Cap'n Refsmmat

I don't think it's fair to boil his motivations down to "hating war." Many other leaks have been related to banks, diplomacy, and courts, not war. I think he has explained his motivations by opposing government secrecy in general, not war. I think what this really exposes was a failure by the Wikileaks people to fully screen the data. They say they've withheld several thousand documents for being sensitive, but apparently they missed some. When you're releasing 90,000 documents, you have to be thorough.

I might even try setting up one of the photoblog plugins to make it easier to show off pictures. I think the newer WordPress versions support in-post galleries though. Give it a shot.

One more tip: When you're viewing the list of PMs, on the left there is a box titled Folders. The "New" folder only shows conversations marked as unread. The "My Conversations" folder shows everything. If something doesn't show up in New, check My Conversations. And again, if you have specific issues with how the new system is laid out or how hard it is to find certain things, let me know and I can try to improve things. I can't make improvements until I find out what people don't like.

If there's no way to differentiate between the two, there's no particular reason to choose one theory over another. But if some of your model's predictions vary from the accepted theory, it can be validated. A new idea's really only "groundbreaking" if it explains something that was previously unexplained, or makes more accurate predictions about reality. Otherwise, it is indeed an "interpretation." Different interpretations can be useful though -- sometimes they make reasoning about strange situations easier, even if the end result is the same.

If someone wants to write it for us, I'm fine with that. But the gallery add-on already exists and is rather nice: http://www.invisionpower.com/products/gallery/

Hmm. I see that there are eight total messages in that conversation. Is that what you see? If there's a message that appears to be deleted, tell me where it appears in the sequence (it should be after the 4th, or the 7th, or whatever) and I'll search around to see if something's missing. Now, I know what problem you may also be encountering. When we converted, many old messages were marked as "unread" for some reason. When you visited your messenger page, the system would recount, go "wait, there's unread messages!", and list them even though they were months old. (This is a bug I reported to the software manufacturer.) Is it possible that you're seeing the unread message notification (saying you have 8 new messages) even though there are no new messages? Well, the new software doesn't do galleries unless we pay for an add-on. Now, if you want to get your pictures back, I can move some stuff around so you can get back into the old site and see your pictures. If you'd like to have galleries in this software, give me a convincing sales pitch on how SFN would benefit and maybe we can fork out the money

I will investigate and let you know if I find out what the problem is. As for email addresses, it's unfortunate but necessary. Staff can edit profiles to remove objectionable content, and while doing so they can view the member's email address. I have a zero-tolerance policy for any abuse of staff privilege, so if a problem ever occurs, I'd like to know.

This is a false analogy. Lenski's bacteria were not subjected to selection pressures (they were grown in their ordinary environment), they were pre-adapted to their environment, and Lenski had no way of detecting other mutations and alterations that may have been substantive but not immediately visible. (For example, a mutation could have occurred that set the stage for a later development, but did not cause significant changes in the bacteria by itself.) Furthermore, your claim of "1 substantive alteration" is false; Lenski has noted numerous differences between his lab bacteria and the "original" bacteria, such as significantly increased size (a doubling in volume), a change in cell shape to a more spherical form, a decrease in reproduction rate (as the larger cells consume more resources and compete with each other), and a change in DNA repair which accelerated mutation in some of the populations (evidently as a way of speeding adaptation). Lenski himself estimates 10-20 beneficial mutations that became fixed in the populations, among numerous neutral or deleterious mutations. Furthermore, it's silly to assume that there'd be one fixed mutation rate that would occur over all time. The evidence for punctuated equilibrium suggests that it is responsible for a significant portion of evolutionary adaptations, and one would not see punctuated changes in a short-term sample without being extremely lucky, or introducing the bacteria to significantly different environments. Finally, I'd like to see a source for your numbers, so I can see that "substantive alterations" in the genome means "significant beneficial change in phenotype", rather than simply "a difference in genes." Lenski estimated 10-20 beneficial mutations, but the number of neutral mutations -- which would not be easily noticed -- could easily be far higher in each population. And, of course, Lenski did determine the mutation rate per base pair in the bacteria, which could tell us the number of "substantive" mutations of the genome, whether they're beneficial, neutral, or unhelpful. (Also, I don't see how you can make the claim that human and bacteria mutation rates should be similar, when their environments are significantly different, they are subjected to different selection pressures, and their molecular mechanisms for repairing DNA damage are different. Lenski observed a change in mutation rates after 20,000 generations in some populations; why should humans over 200,000 generations maintain the same mutation rate? Why should bacteria over tens of thousands of generations? It's a very naive claim.) If you're going to make claims about evolution's observability, at least familiarize yourself with the results of experiments already conducted and understand the mechanisms explained by those experiments.

How would one determine if time really is slowing down or not?

That's the email generated by the "send email" form on a user's profile; it means they opted to email you through that form rather than sending a private message. I'm not sure what could cause a conversation to be deleted. I am not aware of anyone deleting private messages recently; the last messages deleted were a mass spammer when we were still using vBulletin. Now, I'm not yet familiar enough with IPB's system to know how conversations could be deleted; I don't know if the other party could possibly delete the conversation. Regarding email addresses: Email addresses are visible to all moderation staff. The software makes profile information visible to moderators so they can remove objectionable content. However, as per our privacy policy, we do not reveal email addresses or share them with anyone. The only staff who can read PMs are those with direct access to the server to make software changes -- that would be the administrators only. The forum software itself gives no provisions for reading PMs unless they are reported by a member. Now, I did recently receive an e-mail from a member who had been experiencing troubles with the PM system after spending an hour composing a message -- the system logged him out before he could send the message. Perhaps something similar happened with the person you're conversing with and they used the email form instead. Again, I'm sorry your messages seem to have vanished. I don't believe any of our staff deleted the messages. Perhaps you could check to see if the other participant can still view them; if so, there may be some software glitch that I need to take care of.

