Slashdot Mirror
Time Travelers' Convention
usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."
But will John Titor be invited?
Let me just hop in my delorean, and I'll be there in 5 minutes.
I was near MIT.
Utinam me logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
We all know what happens when people travel back in time and change the past. We've seen the Back to the Future series.
So if there IS ever a time-traveler's convention, it will be held at some point in the future AFTER time travel has been perfected.
But I couldn't figure out where those coordinates posted. Would you mind pointing out where you are at the moment in your galactic and solar orbits relative to a few quasars, please?
Why didn't they set the date for yesterday? That way we wouldn't have to wait to see if it was successful.
I already tired something like that back in computer programming class. I added a message box that would pop up when ever any of my programs started telling people to travel back in time to the last day of class and where the room was located. It didn't work.
hmm...things to remember:
1. if a time travel came back in time and altered the past, no one would know but him/her.
2. it is impossible to prove that our recorded history now is the same as it was 1 second ago due to rule number 1.
3. You may be caught in a temporal causality loop, doomed forever to repeat the same period of time over and over.
4. If time is an expression of entropy, then the only way to travel through time is to prefectly reverse entropy, which is impossible because, iirc, entropy is chaotic.
5. If the universe is nonlinear, or rather, linear is an illusion, then there is no past or future to travel to, but only the present wich exists at any instant as a snapshot in the cascade towards greater entropy.
6. The universe is moving towards a state of pure heat, at which time entropy will cease, as all engery, which drives entropy, will have been used. if you intend to travel through time by altering the universe around you, then you can not go past this point, or ever return. if you time travel by using internal independent means, then you may travel past this point, but you would no longer have any external means of measuring the passage of time in the universe. To time travel through external means you must increase the general entropy of the universe such that all events happen faster outside your time machine. to travel through time internaly you must slow down your own entropy. in both instances you must phase away from the universe such that you do not exist in it, lest you collide with something going faster than you can percieve.
7 If time is a seperate dimension then you must find a way to travel in the direction that is forwards or backwards from where you are now. 4 dimensional travel occurs at a steady, measurable rate. As you approach the speed of light, this rate of passage decreases. Thus, it is logical to assume that by exceeding the speed of light in our universe of spacetime you would travel backwards in time.
8. You may be your own great great grandparent.
9. If you change your own past you can not go back to your own future to reap the benifits because the new future would have a new you to match it.
10. Journeyman Project is t3h roxors!!!!!
They should plan out all the conferences in advance for the next 10,000 years, like the freemasons did in 5000 b.c.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
youve gotta love those mit guys and their uncanny study avoidance manouevres
It was great.
I went, and let me tell you, it will have been a blast!
For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT
Oh, I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these days.
create a history of "time-traveller" friendly events and someday, who knows, we may meet a time-traveller .
Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!"
But if it gets popular, theyll run out of space pretty quick.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
if someone were to travel back in time and come to this event, they would be present, wouldn't they?
So if there is no one present from the future theoretically we never figure out how to transend time.
Or they don't care enough about this period of time
That any of the participents aren't time travellers themselves!?!?
I went to it last year, it wasn't anything special.
Will there be parking for Time Traveling Phone Booths? If so... then whoa, dude. I'm like totally already there, man.
It wasn't all that great. I might not show up next time (i.e. in your "future").
Noise Is Music Podcast.
The place will be full of dozens of idiots dressed in spandex and insisting thet they come from the future.
This event is co-sponsored by Bellevue??
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?
Personally I would have thought it'd make sense to give a bit more advanced notice than a week, if only to give people a chance to get the word around more beforehand (thus more likely to be archived).
When I'm a time traveller, I'm only going to come back in the morning, that way I get the whole day ahead of me...
I'm a time traveller. Unfortunately, you can't tell, because I travel through time with the help of an angel and an invisible lech, and the process causing me to appear identical to someone in the time I'm travelling to.
Hold on, I have to go get this Erik kid married to his one true love.
Oh boy.
all the wackey fun we could have with a load of seasoned time travellers........
someone could bring einstein along, we could have hitler poised above a dunk tank, we could finally get some conlcusive evidence on the whole religion vs science debacle....
It could be a ruse... the organizers may be stranded time travellers trying to send a message to the future to get rescued now. It may not be a genuine convention, but rather a lifeboat technique for the Insiders.
While this is a great idea, wouldn't it be better to create, say, a magnetic anamoly on the moon and place, say, a black monolith?
After all isn't the earth a bit fragile for this sort of thing?
I belong to this: http://www.timetravelfund.com/
Actually, I didn't read the article before I posted that so it makes no sense. I'm on glue, sorry. I did write the directions on a piece of paper and buried it in my backyard in a piece of PVC pipe with 2 end caps and a packet of silica gel.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Sounds kind of nerdy... er... I might be a little late....
Esoteric reference.
It kinda sucked. Just a bunch of slashdot readers. I don't think I will go this year. Maybe next year after more people hear about it....
So, we only need to make this ad an ad that will be remembered for all of eternity in 1 week.
Let me suggest that you advertise it using a laser light show pointed at the moon.
(Was it Pepsi that considered doing this until it decided that it would piss off most of the planet?)
Anyway, the global uproar should be big enough that at least someone will remember.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
Being the Veteran of the Bermuda Exploration Venture 1991-1953 this was really nice event to meet some members of our crew we thought we lost. Plenty thanks for great people in MIT for this heart breaking event.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
to find parking in time for the convention.
Its gonna be boring. But the after party they're planning last year kicked ass.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
...watch out for guys wearing leather jackets and sunglasses, asking for "Sarah Connor".
http://maps.google.com/?sll=42.360007%2C-071.08787 0
If a time traveler chose to come back to such conference, he/she would obviously come to the first one, as that of the most historic importance. If the first conference was held and none have shown up, this implies that time travelers are, alas, not going to come at all. Not necessarily that time travel is ultimately impossible, but it may be forbidden for some reasons.
On the other hand, all this thing smells faintly of Douglas Adams. Parties come to mind, bricks and don't.
You could have a Time Traveler supply booth running there:
- Legit costumes for whatever era. WW2 uniform, peasant outfit, etc
- Monetary exchange: buy/sell money from different eras, at varying rates. You will always need money(depending on the time)
- Fake IDs. Going back 20 years? get an ID 20 years prior to your birthday
- Fake license plates. Travelling in an old car back to an earlier time? Get "legit" license plates that are either from the same car, or just some convincing out-of-state plates.
WARNING: Management is not responsible to disruptions in history.
The sales possibilities are endless.
some of the speeches were really amazing. i especially loved the talk about hyper-relativity given by the guy from Olympus Mons U's department of temporal aesthetics.
the snacks were a little anemic, though. i would have hoped the food planning to be a little better.
but definitely a worthy event. glad i went.
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
Anyone else find it amusing that the quote at the bottom of /. is currently from Kurt Vonnegut? :)
You are not the customer.
Even if someone time travelled into the past for a few seconds, wouldn't they wind up in the icy cold of space while the planet speeds along on its normal course around the sun?
