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How Life Can Come From Randomness

Started by stromboli, July 03, 2016, 01:17:08 PM

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SGOS

Quote from: trdsf on August 31, 2016, 07:57:18 PM
Four gigabytes is still four billion.  I remember when we couldn't imagine how to fill a 25 megabyte drive.

One of my first computers was an Apple II GS.  It came with a standard 3.5 inch disk drive.  I can't remember how many megabytes a 3.5" disk held, but I wanted to upgrade.  I found a hard drive which could be added inside the computer housing.  It was an aftermarket thing made by an outfit called Applied Engineering if I remember correctly.  It held a whopping 10 Megabytes, room enough for all the programs I had written, along with all the accompanying data files, with room to spare, but in retrospect the most astounding thing about it was the cost.  Six hundred dollars, and I bought it without much deliberation.  It served me well for several years.  Never had to reach for another floppy disk in my boxes of floppies.  When it was time to get rid of it, the Internet was already going strong.  I offered it to the local Christian school, which operated on a shoestring.  I had a friend who taught there, and I felt quite magnanimous as an atheist giving such a precious resource to a Christian school.  But they didn't want it, so I put it in a dumpster, which was actually kind of painful for me, because I had enjoyed it for so many years.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Baruch on August 31, 2016, 06:17:59 PM
The odds of all 4 billion pennies landing face up on fair tosses ... is a much bigger number.  Two to the power of 4 billion.
I said nothing about a toss. The point of "face up" was that each penny has to be examined and some of them manipulated to achieve "all face up". That extends the amount of time and work to be done, until you build a machine to do that, which defeats the point of the exercise in understand "four billion".
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers