If I understand the intention of the puzzle correctly, I'm assuming the lake is a closed system (a large pool, really), that all energies are transferred instantly and evenly, and that all things mentioned have mass.

After you pick up the anchor and start lifting, the boat will sink some amount (not a rate) proportional to the speed you're raising the anchor, and the lake will rise a proportional amount to the amount the boat sank. When you stop lifting the anchor, the boat will go back to the start height, as will the lake. The moment you release the anchor, the lake boat will rise above its start height, and the lake will drop below its start height. As the anchor enters the water again, the lake will rise back to the start height, so the final result is the water will stay the same level.

Or I could say that with any anchor that I could lift and an average-sized lake, the difference in the height of the lake distributed over the entire surface would probably be less than a molecule of water, so even without figuring out the forces, I could claim the difference would be insignificant, so "stay the same" again. But I guess I can't just assume the "lake" is not a wee tarn, where an anchor could make a measurable difference.>> ^Boise_Lib:

This is one I've seen used in job interviews:
You're in a boat on a lake. You pick up the anchor that's in the boat and throw it into the lake.
Will the water in the lake; rise a bit, fall a bit, or stay the same level?

Terrific! I imagine that Carl would have really liked this. (Anne? Nick? Sasha--Thoughts? As much as I enjoyed this, I hope the producers keep going and add more time and detail with the amazing journey from self replicating molecules to RNA to single cell organisms to polyps to fish, and also toward the end with what we know of hominid evolution. Very Cool!

>> ^vaire2ube:

k thats it i cant take our planet anymore / suicide
you know what, all food is just molecules in a different form. one step closer to the jetsons pill into meal, just need to seal it all up in one container and have the microwave handle the mixing, like a bread maker.
shit son.


Personally I'm waiting for the 5th Element cubes you put in the cooking machine for 2 seconds and get a big chicken meal out of it, complete with vegetables.

k thats it i cant take our planet anymore / suicide

you know what, all food is just molecules in a different form. one step closer to the jetsons pill into meal, just need to seal it all up in one container and have the microwave handle the mixing, like a bread maker.

shit son.

"Ok, you need to understand two different concepts........the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality.....supposedly bring down evolution."

Minor disagreements? I'm having a hard time believing that you've seriously investigated this subject if you are now claiming (scaled back from your prior claim of perfect agreement between "scores" of them) that molecular and morphological phylogonies typically have a high level of agreement. They don't. Agreement is the exception, not the rule. Even worse, molecular phylogonies don't agree with eachother either:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology. . . .

Partly because of morphology’s long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published (e.g. 132, 152, 170), structure or resolution tends to evaporate

Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

"If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference"

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution""

Your charge of quote mining is false. Quote mining is the logical fallacy of quoting something out of context, distorting its intended meaning. The quote I provided was very much in context, and showed support for the assertion that molecular and morphological phylogenies do not have "perfect" agreement, and now I have further supported that assertion (and disproven your scaled back claim of very statistically significant agreement) that their agreement is actually very superficial. It is far more significant how little agreement there actually is.

The very reason there is a contention about which is the "best" method is precisely because there is so little agreement. In any case, molecular homology appears to be winning the battle, perhaps because the evolutionists are getting tired of never finding any evolution in the fossil record.

Which brings us to the many issues with molecular homologies, specifically, their lack of falsifiability:

"We believe that it is possible to draw up a list of basic rules that underlie existing molecular evolutionary models:

All theories are monophyletic, meaning that they all start with the Urgene and the Urzelle which have given rise to all proteins and all species, respectively.

Complexity evolves mainly through duplications and mutations in structural and control genes.

Genes can mutate or remain stable, migrate laterally from species to species, spread through a population by mechanisms whose operation is not fully understood, evolve coordinately, splice, stay silent, and exist as pseudogenes.

Ad hoc arguments can be invented (such as insect vectors or viruses) that can transport a gene into places where no monophyletic logic could otherwise explain its presence.

This liberal spread of rules, each of which can be observed in use by scientists, does not just sound facetious but also, in our opinion, robs monophyletic evolution of its vulnerability to disproof, and thereby its entitlement to the status of a scientific theory.

The absolute, explicit and implicit, adherence to all the monophyletic principle and consequently the decision to interpret all observations in the light of this principle is the major cause of incongruities as well as for the invention of all the genetic sidestepping rules cited above."

A Polyphyletic View of Evolution

Schwabe and Warr

This is why Schwabe, a biochemist, wrote:

Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many, in fact, that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message

It's a shell game where virtually any kind of data can be accomodated, and at no point is the theory questioned. Ad hoc explanations can be invented for any kind of discrepency.

""There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.""