[o]_O
First, I thought: "Wow. That would be a great idea for a book." Then I remembered The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
you're from the past and wish to attend?
They left out the present elevation of MIT, thereby ensuring future time travellers will AVOID the convention, since they will instantly recognize it as a clever trick by the Morlocks, dwelling deep in their underground lair!
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
There are 2 scenarios:
1) nobody will come from the future. We'll notice that on the convention, so nobody will market this activity anymore. Nobody of the future will know about the event, so nobody will come (We already knew that).
2) somebody will come. We'll notice that on the convention, but as we are all humans, nobody will market this activity after a year of so as we all are lazy bastards. Nobody of the future will know about the event, so nobody will come. This is impossible, so either we should rule out this scenario, ore else the universe will crash, god will notice the BSOD (A lot of our mad world is explained if you assume it runs under windows) , get mad, install linux/BSD or just buy a mac. Either way, our little souls will get erased from his hard drive along the way.
OK, I admit: If you are really strange, you can consider
3) they will come, but because of some time travellers limitation/regulation/... we will not be able to detect them. We are now back in scenario 1.
Haha! Thank you, "Professor Steetmentione." A "timely" joke, no less...
But it will be in an alternate universe. I will be coming back to my own time afterwards, but in yet one more alternate universe. Luckily, none of you will notice it. See ya there!
by some broke engineering students who do not have any money for booze for an end of semester party. nice touch though.
In order to minimize the odds of creating a universe destroying paradox, the meeting will be held a sealed vault, and everyone will be automatically killed and incinerated immediately after the meeting. No grandchildren, no grandfather paradox.
I dropped in on them the other day; it was totally boring; just a bunch of nerds yanking themselves. Don't know why I bothered. -Zaxxor, 2568 A.D.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
by showing up in a "Chicago Cubs World Series Champions" t-shirt.
Pshaw... everybody knows that nobody goes to these things because they are too crowded.
I attended this, there wasn't a very good turnout and the food sucked.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
So what was that disco floor thing a while back? Maybe it was they who were responsible for disco?
I wish i could make it. But my Delorean was hit by a train :/
For a universe in which time travel is possible and the past can be altered by time travelers the only stable state is one in which time travel is never invented. Work it out.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Message From: The Doctor
If only I could get my TARDIS to work properly, it never seems to go to where (or "when") I want it. Anyone seen my sonic screwdriver?
Maybe if I give it a good thump...
*REEEskrrrREEEskrrrREEEskrrr*
I'll be right there!
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Hmm, in a few thousand years, the magnetic pole may be so off that the good ol' coordinate system may be redefined / out of existence? And the plate moves, too. Not to mention the Sun zips through interstellar place to make it even more obscure about where this event actually took place?
They missed out the earths translation and rotation, translation includes the Hubble-Expansion
..
... logical breaks and plot holes,
:)
/. /. in new years eve 1999/2000 save
;)
and where went Parker when he jumped
why he doesnt get timeoverlapped
clone instances of himself (not the evil ones)
Have you ever recognized that the display
in the capsule never matched the "wooden-spoon spinning style" Parker was performing ?
What happend to this tv-show where the
timecop woke up at the Smithonian,
in another dimension (contact possible
through the newspaper archive
->
(two different dimensions one newspaper ?)
yes
and thats what common timetravelling lackes,
but thanks we are living still, we can
say
the future isnt steady! , nor the future happend,
nor has anybody performed a travel through space-time,
but there is one final border of thinking,
the happing of the future in every moment,
but in quantitative (perhaps discreet timesteps)
Planck-Time
->
hunting the evil genius (there is minimum one evil
genius everywhere!) Dr. Mordehai Zombie
when I was Duke and cleaned up D.C. and
the ATOMIC edition I must have missed them - with my RPG !
When I travel to the past, I will
fry, destroy the world and play
D&D with all of you ppl. floating around
with Al Gore !
Al Gore invented the internet !!
....It will be quite a spectacle.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
I currently plan on transversing Space-Time in order to attend this. Does that make me a Time Traveler? After all, I'll have transversed approximately 6 days time from this moment to arrive there on time.
We would have loved to attend your function, but time travel is very expensive. So we went some place cool instead.
..while I was at college.
Unfortunately, it devolved into YAKP (yet another keg party), instead. I had a hard time keeping my fellow collegians motivated and committed towards the party's original theme and goals.
That, plus we actually wanted girls to attend, and we realized that girls from the present were more likely to show if we weren't actively advertising for attendees from the future.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
21st century amateurs! Let me see if I can bring this down to your level, monkey brain:
What Earth datum? What galactic reference frame? What universal reference frame? Which hyperdimensional anti-collision beacon UID? And for heaven's sake, which 4 of the many dimensions do you mean us to meet you time-spatially at? You're not providing a unique answer.
In the colloquialisms of the day: time travel isn't like dusting crops, boy.
Done that.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I have recorded the event in my journal. Someday, when it becomes the foundation of a great and powerful human civilization the likes of which no man can now comprehend the convention will be both well known and universally celebrated.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
Everytime someone speaks to me about time travel, I always shrug it off as being possible, but where would the earth be ?
travelling even a few hours or minutes into time also means the earth has changed position many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of miles.
It's pointless giving a reference to the lab in MIT, you really need a reference to where the earth is now !
Why do people overlooks this simple, but obvious fact ?
It sucked.
Food was awful and the hotdogs cost eight dollars. The only high point was meeting the First World President - when he offerred to supersize my meal I almost fainted!
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
you don't want Coop, Jamie and Kiva to appear in their giant robot (specially with Coop on the driver's seat).
So what happens if all these time travellers materialise in the same location and time?
42.360007,-071.087870 is very precise - on the order of 10 cm if I've done my (very quick) sums right.
A good way to kill off any future time travellers.
But then, you'd like to think that anyone who's mastered time travel will realise this and appear at some offset location. Otherwise the outcome will surely be a catastrophic rift in the very fabric of space and time itself!
Don't go, it's boring.
wanted to talk about was how they wished they had gone to CalTech.
I will not be going back last year!
There's no need to publicize it beforehand. If no time travelers attend, there's no need to publicize it at all, since it would do no good. It seems like even the organizers of the event have no real understanding of what time travel to the past implies.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This time around it was pretty boring. The highlight was when Scott Mc'Neal kicked over the punch bowl shouting 'Cowboy Neal Rocks', I have to say not many girls attended and it pretty much verified the fact that even geeks in the future are still un-appealing to the members of the opposite sex. Hopefully next year it will be better.
...the party's not all that great, and there's hardle any chicks.
why would a time-traveller choose present time to reveal time-travelling is possible. may be in an another 200-300 years when there is less turmoil and people as a whole are not as selfish.
i would still show up for the beer though.
Let's see... a series of parties being planned by the kind of guys who are obsessed with things like time travel. Yeah, sounds like a blast. It's pretty much a given that there won't be any females around.
#DeleteChrome
"and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers" Surely they'll all come to it at the same point?
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
I'm too busy. I might have time to squeeze it in after I retire though.
By the way, great idea. Make it as popular as possible so that everybody materializes all at once in the same place in a bloody mess. That's why we can't find any evidence of time travelers. They all died at the time-traveler's convention.
This definitely goes under 'you might be a geek if...'
...
Are we going to get a dupe of this in two weeks?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I'm granting the validity of the premise here (I don't think it is arguable that you can't travel in time, I don't think the premise is provable one way or the other), but he should have started publicizing this last April, not wait until a week or two before the event, or start publicizing it less than two weeks before it happens.
I am, of course, reminded of the humorous tag line, "The seminar on time travel will be held last week."
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
...until it's canceled for "administrative reasons."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
What if I'm late?
I think "Time is an illusion" is an easier way to say it. If you have a picture you and a friend are looking at, and he wonders if the right side can ever travel to the left side and modify things, you'd wonder what he was talking about. I would argue that time is like that: static if viewed from enough dimensions, available for observation (in theory) as one massive N dimensional statue.
If you were really a time traveler, why would you want to show up at a known place on a known date? The government would be waiting with an awesome arsenal of firepower, waiting to forcefully take your tools from you.
Or if you're the big-business conspiracy theory type, substitute "government" for "private mercenaries."
What's your damage, Heather?
So if no one during this convention reveals him/herself to be the time traveler from the future we can be absolutely positively sure that time travel does (will) not ever exist!
If it were, US Patent #1 would be for a time machine. :)
Did the guy who came back in time to play the market show up at the party ? I read about some guy put less than $1000 into the stock market ran it up to over 800 million in 6 weeks, was arrested, and claimed he was from the future, never heard anything else about him, which got me thinking......
Due to the incredible density of the, still unknown alloys, the Area 51 team had to leave the wreckage in place. It was spray painted black and the cover story of it being campus outdoor art concocted.
Other attempts to move or otherwise camouflage the wreckage over the years have been attempted.
The hope is that the temporal verion of AAA will show up at the convention and finally remove the eyesore.
don't bother, it was just a bunch of party animals from the year 3131
go to next years, it's bigger n better
Words to men, as air to birds.
So... Assuming someone develops a means of travelling back in time, the first event they'll consider travelling back in time to witness will be an MIT party? Whee. I know the semester is wrapping up, but jesus, that's delusional.
It all makes sense: Inside a black hole, time almost stands still for the ones inside if somebody from outside could watch, ergo the time outside as observed from the inside is passing close to infinitely fast. /. greatly accelerates hardware decay outside of its event horizon, in servers as well as in the unlucky guy that has to pay the provider bill (gray hair, wrinkles, hunched back).
The massive bandwidth-black hole that is
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Everyone, quick! Print out this article and bury it in a bombproof box in your backyard!
but tell them to get better beer, oh wait they did. Nevermind
Since there tend to be quite a few better informed people reading and posting on here, I thought I would ask a question that has been bugging me.
I thought the first law of thermodynamics was that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Given this, I assumed traveling backwards in time would be impossible since the person or object going back in time would be introducing "extra" energy into a period of time. For example, say I went back into time, either if I was alive during this time or previous to it, wouldn't the energy that I take up/am made of be accounted for already? And wouldn't introducing the quantity of energy I was made of break the aforementioned first law of thermodynamics?
I had actually just started thinking about this again after watching the movie Primer. I would really appreciate people with a lot better understanding of the sciences involved responding.
Any chance I could meet some hot girls there?
That's year 4053 your time.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
... i was in the future and it was to late to RSVP
"Van Wilder? This is your cousin Marvin. You know that new party you've been looking for? Well, listen to this!"
Actually Time Travel by itself is impossible.
:-)
Says who?
The point being that the rest of your post isn't worth reading if you start off with an unsubstantiated statement.
"awesome arsenal of firepower"
Compare a Cherokee warrior to a fully equipped Royal Marine....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The after convention party would be a bit of a fizzer.
Bouncer: "Can I see some ID sir?"
Time traveller: "Sure"
Bouncer: "Sorry sir, you need to be over 21, according to your ID you are -62 years old"
Read reviews of shopping cart software
It's happening here
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'm hungry. I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.
... when it goes backwards. at least i think it does (this is a very vague recollection). something to do with split light beams and what not, or it may be in "a brief history of time."
Just ask Joan of Ark. Noah's wife.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
...all I found where these incredibly silly primitive types who actually thought time travel was interesting. It's so yesterday..... I even went to see Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy, now that guy..How the heck did he know so much? There is a rumor that he' a time traveller by the way.
Well they certainly didn't allow themselves much time for this task.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Aren't time trave;;ers likely to be more interested in important or spectacular events, like the crash of the space shuttle, the hindenberg, titanic, the surrender of japan at the end of WWII, and so on.
Don't go. It was boring so a bunch of us went to ancient Babylonia for the invention of beer.
Ok.
I didn't get it, can someone explain?
Is this just you saying that history changed... or is this something from a movie, or what?
Basically a time travel movie where they figure out if they sit in this box running a device they invented, they go back in time about the same as long as they sit in there. Gets into the whole seeing yourself do things and trying to outsmart your future self. Pretty cool, check it out.
.. those 'rapture' idiots, trying to force the second coming with their phony wars, and 'cremation of care' ceremonies, and all that ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Don't they need the coordinates of Earth relative to the "beginning of time" in order to reach the place? Otherwise there may be a cluster of Slashdotters from the future leaving a small trail of freeze-dried corpses in Earth's wake.
So.. if no real time travelers show up to the convention, could that possibly infer that the knowledge of the convention was lost whenever the end of humanity came?
That's it! Proof that we will be extinct... before we invent time travel! drats.
I seem to remember a bunch of researchers carefully checked attendance figures at major events (such as the Red Sox winning the World Series) against the predictions, and they didn't find any discrepancy to indicate that people might be travelling back from the future to see it.
So maybe at some point in the future, it becomes a crime to go back in time to attend specific events where you could be spotted, eg this time traveller convention.
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
Only 6 people even botherd to show.. Skip it. G~
If global warming (ok, or an asteroid) wasn't going to destroy all like on earth in the next 100 years, we would have already met time travellers. Humans never had time to invent time travel. Doh!
..why didn't you get first post?
If I had an illustrious time-traveling career, I'd probably be able to think of a lot of better places to be than hanging around an MIT courtyard. Unless the yet-to-be-discovered laws of temporal travel includes an unfortunate law for the conservation of boredom, of course.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
... Easter Island's stone heads.
Lasting for 10,000 years, they offer a language-independent warning of what you felt like the morning after.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Making fun of the misspelling.
Nobody ever talks about "Mr. Hitler", but when referring to some random male by last name, you'd say something like "Mr. Hilter".
One little detail people NEVER consider when talking about time traveling.
Let's say you can time travel.
Let's say you come back from 50 years from now to this event.
You missed the earth by several million miles and are now effectively spaced.
The earth moves people. So does the solar system. So does the galaxy!
Even if you could travel through time if you couldn't manipulate where you came out you'd be boned.
Question everything
The only sad truth to emerge from this entire convention... There aren't any women in the future.
FOr example, it occurs on april 1, and everyone is required to wear a mask. That way no matter what you said about the future there would be enough kooks at the meeting making prognostications that yours would be indistinguishable at the time. The masks would prevent the contemporary kooks from being identified and thus the future folk identified by process of elimination.
perhaps everyone could be issued a time-coded hash key, so they could prove to the people of their own (future) time period that they had been there.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Actually, it's a reference to a Monty Python sketch where Hitler and Himmler stay in an boarding house under the assumed names of "Mr. Hilter" (sic) and "Mr. Bimmler".
Will they each step on a ceremonial butterfly?
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode12.htm
Not to mention "Ron Vibbentrop" and "Mr. MacGoering".
But you still can be your own great great grandparent.
Rethinking email
I would've RSVP'd but it was too late, for I was already in the future.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
I promise that in every work I ever publish, I will include the information about this convention. Also, this will conclusively prove that I will never invent a time machine. Because when I do, I intend to come directly back to the convention. Look for me, I'll be wearing futuristic garb, advertising a futuristic corporation by the name of, "MacroScotch" and I'll be drinking...
42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees
"decimal degrees?" But we haven't used that system since... oh wait.
I'd give the link, but it's in the future.
...then if anyone does travel back in the future to attend the conference, they will be here when it occurs the first time. Call me crazy, but I believe that things happen only once in time...
I actually found a msg I posted over 15 years ago on a BBS in some usenet archive.
Privacy is terrorism.
Because the government won't take it seriously and won't show up (or rather, "didn't" -- you know that because you're from the future).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I would go, but my tardis is on the fritz.. *kicks* ah there we are.
But what you could do is slip into an alternate universe which is exactly like ours, only 60 years behind. Once there you could kill Hitler and alter History... but only in THAT copy of the Universe.
Where are referenced Universe instances when you need them?
I want to go to this, but I'm busy when it's on.
Guess I'll just have to try and make it to last year's convention instead.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I'm a firm supporter of the parallel time theory. To elabourate:
Every possible instance of history has happened and is happening, simulatenously and infinitely. It's like billions and billions of points, forking from each other with motion of every molecule.
1) You can't disrupt it, because any possible scenario is already being applied somewhere. Even if you change things, you've simply moved current events to an alternate path--the original one is still progressing transparently.
2) You can't eliminate your own future or past, because your instance of "you" is created by a series of events that will continue to exist. When you go forward again, you'll wind up right back where you left.
Sure, it's full of holes. Science fiction (or semi-fact or hypothesis or whatever) is like that. Putting stock in theory derived primarily from a Christopher Lloyd movie is futile.
It's not the voices in my head that annoy me. It's the psychosies they invite over for parties that annoy me.
He wouldn't be around to decide whether or not to go back in time and do her.
Obviously, he went back in time. Pervert.
Or it would've been, if all those time travelling bastards hadn't gone back and posted before me.
Most likely, a time travel path would be along a line of freefall (geodesic). ie. Imagine if you could fall through the ground, wobbling back and forth from one side of the planet to the other.
For any given initial velocity, there would only be certain periodic times when you *wouldn't* end up inside the planet. And the position on the planet where you come out would also be problematic. If you're not satisfied with those precise times and places, then you can adjust your velocity a tad, to get another set of options.
If you're in orbit then you have much less to worry about.
May 7, 2005?
Been there, done that....
exactly 31556925.9747 seconds in time, and you will show up in exactly the same place you left, albeit a year before.
Multiply by how ever many years you want to go back, and pray there isn't some sort of obstruction that you might beam into.
While they are careful to provide the exact location of the convention relative to the current location in time of planet Earth, that spot moves through our relative space in time like a 3D spirograph gear.
On the day of the convention, point your telescope roughly toward Orion, and you might be lucky enough to make out a central cluster with a long looping trail of time traveller bodies popping into space and exploding in vacuum at the approximate coordinate where Earth will be when time travel is discovered int he future.
I stopped by the convention last week, but there weren't enough attractive girls and the beer was flat. I left after about 30 minutes for a party that was really flying.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Compare 20,000 Zulu warriors to 2,000 fully equipped royal soldiers. Compare a force of about 1700 Lakota warriors to a force of a little under 800 US Infantry and Cavalry. Sometimes the best armed group doesn't win, if the force with superior firepower is surprised, and the technologies aren't too far apart.
This is where it started. A couple of Sullibans attended (they really are party animals once you get to know them), but unfortunatley one present-time Enterprise fan thought they were just other geeks in a costume and poured his beer over their heads.
That kinda sparked it, really. We told Bermann that showing history programmes before the events actually happened was really not a good idea, especially given how his documentaries polarise against de Sulliban but that's Rick for you. When he was a kid, he showed the moon landing to Jules Verne, who was rather impressed.
But no worries about the Temporal Cold War. Admiral Daniels will be dispatching Archer to stop the party from happening, thus preventing the onset of the war. Some of you present-timers might actually look forward to this, as it will result in the purging of all Temporal Cold War references from the documentaries Bermann has slipped into your time.
Shame about the party though. It really was a good laugh. Well... would have been.
If a time machine uncouples itself with the current time, wouldn't the planet spin away from it in its orbit? You might turn up at the right time, but in the wrooooong place.
...great beer buttoo many geeks and some guy with a birdcage on his head.
Compare a Cherokee warrior to a fully equipped Royal Marine....
OK, comparison made. Now compare several hundred similar Cherokee warriors to the same fully equipped Royal Marine...
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Watever everyone says, time travel is possible. The thing is you can only travel to the future and it is incredibly slow...
cuz not publicizing the event could be the reason that no one turned up!
-2A
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
If you come from the future, please bring food.
:(
Many of us are almost out of cash for the term.
Oh, and bring alcohol too.
I will have been there, eventually.
--
make install -not war
I was about to mod some posts but decided to reply to this instead. :-/
Why would anyone promote this after the date if nothing happened?
If the party was (will be?) a success, then people from the future will show. If no one shows up, It's because either:
a) We already failed at promoting it adequately, or
b) We never obtained the ability to travel through time.
Someone a few posts up best described it with: "It's just the simple fact that a thing didn't happen and your actions in trying to change the past are already part of history."
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
That's right... I'll tell them all about what the future is like... The United States has 85 states with the addition of Cuba following Castro's death, Mexico's 33 states following the Mexican Purchase, and Puerto Rico's conversion into a state.
The neverending mid-east tensions have been reduced with the joint purchase of Egypt's Sinai, which was split into two and given to Israel and the Palestinians so each have their own state. The economy of most Middle Eastern countries had all but collapsed following a major shift from oil to other forms of energy with simultaneous drilling in Alaska and increased oil production in Latin America, so after being bailed out by the United States, these countries now mass-produce superconductors for efficient delivery of electricity.
