heard of file sharing until the RIAA came knocking on her door, the judge held that Ms. Schwartz's summary judgment request for dismissal was premature because the RIAA said it had a letter from AOL "confirm[ing] that defendant owned an internet access account through which copyrighted sound recordings were downloaded and distributed....". (Copy of order)(pdf) When her lawyers got a copy of the actual AOL letter they saw that it had no such statement in it, and asked the judge to reconsider."

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