Slashdot Mirror

It is normally do the fact that most people think that everyone else is smarter then them.

I would like to point out that even with an Arecibo style array on a truely large scale ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=219#more-219 ) you loose TV broadcasts about before reaching the edge of even local space. I doubt our Russian friend has a big enough signal to do much harm. It most likely comes down to the fact that if anyone can get here we loose already.

Personly, I like the Alistair Reynolds solution to the Fermi paradox, what with the galactic wheel and the wolves and all that.

Tis more fun anyway, plus we win in the end!

This one freaks the shit out of me for some reason. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=53

Eh? Ever heard of the natural nuclear reactors at Oklo? http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=98 for more information. Maybe less concentrated by nature now, as we don't see any of those presently, but it was indeed concentrated at one point.

I think you are talking about risk compensation.

I don't see how that applies here. Radiation, in relatively small doses, may not cause death. But radiation sickness is some pretty nasty stuff.

I don't really find parent that "Funny" - The general code really was 00000000 until 1977 (and probably still the same on individual devices, until much later).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_369/ai_n6142131
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=167
http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm

Check out this link about Unskilled and Unaware. It's really interesting, and has some numbers and research to back up your points :)

The link in question is here.

You might be interested to know that there has been research in the past (abandoned now AFAIK) into ballistic orbital insertion of satellites. Maybe they should've used a trebuchet....

Imagine hooking this up to something like what Nikola Tesla tried to invent in the early 1900s. Free world power on a natural electrical grid. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=703

When did dickish corporate behavior become the new standard?

My question is, why are corporations in certain sectors almost invariably dickish while corporations in other sectors aren't? Lack of competition may be necessary, but it isn't sufficient. Intel and AMD are a duopoly but they're both constantly producing better and cheaper products. My tentative theory is that when companies are selling ongoing services rather than products, they see much more opportunity to try to control you and nickel and dime you at every turn. They count on people's tendency to use hyperbolic discounting and focus on short term benefits (e.g. "free" phones) rather than long term costs.

god, i just love this marker system.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=160

I'm no computer security expert but I do know of the world's most unhackable firewall -- it's called a one inch air gap. Put that gap between the network cable and the NIC and nobody is gaining access.

Yes, I know power plants will require some net access for web, email, etc. But the office worker network and the command and control computers and network for the generators should have nothing to do with each other! Separate systems, no network connectivity, the plant software should be operating in a vacuum bubble. The rest of the world should not exist for it, no way, no how. Oh, need to install a patch for the software? After being thoroughly tested and vetted on a proofing system, the software is then installed the old-fashioned way, off of CD-ROM's. Now if someone can fuck with the CD-ROM's, THAT I can understand. I can buy the plausibility of the NSA printer hack, even if it was a hoax. (NSA puts a virus on printers heading to Iraq, takes down their network.) The story about the CIA sabotaging software for equipment the Russians were buying to use in their pipelines is true. These are secure systems completely cut off from external contact that were sabotaged by the insertion of compromised components that were not detected. That makes perfect sense.

It always bothers me when I see movies showing hackers getting in to some place and gaining access to files on servers that should never have a connection to the outside world. Then again, maybe I'm giving the fictional syadmins of the target systems too much credit. Who knows, maybe next week we'll read about some Korean hackers who were able to compromise a Minuteman silo and add it to their botnet.

Actually, it's been tried: One Small Step For Mail.

For the reasons you would expect, it didn't catch on.

The Farewell Dossier.

In 1982, operatives from the USSR's Committee for State Security- known internationally as the KGB- celebrated the procurement of a very elusive bit of Western technology. The Soviets were developing a highly lucrative pipeline to carry natural gas across the expanse of Siberia, but they lacked the software to manage the complex array of pumps, valves, turbines, and storage facilities that the system would require. The United States possessed such software, but the US government had predictably turned down their Cold War opponent's request to purchase the product.

Never ones to allow the limitations of the law to dictate their actions, the KGB officials inserted an agent to abduct the technology from a Canadian firm. Unbeknownst to the Soviet spies, the software they stole sported a little something extra: a few lines of computer code which had been inserted just for them.