A mountain of weak, circumstantial evidence (much of which contradicts itself) does not prove macro evolution. "We're working on it" does not somehow validate that evidence. We know the holocaust happened; there is no proof for macro evolution.

""As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.""

There are numerous sources showing that junk dna is not junk:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/28/1103894108.full.pdf+html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025112059.htm

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/transposons-or-jumping-genes-not-junk-dna-1211

Based on your earlier argument, "we're working on it", you should realize that what some scientists consider to be junk dna stems entirely from ignorance. The idea that it got in there by "viral dna insertions" and the like is simply another ad hoc explanation among many.

""And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on""

I have already demonstrated that the consensus is very weak. What you need to provide is data backing up your claims regarding cytochrome c. I am awaiting the "scores" of phylogonies that will match that data.

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:

Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:


Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.

Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.

You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.

I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.

I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.

The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.

Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

>> ^longde:

Wow. Just wow. If rampant piracy existed in your country, or the key markets for your products, you wouldn't have a livelihood.
How can "service" or "design" stop outright duplication of a work?
So, if I completely duplicate WOW, from the look and feel to the name, and everyone flocks to my servers, that's just tough nuts for Blizzard, right?>> ^gwiz665:
Reproduce all you like. That said, I'm just a part of who makes it, so the official stance on piracy etc etc is not my call. But for my 2 cents, piracy is a service issue. You can design your way out of it.
>> ^longde:
I find it wildly ironic that a VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER decries the concept of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
To use your analogy: so it's OK if I independently reproduce your video games and make money off them.>> ^gwiz665:
Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.
Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.
Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

Wow. Just wow. If rampant piracy existed in your country, or the key markets for your products, you wouldn't have a livelihood.

How can "service" or "design" stop outright duplication of a work?

So, if I completely duplicate WOW, from the look and feel to the name, and everyone flocks to my servers, that's just tough nuts for Blizzard, right?>> ^gwiz665:

Reproduce all you like. That said, I'm just a part of who makes it, so the official stance on piracy etc etc is not my call. But for my 2 cents, piracy is a service issue. You can design your way out of it.
>> ^longde:
I find it wildly ironic that a VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER decries the concept of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
To use your analogy: so it's OK if I independently reproduce your video games and make money off them.>> ^gwiz665:
Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.
Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.
Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

Reproduce all you like. That said, I'm just a part of who makes it, so the official stance on piracy etc etc is not my call. But for my 2 cents, piracy is a service issue. You can design your way out of it.

>> ^longde:

I find it wildly ironic that a VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER decries the concept of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
To use your analogy: so it's OK if I independently reproduce your video games and make money off them.>> ^gwiz665:
Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.
Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.
Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

I find it wildly ironic that a VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER decries the concept of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

To use your analogy: so it's OK if I independently reproduce your video games, pass them off as my own, and make money off them?>> ^gwiz665:

Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.
Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.
Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.

Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.

Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

I said that God doesn’t exist? Oh yeah? Where exactly did I say that? The last time I checked, saying that I reject an idea isn’t the same as saying that the idea isn’t true. Get your facts straight.

Saying “god did it” doesn’t answer anything. It doesn’t answer any question about mechanism and until someone can come up with a testable model of how god interacts with the universe which we can then make accurate predictions with, it’s a useless and meaningless statement. It doesn’t help us expand the frontiers of our understanding of reality.

The fact of the matter is that it is you who is fundamentally uneducated in everything that you mentioned and that is made obvious by your inability to form your own arguments; you’re just cherry picking quotes that support you’re cognitive bias.

I love it when people like you pull out the second law of thermodynamics card because I know that you can’t name or explain the rest of the laws of thermodynamics without copy and pasting them from Google search. Life isn’t a closed system and the second law of thermodynamics only deals with closed systems. The 2nd law has nothing to do with anything biology or the existence of complex organisms, get your facts straight. If you had any respect for truth, you wouldn’t be making so many entirely misinformed and uneducated statements.