All highways are buried underground in tunnels to clean up the clutter in cities; In many areas, there are several levels of these highways. Nobody drives anymore; cars are driven by computer at speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour. A drive from Los Angeles to San Diego during rush hour takes roughly 30 minutes.
Microsoft? They make business software such as CRM, ERP, etc., but no operating systems, office suites, games, or other stuff. Had to sell it all because the alternatives kicked their ass. Longtooth was a big disappointment in light of huge advances made in Linux and the Mac.
There are two large cities on the moon, mostly used for production of cheap energy and medical drugs. There is an effort in place to build over 100 cities on Mars after discovery of large gold caches, Martian diamonds, silicon, and other materials needed for industrial and consumer use.
Chances are, they won't believe me, but I could bring pictures. Yes, I am actually from the future, but while here on a business trip (you know, dumping my stock in Microsoft and buying up tons of General Motors stock), I met the love of my life and had to move over here permanently.
'nuff said.
This year's convention was OK, but next year's was better.
I just came back after the gig and i had a great time. If you ever want to check it out, please do so.
I'm now going to the theatrical release of A New Hope, dressed as Qui-gon. I just like in-jokes.
Why would anyone promote it after the event either way? If someone shows up, is there any need for promotion? It already happened.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Yes, but where is this convention going to be in thousands of years once the continents have drifted a bit?
Think me stupid but... If we are trying to go forward and advance ourselfs, isn't it ironic how we want to go back?
Time travel either exists, or it does not. There is no question of 'having' it in a year, or not. Are any methods of traveling into the past well known in 2005, here on earth, among homo sapiens? no. By its very nature, powerful time-travel tends to be kept quiet, John Titor not withstanding.
This shocking ignorance of the basics in time-travel caused many time-travelers to scoff at the event. Nontheless, it is useful as a 'zero point' reference.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to lay down some hundred-year old wine to bring to the event.
Finally a party that my wife *can't* possibly make me late to...
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
The correct tense might be "The government troops didn't show up, so it's safe to go."
If traveling through space takes time, does traveling through time take space?
LOL. Mod parent up.
Le français vous intéresse?
They once had a website where they said if you paid $10 they'd put it in savings and in a few thousnad years the intrest would have made it into a fortune, and they would use that fortune to pay for a trip back in time to pick you up.
:-)
I was chatting about this with a friwnd on ICQ and told him I just sent them my $10 and was waiting for them to pick me u...
He got a good laugh when I logged back in a few minutes later.
If there are events that happen without cause (i.e., fundamentally random events) then running the clock backwards will not be merely a replay of the same events in reverse. The random events are noise that always tend to increase entropy. Time will always flow in one direction. This means that there is no way to get back.
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0101088/
Now, as far as we can tell all quantum mechanical events are causeless (i.e., fundamentally random). Anyway, if there are not causeless events then we get either an infinite regress of preceeding causes or closed causal loops.
So do not expect that you will meet any real time travelers.
if time travel is possible, wouldn't every moment in time be filled with time travellers? theres a lot of future for time travellers to be born :O
The original will be posted tomorrow.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It was OK. Attend the one in 2010 - it's a blast.
I have a question about time travel. I don't know if anyone else asked it, because there's 300+ replies and I'm not going to read them all, but if I went to a "when" but didn't move from where I was, wouldn't I end possibly VERY far from where the earth is at that time since we move through the universe, not to mention around our star? Just seems even if we can get time travel to work, we wouldn't be able to go back to earth without faster than light travel anyway... but then we'd have it if we did travel time, so I guess it's all good :/
-SaNo
"A seminar on time travel will be held 2 weeks ago."
I'm going to come back in time to that convention and tell all the attendees that, no, none of them ever get laid.
Someone take some pictures and post them online later. I want to see if I show up at the conference.
what sig?
I am glad I decied to show up for the Time Travelers' Convention a week early. I have been spending the last few hours reading the news. Apparently George W. Bush is the President of the United States and over 90% the home computers in the world are run by Microsoft operating systems. This demonstrates the dangers of time travel. I hope all the 'geniuses' at M.I.T. are proud of themselves. Anyway, I am off to try try and fix things. You people can keep this strange altrernate reality.
I have a question about Time Travel that's always been bugging me... theorethically, if you travel through time, do you chnage your space coordinates? Since the Earth is constantly rotating and moving around the Sun and Sun is moving around our galactic center, if you traveled back in time (or forward), Earth would have moved and you'd appear in an empty space (most probably). Is there a way to compensate for that?
So let's say you have yourself an Acme Time Machine, and it works. So you set it to transport you back in time 24 hours. Has no one ever considered that the earth has moved? Assuming for the moment that time travel is possible, if you do not calculate precisely where the earth is, and the location you want to go to, then you will most likely end up in space, but with a nasty possibility of "arriving" inside the earth (or possibly even the sun or some other body).
A time machine would have to also be an instantaneous space travel machine, capable of transporting you anywhere in the universe. I mean, if you can magically transport yourself the 17,640 mi (28,224 km) the earth will have moved in 24 hours, then whatever principle it uses will probably transport you over much greater distances.
Will there be an 'awesome aresenal of firepower' at the MIT campus next weekend?
No, but I'm sure there will be agents observing. They might as well.
In either case, a time traveler from the future will know if the FBI/CIA/Army/corporate mercenaries showed up.
That assumes one specific theory of space-time travel.
Lazarus Long says, "I'll be there! Will you?"
If nobody even remembers this time-traveller's con from less than twenty years ago, it hardly seems likely that the MIT one is going to meet its thousand-year goal either.
Nice try.
I for one welcome our new Time Overlords.
#3 - Like Groundhog Day?
Seriously though, how about this idea: You can go back in time, but you don't go back in your own "universe"-- you branch off (like a new CVS branch) which starts out as a copy of your branch. You change something (breathe, step on a bug, etc), your changes go to the new branch. This means that there's no "kill your grandfather" paradox. Unfortunately this also means that you can't go into the future, since there's no way to choose which branch you'd follow). (You could put yourself in "suspended hibernation" and that would probably be close enough).
The other point about this is that every instant, new branches are being created (with every event), so there's not one static time-line, but rather a huge tree of time-lines. YOU happen to follow one of them based on one set of decisions and events that happen.
I think it's a bit Startrekkian, but whatever, it makes sense to me, and I don't like the whole, "I'm my own father" complaints.
I've got to get back to my time machine now. The Mets are likely to have a good season finally in 2431.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
... or substitute "private mercaneries" with "Al-Quaeda".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
A "fully equipped" Royal Marine would probably have at least a light machinegun with several spare boxes of ammo. If the Cherokee warrior miniatures didn't start in base contact with the Royal Marine miniature they would probably fail their morale check before pressing home a charge.
Read "The End of Eternity" by Asimov... he also alludes to the episode in other books.
Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
Actually, that is a misrepresentation of the movie. It does not do anything silly like gun-jamming or heart attack. What's interesting (partial spoiler) is that Bruce Willis' character actually generates the reason for him being sent back in time. It is one of my all time favorite movies due to the complex story nature, Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt's excellent acting ability and Terry Gilliam's genius. Ultimately the mission is accomplished and the people from the future do change the past. Of course the story ends there, so we don't know how the timeline is effected...
Find coupons in Greeley
Nope, he accidentally brought back a C64 instead of the IBM 5100 and is banned from returning to the past.
If there's a well known time traveler convention being held in 2005 AD, why would we have to wait 1000 years for someone to go show up? I mean if you believe in all this "time travel" stuff, there is no present, past or future - there is only the time line you yourself are a part of. If "time travel" was real, this is not the first convention. In fact, in this line of thinking, there have already been tens of thousands of conventions.
Dude, I think you and I both know that the U.S. military functions as a group of private mercenaries for our corporations, so the distinction is entirely unnecessary. Besides, you can't beat people from the future, if you steal anything from them, they just inherit from you when you die anyway.
Seeing the location depicted so accurately, I have only one fear...
Telefrags.
Thank you for your brilliant idea for an experimental test of the hypothesis that one of a certain number of forms of time travel will be invented in our future light cone, in the form of the "first" time travellers convention.
I have a suggested improvement to your experiment.
As Marvin Minsky has estimated, the smallest form with a level of mental complexity similar or greater than our own (representing say 10^15 bits of information changing at 10^12 bits/second would be about (10^4 nm)^3 or (10 micron)^3, i.e. about the size of a single cell. The time travel vehicle would presumably be a little larger.
Furthermore, as he has suggested it might be very much energetically advantageous to send a much smaller vehicle and passenger back. Finally, hundreds to thousands of years in the future of human beings, the optimal size of humans may be engineered to be much, much, smaller in any case as one of only a few possible solutions to the malthusian problem of overpopulation, and the second order problem of loneliness (see http://anotherview.memebot.com/ ) for a little more on this.
Therefore, the coordinates of your convention are insufficiently precise, for the most likely attendees. Rather, the "convention center" should be scaled for attendees of various sizes Therefore, I propose the following modification of your experiment: 1. place (at least) a light microscope in your convention hall 2. advertise the (4-local) spacetime coordinates of its specimen stage widely, but make the precision and accuracy of these coordinates relative to the size of the entity coming to visit, e.g. for organisms of size 1-3 meters, the resolution of coordinates you have given seem to be fine. For smaller organisms/entities advertise more precise coordinates.
Regards,
Seth Goldberg
Of course attendence will have been RSVP only. Otherwise there would not have been enough pizza for everyone who is coming. Everyone knows that that convention was famous for the pizza it will serve.
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
I was going to drop in from 2025, but the mail was late delivering the invitation. Damn if the post office just doesn't keep getting slower in the future.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
-318348.17
I would hate to meet myself due to the awkwardness that causes.
Your
No one important goes to time travel parties anymore. Come on, we all know how that party will turn out. It's going to be that one lonely guy who shows up a hundred a fifty times so he can try every single pickup line in his book. And he's just going to get rejected a hundred a fifty times, then all of him will get drunk, unruly, and finally the temporal cops will show up and have to drag the hundred and fourty nine of excess copies of him away.
Meh.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
The answer to the age ole riddle: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Is:
- The chicken travelled back in time to lay the egg!
To generalize a bit further? The final event culminating in the end of the Universe, will likely cause some sort of Temporal annomaly, where the universe itself, travels back in time to "create" itself.
Aggies
You all said that last time too.
Remember?
http://www.phys.uconn.edu/faculty/mallett.html
~hylas
im deguassing my flux capacitor, somebody remind me in 20 years so i can get there on time.
in case it hadn't already been pointed out
http://catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=131
remember the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi: If enough peasants die horribly, someone will probably notice
Setting the date to sometime in the past is a *much* better idea, because it can be empirically analyzed.
First, we must pick a location and time that a very large collection of people, many acting and possibly looking out-of-place, would not stand out as strange. Large city-parks are good candidates.
Second, we must begin the effort (in earnest) to get the information out that such an event will be occurring (in the past).
Third, once it is clear that the marketing has been widely performed enough to ensure that it is *locatable* in the future, we should go look at newspaper clippings from the time in question and attempt to find a gathering such as that which we organized.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Ugh, time travel discussion.
:-)
Queue fifty pages of "Yes, I could kill my own grandfather." "No, you couldn't!" "In Soviet Russia, time travels you." "First Post!" "No, this is the first post, I traveled back before you posted yours", and so on...
Convention's a neat idea, though
on the third Saturday of August, 1969, but for some reason nobody came.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
1. Humanity will never discover time travel
2. Time travel will never be available for public use
3. Only a few time machines will be created before they are destroyed, or humanity itself is destroyed.
One of these statements about the future of humanity is true, or else we would have exposed an almost infinite number of time travellers.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
Really, they've got to schedule it sometime in advance so they could arrange for hotel room space. A few people will show up yesterday anyway just to grab the weekly rate, but they'll probably bop in, hand over their credit card, and not spend much time in the room until next weekend. And the waiting line at Mary Chung's will just be outrageous...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
that's all.
...if you see me there.
How does time travel account for the fact that the earth moves again?
I attend the "Time Travel" conference, but it is a near-disaster. As far as I can tell the conference is spectacularly devoid of time travellers and instead is full of wannabees wandering around speculating about time travel. Worse, there are glitches at the registration table forcing people to wait in long lines as the students try to get organized. The "food" leaves much to be desired as well, what there is of it. And about the conference sessions, the less I say, the better.
It certainly doesn't compare with the twin millennium celebrations on December 31, 999 and 1000, where the hostesses pull out all the stops to outdo one another. Now, those are parties!
Whether or not one expects it, this is an experiment, and is probably worth doing, given the miniscule cost. Theory may say "no go", but theory here is very weak
This will fail, because it would need at least
one trawler to come back. For one traveler to come
back it would need to be popular in the first place.
Hence the chicken or egg scenario.
Eminent failure paradox is all around us people, there
is no getting away from it.
Arash Partow
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Where should I park my DeLorean?
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
If time travel does indeed become possible, and if these potential future time travelers deign to show up at this particular event, they will know of this event by MIT or press historical records. They would also know (by the following days historical record) of the (non)presence of govt troops waiting to apprehend and interrogate them.
What happened on Boston Common, May 7 1905? Dunno, but if I were really interested, I could find out. Especially if there were a large police presence around a college party. Finding out the details from a party in 2005 from 2105 or 2205 or 3005 would presumably be easier. Especially a party aimed at the future me.
You call one second per second slow?
Also, you can change the rate of time travel by adjusting your speed.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded that time travel is impossible.
I know the best way to get a bunch of wierdos to go to it. Have it announced on Coast to Coast AM.
When you gave the coordinates, you neglected to give the "altitude". You may want to have a big safety net over and at the bottom of a big pit, for those who don't have their "Heisenberg Compensators" correctly adjusted. After all, this period is rather high in Uncertainty.
Ok, but all Star Trek allusions, temporal fugues and jokes aside... how WOULD you specify altitude to a person in the future? Sea Level is not a constant, and not particularly well documented as it rises and falls. I suppose you could use the GPS, but that prolly won't still be in the sky when time travel already became possible (Future Past Tense).
Also, what about currency? How are you going to set exchange rates even with future humans? PayPal points? Beer?
One more thing... How do you think the Dept. of Homeland Security will feel about an sudden rush of 'temporal aliens'?
--
"Everything is defined in 6 Dimensions: X, Y, Z, Time, Money and Politics"
I've read through their discussion and changelog, I think one more person coming along with "Shh! grownups are talking" will yet again be met with "if someone believes it for whatever reason, it's a valid opinion" line of thinking.
Yeah, it's a rather strange phenomenon. "Fair and balanced" means presenting both sides of a case, even when one side is obviously right (or at least more right), and one side is wrong. The John Titor case is one of those (obviously a very artful hoax). Intelligent Design vs. evolution is another. Both John Titor and Intelligent Design are attractive falsehoods (at least, attractive to some people). That doesn't make them right, or even viable.
I mean, if I claim that I have invisible aliens called Dvutels living in my attic...
Jesus, you've got those, too? How do you get rid of them? I've been using invisible Raid, but that ain't working.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Going back in time and changing the past is akin to trying to lift yourself up off of the ground. Both are equally impossible and equally silly; it's just that people understand space better than time, it's not quite so obvious.
Gee, that's great that you've included such detailed coordinates and all. But I hope the far-far-future travellers realize the problem, since apparently none of the MIT folks have taken any earth science classes and didn't take into account tectonic shift!
It would be a sad day to see a traveller from 150,000 years in the future pop in existance in the middle of an MIT wall because the MIT field the visitor was aiming for was actually 150 feet east of it's present day location.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
If coach would've put me in fourth quarter... we'd have been state champions, no doubt. No doubt in my mind. You better believe things would have been different. I'd have gone pro...in a heartbeat. I'd be makin' millions of dollars and... livin' in a... big ol' mansion somewhere. You know, soakin' it up in a hot tub with my soul mate.
I reckon these people know something about time travel... I'll be there.
That's funny, I was thinking just how time travels way too fast. So much to do, so little time to do it. Eh, you'll understand when you get a little older.
I went to this convention with a few friends. Met a few interesting people there - most, predictably, from the 21st century and beyond. The unexpected highlight for me though, was meeting a couple of pre-20th century travelers. (All claimed to be time-knapping victims - one claimed to have been abducted several times!) Regardless, it was good enough for me to hop to right now to post about it on /. I encourage all to attend. I wore a red an white "where's Waldo?" hat. Say "hi" if you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(technology_slan g)
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Think of it this way. You couldn't go back in time and shoot Hilter before he got into power for the very simple reason that it didn't happen. Say you setup a sniper rifle on a building. You could try to fire but you'd either miss, the gun would jam, you'd get arrested, have a heart-attack etc. etc.
Not necessarily. You could kill him easily enough. It would just turn out that the Hitler we know was an imposter who had easily adopted the identity of Adolf Hitler due to the real Hitler dying mysteriously at the hands of an unknown assailant, and that you just killed an innocent man. (cue Outer Limits theme)
That, or another time traveller would come along and reverse fate, preventing the assasination. You'd probably have an army of time travellers, fighing both sides: "Hitler must die so that my future is preseved!" "No, Hitler must live so that my future is preserved!"
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Time travel is for particles.Now if someone could get me the recipes I'd be a happy camper. ;)
Will they have the homebuilt roller coaster or the 3-d teeter totter around for the future arrivals?
If I say that I'm from five minutes in the future, is it even possible for them to prove me wrong??
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I dunno man, this weekend seems like it went by really fast...
||:|::
The problem is, there are many people who believe they are obviously right and others are obviously wrong. Take extreme liberals and conservatives. They are so convinced that their side is "right", they don't think the other side should say anything at all.
Now, ignoring what a person has to say is fine, but personally I don't believe in taking away their voice and ability to say crazy things.
I am glad that both my government and wikipedia believe in Free Speech even if it means I hear some people make absurd claims sometimes. I'd rather hear both sides and be free to make my own choices and decisions. If the idea of free speech worries you, then you worry me.
Someone get over there right away, fill the box with argon and switch it on.
I am not able to attend in the present, therefore there is no reason for me to attend from the future.
-John Fenley
was good lot of people showed up
If my plan works (or is it 'worked'?), I will travel back to 1936, shoot this guy 'Hitler' (or is it Hilter?), and - if I'm successful, I shall then immediately kill myself, so the gestapo don't torture me. Please let me know if I was succesful.
.
- aqk
F U
This has nothing to do with free speech (or even Free Speech) whatsoever. Free speech guarantees your right to hold and voice an opinion, unmolested by the powers that be. This concept is often warped into the notion that it obviates the need to defend such an opinion, or that merely holding it requires others to recognize it as valid.
Nobody is even remotely pondering curtailing the "Titorites"' rights to self expression. What I have a problem with is that the editors of the particular article, in their treatment of the subject matter are giving far too much credence to this particular crackpot theory. They do this in the laudible pursuit of neutrality, but in this case that leads to a product that reflects negatively on the project as a whole.
Free speech does not mean the abandonment of objective reasoning. Neutral point of view does not mean that wikipedia editors should parrot everything they read on the internet.
Oh and thank you for providing a link to the article on free speech - how deliciously patronizing.
sic transit gloria mundi
http://www.promotemugs.com/
The screening is fired on, so it's got a chance of lasting a few hundred years. Time travelers should be able to find them at or just about any garage sale.
I have to assume they'll still have garages - gotta park the floating cars somewhere, right?
If there ever could be Time Travel, there always would be Time Travel.
When I was younger, I once wrote an ambitious letter to an unknown person of the future, asking them to time travel back to the moment I was writing the letter and visit me, and tell me what the future was like. I had a grand vision of protecting the letter and keeping it in the family for generations to come.
After signing the letter and waiting a few minutes, the time travelers never showed up. So, with a heavy sigh, I threw the letter in the trash.
"All hands, abandon ship! Repeat! All hands, abandon.. .. **KABLAM** (commercial)
would slam the traveller against the wall at 30km/sec
The wall slams into the traveller.
paintball
WARNING:
Cubic time is proven fact and cannot be disputed. Nature's simultaneous 4-day cube proves that there are four parts to a day, and four days occuring always at the four corners of earth. 2x2=4, and people who insist in time as something that can be traveled think of THREE parts, past present and future, but there are in actuality FOUR parts, fact which is ignored by antiHarmony academia criminals. Time "theories" from people educated moronic in evil institutions are ignorant of the four corners of the time and of the world. Denying the existence of four-sided nature of time and universe is to ensure your own demise. You are stupid arrogant curse to all creatures of the planet.
/obligatory
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
So... did they come?
> If you were really a time traveler, why would you want to show up
...and bear in mind that these guys from the future will know (by reading
> at a known place on a known date? The government would be waiting
> with an awesome arsenal of firepower, waiting to forcefully take
> your tools from you.