I wonder if this be subject to Benford's Law? http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=210 Namely that the most common first digit will be one, two will be the next most common first digit, then three and so on. Apparently this happens with random numbers pulled from real life.

"Inside the cells, the culprit seems to be in the mitochondria, which is the cell's power plant where sugar and oxygen are converted to usable energy. Mitochondria are also responsible for apoptosis-the organized, controlled self-destruction of a cell. Normally apoptosis occurs in situations such as the cell being damaged beyond repair, infected by a virus, an attempt to prevent cancer, or aiding in initial tissue development. The process effectively kills and dismantles the cell allowing the body's usual waste management functions to carry the cell's remains away. For reasons not entirely clear, reperfusion triggers apoptosis-the oxygen intended to save the cell actually causes cellular suicide."

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=860#more-860

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=384

In other news, the rest of the world released a huge sigh of relief as the Doomsday Clock was turned back. A spokesman for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was quoted as saying "A Starcraft MMO could have ended it all. We may never know how close we came to the complete and utter destruction of society as we know it."

• Robert Heinlein
  
• Alfred Korzybski
  
• General Semantics
  
• Aristotlian Logic
  
• Martin Gardner
  
• Mathematical Games
  
• Soma Cube
  
• Pentomino
  
• Solved Games
  
• Endgame Tablebase
  
• Computer Chess
  
• Kasprov and this famous matchup
  

Just for those who are interested more ... http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=834

His spoon covered cadillac, however, is laughable.

For an easier reading about human exposure in space, check out Damn Interesting's article. It's the same facts as the NASA link but written with the idea that you don't need everything phrased in the form of a question and answer.

Why did I think of this after reading this?

In related news, there is also a plan to free the world from tooth decay by introducing a GM strain of mouth bacteria that out-competes existing strains yet doesn't produce the acids which damage teeth. It's an interesting technique with a lot of promise, but also a lot of risk.

A few months ago I was wondering how deep mankind has drilled, and found some interesting stuff. Basically, you should read "barely" as "didn't".

As always, when you think something's easy (make_small_hole(); while(1) { make_hole_deeper(); } ), it's just because your ignorance doesn't let you appreciate the problems, like the extreme temperature and pressure. For example, I didn't realize that the pressure compresses the rocks and when you drill a hole that deep, the rocks around it want to expand, causing engineering nightmares.

And while measuring the straightness of a hole seems quite doable (or put otherwise, I accept the assumption that there exists technology to do that), I still wonder how they can adjust the drilling direction.

Fascinating!

The deepest hole ever drilled by human is "only" 12,6 km deep. Both links are a fascinating reading.

It's the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which was drilled from 1962 till 1994 to gather information about Earth structure. The drilling was stopped because the temperature rose too high (and the walls started deforming under the enormous pressure). They also had to make several branches because of that.

Today, the deepest hole ever created by humankind lies beneath the tower enclosing Kola's drill. A number of boreholes split from the central branch, but the deepest is designated "SG-3," a hole about nine inches wide which snakes over 12.262 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Earth's crust. The drill spent twenty-four years chewing its way to that depth, until its progress was finally halted in 1994, about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) short of its 15,000-meter goal.

Meow! http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=636 Not quite the same, but about as funny, if not funnier than chinese pigeon dive-crappers.

There's a classic case of Gage Phineas ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=231 ), for example. And a lot of cases in WWI and WWII with personality-changing head injuries.

If a nuclear missile could be launched with the push of one button, it probably would've happened. Good thing the missiles require several keys, codes, and such like.

Or maybe they do not. Or did not.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=167

(Yes, I have read the comments there.)

massive hotel that couldn't be finished...

That would be the Ryugyong Hotel. You can witness the folly of North Korea yourself via Google Maps. If you look closely you can see the crane stuck at the top of the hotel (it looks like a minute hand pointing to 5 o'clock). More amusing hotel trivia at the expense of fat lil' Kim can be found here.

