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Suppose somebody unintentionally publishes information useful to terrorists.

SETI's search parameters are based on some really well though out assumptions about how ET civilizations might try communicating.

You wish. There are two groups that dominate the public arguments for passive SETI: those who directly anthropomorphize alien civilizations and those that use a thought-out logic that is still steeped in assumptions of human-like intelligence. While this may be reasonable both are really large asumptions that limit our search. The anthro's are screwed becuase any signals using channels of the EM spetrum that we like will have to compete with cellphones, radios random electronics - even those in the detector.

The reasonable logic fellows, such as Carl Sagan, simply look at what parts of the radio spectrum that has no significant natural sources of interference. This is the dominate method in current projects. However, there are many of these dead spots. The most prominate quiet channel to a human being the channels surrounding the frequency of hydrogen's spectrum (aka the 'watering hole.') It is in this streach of frequencies that projects like SETI@home are looking for signals.

The deafing silence of this area should be telling: there seems to be Nothing - natural or artificial - at those frequencies. Like looking for lost keys by researching the same empty spots, SETI carefully combs these small streaches frequencies for any possible signal. This technique is not problematic becuase of focusing on parts of the Electromatnetic (EM) spectrum that humans find economicaly and technically useful but becuase the eschew those spans of spectrum on purpose. Instead of assuming human-like intellegence, the watering-hole gazers are assuming a (still) human-like intellegence acting in the opposite fashion that a human would.

In a technological society where eletromagnetic radition is reasonably well understood it shouldn't take too long to figure out that the radio portion of the EM spectrum is really useful, especially if their physiology remotely resembles anything on Earth.

Considering that if the anthropomorphism above is plausible then they would use similar channels that we use. Not the 'water hole' or other quiet parts of the EM spectrum, but transmissions in area that we find usefull. In the end, we may be getting detectably strong ET signals right now. But, we cannot hear them for the chatter of our own civilization which prefers to use the same channel for repeating Brittney Spears' 3 top selling songs.

Either purposfully sent of just radio chatter, any signal is so attenuated at stellar distances that you must search for the precise signal used in the transmission. Both group assumes that a society would setup and transmit for thousands if not millions of years a steady and powerfull signal or set of targets signals. There is a huge cost for powering and maintaining such equipment over such a timespan. There is very little payback on the timescales of our societies for performing such an ET-friendly transmission. This means billions of channels in the spread of frequencies the FCC allocates to 1 station to play Brittney Spears music. And any signal is likely to be little more than a carrier signal for the local pop-music or military radar. Hence the huge processing requirements for projects like SETI@home to sift such needles in the radio haystack.

To the benefit of both, the encyclopedia galactica may be being beemed at us right now. We just may have the dial on the wrong station.

No one with more than a few days of computer experience has the slightest trouble with multi-button mice.

...

My wife is a novice user (she used to twist the mouse to move the arrow when she started using computers), but even she has grasped the concept of left and right buttons.

Logical fallacy #8:

Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).

I'm sure she's a very nice lady, but your wife is not a valid sample group.

How long have you worked computer technical support? Unless you're in a specialized support field, you will constantly get people confused by the concept of "right click" vs. "left click" when you try to give direction to them. A new user may right click a couple times when they first use a computer, but all they see is a big scary box filled with crazy words, not a context-specific list of commands. They then learn not to hit that side of the mouse and forget about it completely.

a continual repeat of Caliph Omar's infamous command to burn the books of the Library of Alexandria because "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."

One of the master meme plagues of western civilization is the supposed story of the burning of the library of Alexandria. IIRC, Carl Sagan waxed most eloquent about that supposed disaster. Edward Gibbon, to my mind the greatest historian and prosidist the Anglosphere has yet produced, recounts the story in Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs -- Part VII of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius.

The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians -- the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel.

Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity.

For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact is indeed marvelous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria. The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mohammedan casuists, they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mohammed; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials.

I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own defense, or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. But if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes,

I wonder how you would classify Edison, with 1368 patents to his name but no formal scientific pedagogy.

A lot of scientists incorporate & turn into businessman/scientist - eg Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Stephen Wolfram ( Founder of Mathematica ), Dr. R & Dr. A ( invented the RSA cryptographic scheme, Carl Sagan, and a whole lot of people in biotech.