As per our privacy policy (under section 6), we do not read PMs unless we have reason to believe someone has violated the rules. We also do not delete messages unless they are known to be advertising. When you say "forwarded as email," do you mean that the system sent you the message as an email, or that the member you were communicating with was forced to send the message as an email? If there's a problem where messages are unexpectedly deleted, give me as many details as you can and I will investigate to determine if there's a problem.

But the report you quote in your first post says that part of the MRAP's problem is that its weight causes poorly-built roads and bridges to collapse, causing it to crash. Increasing the weight can't solve that problem. And I am talking about the parts drawn in the above diagram; the sides labeled "2" and "3" are interior walls not necessary in a single-hull design. Because the armor and shape of the MRAP is specifically designed to combat IEDs, you'd have to keep the interior walls very strong -- the primary threat is IEDs, not RPGs.

The total armored area would rise. Rather than two sides of the hull needing thick, heavy armor, four sides would. (Two hulls, two sides.)

What if I use a true random number source? Incidentally, many pseudorandom sources on Linux systems use system entropy (noise from device drivers, system events, and user interactions) to generate true random numbers as well. /dev/random in particular is a true random number generator, based on random interactions with the system, not a pseudorandom function.

That may be a major inconvenience in the future. "I'm sorry, I didn't read the contract, as I'm opposed to words."

Klaplunk, please familiarize yourself with rule 8 of the ScienceForums.Net Rules. Also rule 1.a. This is not a lecture hall for you to teach us the "truth." This is a discussion forum. If you are not willing to have an open discussion of your ideas, or if you'd like to keep calling other members "dumb," you should go elsewhere.

Wouldn't the double hulls make the MRAP even heavier? The increased surface area would all have to be armored, so the weight would go up.

Lack of interest would cover for a lot of it, but the Guardian has a few examples of casualties being deliberately hidden: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/task-force-373-secret-afghanistan-taliban

It's fair enough for them to downplay the importance of the documents; there's nothing as shocking as Abu Ghraib and such in the documents investigated so far. But, of course, there's 90,000, and nobody's looked through all of them yet. There's far more information to be had than is in the initial news reports. What might be found next?

Wikileaks has just released 92,000 Army reports on the war in Afghanistan, detailing everything from civilian casualties to suspicions of Pakistani involvement. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?pagewanted=all Here's the collection of reports from each paper: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/warlogs http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html So. Now what? I'd love to see the administration's response to this in the coming days. This is not the sort of picture they wanted painted of the war in Afghanistan.

One must remember during debates that one's opponent often takes opposing positions and therefore requires convincing. First, you're changing the "information" goalposts. The original definition of "information" was in the genome, or in this case the configuration of components. Now you're saying that the kind of component also counts as information, and that the fitness function is information as well. The fitness function is a direct result of the environment, not the organism's genome. Make up your mind. What does "information" encompass? Furthermore, it's naive to call a pile of gears and pendulums "functional parts." What is that supposed to mean? That a gear sitting in a lonely heap on a table is somehow "functional"? No, their "function" comes from their "genome", or rather the arrangement of parts inside the proto-clock. Merely supplying a gear does not help arrange these parts in any way. The choice of gears and pendulums is arbitrarily. If my fitness function is "telling time," anything from a pile of sand to a stick stuck in the ground would suffice as starting places. Numerous different parts could be supplied to similar effects. (Hmm. It'd be fun to evolve an accurate hourglass with minute and hour chambers. Perhaps day of the week too.) There are countless ways to make clocks, they are overlapping, codependent and no configuration is clearly "best." Your point? There are countless ways to survive as a wild clock in the vast steppes of Timeberia.

More importantly, this is a discussion forum, where we discuss the merits of ideas presented. Publications of your ideas are better suited to a blog or scientific journal.

It is interesting that you seem more interested in appeals to ridicule than in explaining your counter-claims. There is minimal information imported into the simulation. It has building block -- gears, pendulums, springs, and so on -- and basic physics. Similarly, it could have had chemical "building blocks" and basic chemistry. A "target" is indeed in this case defined by a "designer", but that target could equally well have been "survive in the environment" and be defined by nature itself. At no point in the simulation did the "designer" help the parts achieve the "goal" of being clock-like. He did not nudge the parts and say "here, this'll work better to make a clock." He didn't even give the clocks an initial condition or setup. One can also observe numerous steps in the process from worthless clock to good clock. At no point did the "designer" give the system information on how to achieve any of these states. He did not "teach" it how to achieve proto-clock status or to develop a dial. This occurred through random mutation and selection. The selection function could just have easily been a result of the natural environment; there is no constraint that it must be designed by a human. A natural selection function would likely be less efficient, but that is a matter of degree and time required. Indeed. I've downloaded the code but I'm not a MATLAB fan. If I get time to work on it, I may rewrite it in Python; it's surprisingly short code.

I see. Could you clarify what you mean by "observed"? I am not sure how to make sense of your comment in light of, say, the Lenski experiment. (It may not match your previous criteria, but metabolization of citrate was a new behavior or ability.) I am also curious what experimental results you cite -- so far I have only seen arguments from information theory.

The first minute or two don't entirely apply here; it's the simulation I wanted to point at. The simulation of numerous random mutations occurring to bring about functional improvements to a device, in only a few thousand generations. (Actually, I'd love to get the code of this simulator running for fun, and perhaps work on improving it...)