Because I know that none of this is actually going to matter to you, go ahead and enlighten us with more of your church-pamphlet science.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Do you know what "the burden of proof" means?
Yes, and you said that God doesn't exist. You have your own burden of proof.
I realize that you're a christian so I've decided to keep this a bit short for the sake of simply providing you with a potentially new view that isn't your own. You may reject it but hopefully you will at least understand how someone else might think about this topic.
I grew up without any religion and was previously agnostic, so I understand both sides of the argument. I used to have many of the same objections that you and others have raised against the existence of God.
One reason that I reject the notion of designer deities is because the question becomes infinitely regress-able; it explains nothing, it helps clarify nothing, and it opens up more questions than it answers. The notion of a designer god begs the question, who or what designed the designer, then that designers designer, and most importantly, how do these gods operate, by what laws?
The answer is that no one designed God. He is an eternal being and has always existed. A created god isn't really a God. God is the one whom no one else created.
This is actually a problem for your side of the fence, unless you believe that something came from nothing, which would be worse than magic. Since the Universe has a beginning there must either be an eternal first cause or else you are left with an infinite regress of causes.
Suggesting that a creator exists because something doesn't make sense to you isn't a valid way of forming believes if your goal is truth.
I don't believe in God because the world doesn't make sense to me. I believe in God because the evidence points to His existence.
The notion of design is for people who cannot understand what it means for systems to assemble from the bottom-up because, to them, it makes more intuitive sense that things are designed from the top down. This is not critical thinking and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the findings of science.
Actually, to believe that systems become more ordered over time is a fundemental misunderstanding of scientific laws, specifically the second law of thermodynamics. Sir Arthur Eddington says
"...if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.", p.74 Nature of the Physical World.
The second law states that systems become more disordered over time and there is no known exception to this rule. Everything is breaking down and becoming more disorganized. Evolutionary theory claims the opposite, that systems are getting more complex and highly organized over time. This clearly violates the 2nd law, which is why Ilya Prigogin said this:
LIFE WON'T "FORM" Ilya Prigogin (Nobel Laureate) "Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred." Physics Today, Vol.25, p.28.
True, we do have gaps in our knowledge about systems and mechanism but those gaps should remain gaps instead of prematurely filling them with god fluff. But, you are a believer, and believers do not make critical thinkers.
Again, God is a better explanation according to the evidence, such as the information in DNA, the fine tuning in the universe, and the appearance of design in biological systems. It is not a gap theory, it is a better theory.
I just hope that you come to understand that the answer "A creator did it" isn't an intellectually honest way of thinking.
There is nothing intellectually dishonest in believe that God created the Universe. Did you know that nearly half of biologists, mathematicians and physicists believe in a personal God? To dismiss the possibility is what is intellectually dishonest.
>> ^IAmTheBlurr

Do you know what "the burden of proof" means?

Yes, and you said that God doesn't exist. You have your own burden of proof.

I realize that you're a christian so I've decided to keep this a bit short for the sake of simply providing you with a potentially new view that isn't your own. You may reject it but hopefully you will at least understand how someone else might think about this topic.

I grew up without any religion and was previously agnostic, so I understand both sides of the argument. I used to have many of the same objections that you and others have raised against the existence of God.

One reason that I reject the notion of designer deities is because the question becomes infinitely regress-able; it explains nothing, it helps clarify nothing, and it opens up more questions than it answers. The notion of a designer god begs the question, who or what designed the designer, then that designers designer, and most importantly, how do these gods operate, by what laws?

The answer is that no one designed God. He is an eternal being and has always existed. A created god isn't really a God. God is the one whom no one else created.

This is actually a problem for your side of the fence, unless you believe that something came from nothing, which would be worse than magic. Since the Universe has a beginning there must either be an eternal first cause or else you are left with an infinite regress of causes.

Suggesting that a creator exists because something doesn't make sense to you isn't a valid way of forming believes if your goal is truth.

I don't believe in God because the world doesn't make sense to me. I believe in God because the evidence points to His existence.

The notion of design is for people who cannot understand what it means for systems to assemble from the bottom-up because, to them, it makes more intuitive sense that things are designed from the top down. This is not critical thinking and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the findings of science.

Actually, to believe that systems become more ordered over time is a fundemental misunderstanding of scientific laws, specifically the second law of thermodynamics. Sir Arthur Eddington says

"...if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.", p.74 Nature of the Physical World.

The second law states that systems become more disordered over time and there is no known exception to this rule. Everything is breaking down and becoming more disorganized. Evolutionary theory claims the opposite, that systems are getting more complex and highly organized over time. This clearly violates the 2nd law, which is why Ilya Prigogin said this:

LIFE WON'T "FORM" Ilya Prigogin (Nobel Laureate) "Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred." Physics Today, Vol.25, p.28.

True, we do have gaps in our knowledge about systems and mechanism but those gaps should remain gaps instead of prematurely filling them with god fluff. But, you are a believer, and believers do not make critical thinkers.

Again, God is a better explanation according to the evidence, such as the information in DNA, the fine tuning in the universe, and the appearance of design in biological systems. It is not a gap theory, it is a better theory.

I just hope that you come to understand that the answer "A creator did it" isn't an intellectually honest way of thinking.

There is nothing intellectually dishonest in believe that God created the Universe. Did you know that nearly half of biologists, mathematicians and physicists believe in a personal God? To dismiss the possibility is what is intellectually dishonest.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr