if you do a compare between two DNS servers then you are bound to also come up with differences that show how outdated one server is compared to the other... There has to be many new domains registered / re-registered and associated / re-accociated with a new IP every minute, if you run the script for long enough between two different snapshots you are bound to find one of these...

So my appropriately verbose question in response to your post is: how often do you think google and comcast update their DNS servers, and do you think they update at exactly the same time... I know ISPs like to filter stuff... just wondering if your method is sound.

Thanks for this, interesting. +

Perhaps the argument of the effectiveness of evolutionary processes as a design tool revolves around the specificity of a problem (as gweihir points out below).

Maybe the more broad the problem the lower the potentials and greater the iterations needed to refine and vice versa.

Why does the kind of diversity you argue is lacking mean that a potential in a system under certain conditions cannot converge to form the basis of life?

All galaxies have the basic properties of being swirly and full of stars... sure there's slight variations on that but that is basically the essence of them... a huge system with massive potential evolved and converged to form structures with those specific properties.

I don't think the problem is that the the paper is looking at this from the perspective of physics, but more that you are looking at it from the perspective of biological chemistry alone... Looking at chemistry alone everything looks very specific and unique before even delving into biology.

The "Vultures" are no less greedy and manipulative than your description... probably more so. But I wonder if the most gifted artists, thinkers, scientist, mathematicians and so on, actually care. There are far easier ways to make money, If they are as focused and driven as described in the article then it seems likely they care more about attribution than monetary appropriation any more than is necessary to live and fund their work.

Conversely look at how pop artists and the RIAA bicker over adequately appropriating all of their disproportionate wealth...

I don't think this disinterest in money is necessarily limited to "Genius" ether though. I'd quite like to see a slashdot poll on this actually... what do you care about more, your work or your pay check?

It was Andrew Tanenbaum who showed the initiative to create a UNIX compatible royalty free OS for the purpose of teaching, Torvalds Linux is surely a derivative of that initiative if not a direct derivative of the Minix book which inspired him. Torvalds deserves a lot of credit for Linux but i think Tanenbaum deserves to have the credit for enabling so many people to learn about UNIX like systems without paying absurd amounts to AT&T.

Do you think every crime is as black and white as the premise... don't you have the slightest bit of imagination?

Their motive is unknown, and their apparent ignorance of the target's value suggests they are very unlikely to be professional criminals... hmm, petty criminals jacking a truck, how many sorry stories could possibly fit that picture. But by all means feel free to stick with your 3 year old perception of the through and through evil "bad guy" living it up in his evil layer with all the mountains of monies he stole. Or is it the ignorant degenerate that deserves to die? who's morals are we judging again?

According to whom?... you have no knowledge of the perpetrator's intent, and as a matter of probability the majority of "lethal weapon" wielding criminals will not only lack intent or willingness to kill but also hot have a lethal weapon at all... All that is needed is the appearance of a threat, most people are not willing to bet their life on the higher probability of a false threat... that's why it works, how do you know they weren't using toy guns? can you kill someone with a toy gun or a banana under a jacket? are you still certain that they deserve to die for wielding a "lethal weapon"?

I don't know who they are or why they did it or if there was a real potential to cause lethal harm... and my point is that nether do you. Unknown motives should not default to "Super Villain" and breaking the law or being ignorant !== "morally bankrupt moron that deserves to die", not all crime is committed out of greed..."

They spent 10 years researching how to reliably seal it into an enclosure...

Also it is not under the same requirements of a compressed gas canister. The whole point of using helium is for the advantages of it's fluid dynamics compared to a normal air mixture, that's why it's not pressurised.

I've always wondered why they didn't just use a near vacuum enclosure, but i suppose it's much easier to not deal with pressure difference and use a super low resistance fluid instead at the same atmospheric pressure.

This question makes as much sense as asking if free screen wash with a $100,000 car is any threat to a free online recipe for home made screen wash.

(Excluding the esoteric and technically illegal hackintosh route) Free OS X vs Free Linux is a stupid comparison... one runs on almost all consumer hardware and the other only runs on a very specific brand of hardware. It's free because you pay for the hardware that it runs on...