MajesticTreeFrog

Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. As such, attempts to inject it into scientific discussion is due to religious, not scientific, beliefs. Really, intelligent design is simply a non-denominational version of christian creationism, wrapped in a fancy wrapper.

Religion is not the problem. Extremism and hate are the problem. Sometimes religion is used as an excuse, sometimes race, sometimes cultural differences. Whatever. Its the will to see others as your enemy, and treat them as less than human, to see yourself as superior, that causes the problems. Now, sometimes religion is an excuse, and it shouldn't be. But don't let that get the two things confused.

Ok, you don't understand evolution. In evolution men did NOT evolve from apes. Rather, men and apes BOTH evolved from something ELSE. To answer your question about in between creatures, there are plenty. Many are extinct because of being out competed by both apes and humans. For instance, the neanderthal. The easiest place to see this is in genetics. There is HUGE overlap between ape/monkey/human genes. In particular, chimpanzees are very similar. Like I said, above, this is a misunderstanding. As for variation, there is a lot in the assorted monkey/ape category. For humans, it would only evolve if there was an advantage to being similar to humans. There isn't, because humans kill any predators/competitors. The more similar they are to us, the quicker they would be eliminated. See neanderthals. Incorrect. There are 'missing links' between many different creature groups. Evolution happens at a constant rate, but speciation doesn't. That means that while genetics will shift at a constant rate, they may not shift in any particular direction. If the environment changes, either due to external shifts (say, global warming), or due to migration, then a species may be divided and one group may be ill adapted to its new environs. In that case, natural selection becomes more relevant, and speciation will begin to occur. It is possible for this to happen VERY fast, leaving no obvious stepping stones. ESPECIALLY stepping stones that are entirely external (like skeletal remains). Change speed best seen in genetics, since that is where it actually occurs.

The problem isn't with the ratings, its with the parents who ignore them. Even the much reviled GTA:SA was given an M rating, meaning for at least 17 years old. Guess how many parents actually paid attention? Far too few.

I wish I knew what drove my life. I have been pretty aimless the last few years. I am trying to spend this one figuring out what I want to do with my time.

Hypocricy is pretty normal in ANY defined group. Its just the way of things, I think. It would be nice if it would go away, but careful rational evaluation of one's lifestyle on a day to day basis really defeats the purpose of a 'lifestyle' ideal or movement. Thats because people come to different decisions if they do that evaluation, meaning they go different directions, and pretty soon there isn't a movement or 'lifestyle' cliche anymore.

The one issue with this is that it takes more energy to turn the water into H + O than you get from burning it. So, not really a solution to the energy problem. On the other hand, using re-useable energy sources to turn the water into fuel is still a good idea, since the water based fuel is non polluting.

The MM looks nice. Someone mentioned wishing it was USB. Well, it is. Look at the apple page for it. It tells you the windows requirements to use it!I just wonder how good a gaming mouse it would be.

Overall, AMD gives you more computing bang for your buck. That said, there are important architextural differences that may, or may not, be relevant for what you want to do. If its gaming, go AMD. If its business apps, go Intel for hyperthreading, because that can make a noticeable difference. If its lower power/noise, go intel and get a Pentium-M and a desktop chipset adapter.

Actually, it has already been broken. do a search on google, or look at slashdot today, they have an article on it, even going into how to do it. Its pretty easy. As for me, I still use good ol Win2k, and I intend to for the future. I am getting sick of MS BS. when I am finally forced to upgrade, i will just switch to Linux + Wine, or get a mac desktop and run Virtual PC or something.

YAY for cheese!Seriously though, you can't see the flags or anything, which is a shame. On the other hand, I realize that magnification to that degree is just hard, not to mention grainy.

As for the question about space travel, going to a star 10 light years away will take AT MINIMUM 10 years. However, to those ON the spaceship on that voyage (assuming the ship moves at lightspeed), the travel will seem instantaneous. There are, however, proposed solutions for the problem of getting somewhere faster than light. Basically, they all involve freaky hax of the universe. For instance, it only takes that long to get there if you travel through the intevening space. If we can (through worm hole or other method) find a way to ignore intevening space, then we get there faster. One proposed method involves quantum entanglement of large numbers of particles creating a FTL teleporter. However, these methods are generally a long long long way off, and maynot even work. So, interstellar travel a la startrek may not be possible.

Unless you use certain very specific features, they are equivalent, except price. If you use Mac OSX, OpenOffice (or really, NeoOffice J) still has a ways to go, and MS Office on the Mac is better than Office for PC (go figure). Using linux, of course, you only have openoffice, so it doesn't really matter.

Lol, got banned. Pwned.