The skillsets to be both seem conflicting - businessmen need a Machiavellical sense of brutal realism, while scientists are pursuing truths in the gentler idealic realm of Plato.

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius.

The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians -- the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel.

Since the "Dynasties" of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity.

For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact is indeed marvelous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria. The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mohammedan casuists, they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mohammed; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials.

I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own defense, or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. But if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind.

Now go back and read that quote again. That's right. Edward Gibbon says it did not happen.

Here's a link to the box set on the carlsagan.com website.

I suspect that most anyone would research this themselves before running some nine-volts in series and buying some siver wire, but this is as universally considered hookum as homeopathy, and in large enough doses, possibly dangerous.

Research it for yourself, though - don't listen to random idiots on the internet (me or Mike the AC) about medical advice.

(Keep your Carl Sagan Baloney Detector in hand, because there's plenty to detect!)

One of the episodes of Carl Sagan's Cosmos series dealt with long distance space travel and showed examples of proposed starship design and the Orion was one of them. He, of course, had to insert one of his typical comments about how that would be a much better use for nuclear technology than bombs, but the episode is worth watching anyhow.

It seems ludicrous to imagine that a spaceship could ascend into orbit and beyond by riding the impulses produced by a series of external atomic explosions.

I wish that submitters would really refrain from inserting their own editorial comments and judgements in the stories they submit. Cosmos was aired over two decades ago. So the idea for Orion did not seem ludicrous to me. Couldn't this guy just comment on the book instead of making a guess as to how knowledgable the entire slashdot community is on starship design?

GMD

Eratosthenes accurately estimated the diameter and circumference of the earth with a stick. That's beauty.

Quite right. This beautiful experiment is explained and recreated in Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. Not only that, but Eratosthenes did this many years Before Christ. By the time that Christopher Columbus petitioned the royal court for funding for three ships to sail westward from Portugal to India, scientists already knew the circumference of the earth pretty damn well. Well enough to know there was no way in hell Columbus would ever make it. But in 1492 -- and this is still true today, unfortunately -- the intelligent advice of scientists was disregarded by the rulers were blinded by visions of wealth and power and the Queen funded Columbus' journey. Turns out, unbeknownst to anyone, that Columbus' ass was saved because there was a land mass closer than halfway. Columbus decided that since he had sailed west to get to India, and ran into some land, had indeed reached India and proclaimed the inhabitants Indians -- a misnomer which exists to this day.

Although Eratosthenes was a true genius the world hails Christopher Columbus as a hero even though his accomplishment was sheer accident. What does this tell you about how the world views science and scientists?

GMD

Here is the co-organisers (Planetary Society) website (deeplinked to avoid crappy flash front page). It's done in conjunction with Cosmos Studios.

There is much more in-depth information and some pictures on both of those sites.

The Cosmos DVD set is produced and distributed by Cosmos Studios, Inc and from what I can tell is not related to any of the major motion picture studios that make up the MPAA. Maybe you can explain how purchasing these DVDs will support the MPAA?

Besides that the set is Region 0 encoded, meaning it will play on any DVD player from any region. Very cool and definitely holds true to one of the main themes of the series - We are one world.

While buying this will not put money in the pockets of the MPAA, it will put money in the pockets of Cosmos Studios, which is committed to producing quality science programs, that can educate and excite the layperson. And 10% of the sales from carlsagan.com will go to the Carl Sagan Foundation.

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I have not purchased a DVD player yet. I probably won't for some time. I have chosen not to with what is going on with DeCSS and all. Still, the complete collection of COSMOS on DVD makes me drool...

I must admit I got a little laugh at the CD though:
All of the Cosmos favorites, including Vangelis, Pachelbel, Louis Armstrong, Mozart, Synergy, Hovhannes, Pink Floyd, Holst, Yamaguchi, Stravinsky, and many others. Specially composed music by Vangelis and Boydsten not available elsewhere.

I mean come on, what was Sagan smoking when he chose those... Errr. Never mind. (Ok, bad joke :)

On another note I will take this little slashdot moment to promote what is IMO Sagan's greatest book: The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark. If you have not read it, you should.