After reading some of the responses, I come away amazed at how many people get their politics from a poorly written science fiction novel. A pyramid of chumps that get fed a slurry of entertainment and spin to be vomited out on cue.

Yes. There's an evil conspiracy of scientists and ecofreaks that are dead set against you eating eagle burgers while driving your Hummer with your feet.

Hmmm. Scientific process vs the profit motive of a company. Which has a better history of integrity? Tough call.

...he didn't do it by taking apart a bunch of smoke detectors.

Included are such gems as "American students are much more confident about their math abilities than Singaporean students" and "But even the least confident student in Singapore outscores the most confident American student!" Food for thought.

Prediction 1. Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria.

I'd wager the average geek is smarter than 'average'.

This might very well be the case. But maybe it doesn't matter so much since everyone regard themselves above average anyhow, even when they are unskilled (link and link)?

It's not a nuke.

Compare the purported "nukular test":
http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/telemetry_d ata/INCN_24hr.html

Notice how long this lasts.

To a _real_ nuclear test
http://can-ndc.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/980528_e.php

See Operation Acoustic Kitty

Even though to a first approximation they are always wrong, I have a lot of sympathy for the conspiracy theorists. Almost no matter how outlandish the scheme, it seems, someone somewhere has tried something similar for real, so in a way you really can't blame people for being paranoid.

Raising and slaughtering humans for consumption at the dinner table is inhumane and I will not tolerate it any more!

It has been 6 years this month that I stopped eating human meats.

If anyone else wants to join this boycott of human flesh consumption, I would like to suggest that you try some HuFu - The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative.

There's actually an article about this on www.damninteresting.com that I read a couple of days ago. It discusses many of the issues involved in growing meat. Here's the link:

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=66

Damn Interesting ran an article last year about NASA research into vat-grown meat for long space journeys. It points out that "meat developed in this way is essentially a cultured muscle tumor", and so isn't very appetizing:

"... one has to wonder whether these meat machines will become the source of cheap meat for the massive underclass of the future. The rich will dine on corn-fed Iowa beef while the poor masses slave away in the underground factories, lunching on cultured meat tumor-chow laced with obedience-enhancing drugs. It seems almost inevitable.

The barren tunnels outside Wakahachie, Texas house a testament to the U.S. attempt:

America's Discarded Superconducting Supercollider:

Anyone know what the total cost will be? The U.S. version was supposed to top $US 8 billion, and I saw something about a U.S. government grant of $US 500 million in the late 90s. Curious to know if there were lessons learned and if the approach wound up making more fiscal sense.

&laz;

There's an easy way!

Horrified, LeMessurier fled to his island hideaway on Sebago Lake to refine the findings and consider his options. Because he faced possible litigation, bankruptcy, and professional disgrace he contemplated suicide, but he was struck with the realization that he held the information to initiate extraordinary events which could save thousands of lives. The following day he started making phone calls.

As for LeMessurier, the executives at Citicorp asked no more than the $2 million his insurance policy covered, despite the fact that the repairs alone cost over $8 million. It is generally thought that his forthrightness so impressed the executives that they decided to keep their lawyers at bay. It is clear that it takes a lot of character to admit one's own mistakes, but in accepting responsibility for this flaw and then leading the repair effort, the character shown by William J. LeMessurier was nothing short of heroic.

This one isn't quite on topic, but it keeps with the mood... Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom

this disaster involved a couple morons on a drilling rig in a lake forgetting to carry the two, hitting a mineshaft, and draining the whole lake and part of the gulf of mexico into the mine, along with several ships, etc etc.

Sure, it's been done before.

With dogs?

The tendency of the average person to believe he or she is better-than-average is known as the "above-average effect," and it flies in the face of logic... by definition, it is impossible for a majority of people to be above average. The more incompetent someone is in a particular area, the less qualified that person is to assess anyone's skill in that space, including their own. Here is the summary of the study. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=406

From the article: more than 20-year-old DOD security policies

So that would put it in the early 1980s... but in the 60s and 70s, the missile launch passwords were all "00000000" (also see here).