Oh, the shroud exists, that is not in question. What IS controvercial is whether or not the image on the shroud is the impression of the historical jesus.

Faith does'nt tell you what is right and wrong. There are extensive systems of ethics and morality that will tell you what is right and wrong, and only a few of them need to invoke faith (those that are religious systems). The word sin, which means something that separates a person from god, has slowly come to mean "that which is wrong" for many people, and has become somewhat seperate from its original religious meaning. I am an athiest, as in, I do not believe in a god or gods. However, I do consider some things to be morally acceptable, and other things to be morally inacceptable. This does not require "faith" (at least as most people use it in this context. Fath can have many meanings). The simplest, non-faith way of looking at morality is a simple thought exercise: would I want a different person to do X to me, where X is the behavior currently being considered. If not, then it makes sense to not do X. This creates a social contract where everyone, not wanting X to happen to them, declines to do X to anyone else. Really, an aweful lot of moral situations can be resolved using this rule.

From what I understand, the email scanning is realtime. They don't have individualized records, as that would sort of defeat the usefullness of search. Instead, whenever you open an email, they can just search it for relevant keywords and deliver ads. In this way, they can be "not evil", and allow you privacy, while still putting up the ads they need to make money.

Chances are, in the final release the Apple computers will use open firmware and other tech only found in Apple computers, breaking compatibility with prior x86 architextures. You could still install windows on such machines, with the right drivers, but Apple will make sure that the Mac OS will demand these features in order to install/run, thus making it impossible to install OSX on non-apple hardware.

I am always amazed that people care what consenting adults do with each other in their spare time. Yeesh.

WTH are you talking about? Birth and death don't do anything to mass. They don't add or remove anything. The only question is whether the mass in question is part of a functioning living being. AS for whether matter can be created or destroyed: yes, it can. But not usually. Usually it just changes for. Matter is created/destroyed only in certain nuclear reactions, AFAIK.

RISC and CISC are architextural differences. Over time the "x86" instruction set has been extended over and over, with more and more registers added, (SSE, MMX 3d-now, SSE2 and 3, etc). Each of these changes made the chips more "risc-like". As for why they are doing it, the answer is pretty simple: IBM will not give Apple the chips they want/need at the prices they want/need in order to stay competitive. Intel will. Moreover, there is lots of efficiency to be gained with Intel. Intel has an EXCELLENT group of compiler writers working for them, and as long as you are compiling for ONLY an intel chip, using their compiler can get you as much as double speed efficiecy with your code. Finally, Apple knows it has to do something about its notebooks. They are the easiest Mac to buy, and they sell lots of them. But, the G4 is old, and eats too much power. Intel's Centrino is vastly superior both in performance and heat/power measurements. Considering Laptop sales just topped desktop sales, Apple NEEDs a good laptop chip. Considering Intel just lost out on all the new consoles being made, Intel wants another partner. Apple is hot right now, so they make a lot of sense. Everybody wins.Oh, and Intel develops lots of new tech, not just Chips. They were involved in USB. It took forever for USB to take off, but Apple was the group who made it 'cool' or expected to put USB on their computers. Eventually, PC makers did too. I am sure Intel would love to use Apple to show off all their new tech, without worrying as much about backwards compatibility.

The next stage of human evolution will be adapting to the environment. Specifically, that means adapting to a poluted environment, unless we change our ways. It won't be fun as the shift happens.

According to our knowledge, even if you make a genetic clone, that does not mean you make a PERSONAL clone. Their personality will be different. That said, genetics DO influence personality, rather strongly. But, not strong enough to be the dominant factor most of the time. Cloning is really fine, but I think people worry about it to much. That we might be able to do it really doesn't matter as much as WHY we would do it. The comment about parents cloning their baby is one reason, but there aren't a whole lot of others, even militarily. A clone takes as much time to grow as a non clone human, and an "army of clones" would be easily defeated by a man made virus that preys on that specific genetic structure. Making a clone army would actually be disadvantageous (but gene manipulation on a smaller scale would probably have significant payoffs).

The key thing about the decision is it deals with how Grokster advertised itself, not what it actually DID. As in, P2P is not really mentioned. The reason grokster lost is because it sold its service by advertising its ease of use to do illegal things, making it (perhaps rightfully) of contributory copyright infringement. Seen in this light, the decision really helps both sides. The Betamax decision is left intact, and by extension, P2P itself. On the other hand, services built SPECIFICALLY to aid in the distribution of copyrighted works are liable. Which means that generalized P2P programs, clearly created to do any sort of distributed networking (such as bittorrent) should not be affected.Its a good decision overall, as far as I am concerned.

Um, confused? Pretty honest place to be, really.