I don't think so...and there is an easy way to see if I'm right.
Do *you* really think there will be an awesome arsenal of firepower at the
party next week? Just on the offchance that some time travellers actually
show up? I kinda doubt it.
their history books) whether it turned out to be safe or not.
For us here in the past, the only way to have a hope of catching an
alert time traveller would be to do it in some way that would be
completely undetectable in the future - it would have to be very
carefully hushed up!
A well publicised event like this one is the safest possible place
for a time traveller because that's the kind of place where he'll
have plenty of archival data.
www.sjbaker.org
Actually its at the speed of light (thank you einstein!)
Their about 2500 years too late.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
See you all at the convention... or rather, I will haven been seeing you at the convention....
Oh, and if I'm not there, it's because we're in a parallel universe in which I haven't been there yet.
Maybe it's just me.... :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
After all, I traveled from 11:21 PM PST to 11:22 PM PST as I wrote this reply! It was a real journey, I must say :).
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes
slsia.
(subject line says it all). q:]
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
At the 1939 World's Fair, Westinghouse buried a time capsule to be opened in 5000 years. So that it wouldn't be forgotten, thousands of copies of a book, "The Book of Record of The Time Capsule of Cupaloy Deemed Capable of Resisting the Effects of time for Five Thousand Years Preserving an Account of Universal Acheivments Embedded in the Grounds of the New York World's Fair 1939", were printed and distributed worldwide, to libraries, museums, and monastaries - institutions that seemed to have staying power.
It's hard to find a copy of that book today. Not impossible; hundreds of copies still exist. But it's hard to find.
During the convention I will be holding a special 20th century antiques sale for Time Travelers from the future only.
Everything must go!
Fabulously rare items from the 21st and 20th Century available for only a few pounds of gold or diamonds each:
Get in on the bargains now:
Rare Teletubby Memorabelia:
Videos of Worship Services from the exotic Barney and Bob the Builder Cults:
Rare collectable issues of patterned "Toilet paper" once used in primative hygene appliances of this era.
Mountains of rare formatted computer media from the mythical computer intelligence that once tried to rule the planet, known to the future only as the pyramidial AOL! Some have been converted into various primative works of art such as coasters, spinning reflectors, and small game hunting spinners.
These and many other mysterious items can be yours at the one, the only, the original time travelers Antiques sale!
Come back as many times as you want, once we open, we never close, we stay open as long as the convention does, you can leave and come back that week as many times as you like!
That's the wonder of Time Travel.
For more details leave a question at:
http://thepeterfiles.blogspot.com/2005/04/you-too- can-enter-world-of-internet.html/
Our Sponsor, The International School of Blog Repair Technicians, Flim Flam Artists, and Blog Repair Technician Groupie Trainees
Peter, Founder and Chief Groupie Training Evaluator and Testor
I like the idea of a Time Traveler's convention, but wouldn't a time traveler be far more likely to travel to a milestone such as the creation or destruction of the Earth?
:). No, I'm joking about Bush. ...but politics aside, does anyone have a few Nukes?
I would, of course, love to meet some time travelers. As we can't very well travel to the creation of Earth, we only have one choice. Good thing Bush is the US president
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes
Dahlink... I thought you knew... no-one who is anyone turns up on the day... everybody knows you have to be fashionably late to these events... never in the first causality loop... that's for the wannabees...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
My thought of Time Travel, is that it would only be possible to travel from a sending device to a receiving device; and until the receiver is built; anyone attempting to arrive in a prior time would have their atoms scattered across the universe in a gaussian pattern so thin the best you could achieve is a scent of raw meat at the destination.
Ditto with Faster-than-light travel; without a reciever placed the old fashioned way you're gone.
After all, if you had the ability to time travel and you wanted to travel back to a certain point in history, of course you would obviously choose a quantum destination as obvious as a glorified Star Trek convention.
:
:
:
:
I mean seriously, would anyone take any claims seriously regarding time travel in this way. If anyone were capable of it and managed to travel to this posted destination, would anyone actually believe them? We live in a skeptical society where even if a time traveller arived with proof beyond question of the legitimacy of their time travel, they would in fact be considered a fruit cake who fabricated the entire thing.
So, now the obvious agrument from the audience is "Yes, but we are believers and if they can in fact prove it, then we'll learn what we can from the traveller and either let him/her be on their way or adopt them into our society etc..."
Well no offense, but if you're one of the fruit cakes showing up for this event, then you're probably the exact type of person that the time traveller is likely to want to avoid. To best relate to your kind, think of all those Saturday Night Live episodes where either Leonard Nimoy or William Shatner appeared as guests, they seem to always run the same boring skit where a bunch of you weirdos start asking them questions that start with "In Episode XXX, were you...", and shortly afterwards, they jump up and start calling you all geeks and nerds and stuff like that. Well, guess what, the guy from the future probably already knows that story too.
As for reasons that they would travel backwards in time...
The guy interested in fixing something that went wrong
Would obviously travel to 1 hour before the place and time of conception of George Bush Sr. and convince Former Mr. President Bush's that this neat little rubber thingy is amazing for enhancing the sexual experience and she make her husband wear it, it's called a condom.
The guy interested in showing off
Would travel NASA before the Gemini launch and give them designs to something truly interesting.
The guy interested in power
Would travel to ancient Rome and just take over. Times were far more interesting then than now and you didn't have to worry about a bunch of Jesus-crispies damning you to hell for everything you ever did.
The guy interested in science
Would travel to visit Newton during his younger years when he was a sheperd and sit with him while Newton rambled on about his ideas and maybe have a little fun coaxing him in one direction or another.
The sci-fi geek of the future
Would travel back to a frigging sci-fi convention in the 80's before all the original cast were on geritol and wearing false teeth.
I can go on for ages, but ummm... if there were in fact a time traveller interested in travelling back and making their presence known, don't you think they'd have already done it by now?
Sounds like the potential for an MIT hack - we'll know when there's a campus cruiser made to look like a Delorean, and a plywood Blue Police Box...
Baka Drew
A few people will show up yesterday anyway just to grab the weekly rate, but they'll probably bop in, hand over their credit card, and not spend much time in the room until next weekend.
Why would money be an object? Just pop back to the early 1990s, buy a few shares of MS stock, and cash it in when you show up to stay in the presedential suite. It's not like you don't have about a million different ways to make enough money to time tavel in style...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was working as a research assistant at the local university physics department and I would often spend my lunch times in the staff room reading crappy articles in the scientific american and chowing down reheated left-overs. Occasionally a group of lectureres would start conversations of a less-pointy headed nature, the sort that are more general in nature and friendlier on the ear-wigging lunch time ear, and in one instance started talking about time travel in this fashion. After a period of sensible discussion one of them claimed in a half-joking manner: "But we do time-travel! We travel through time at the rate of 1 second per .......second...hmmmm".
All the lecturers went quiet and looked at each other with strange puzzled expressions, then immediately returned to their sandwichs and newspapers rather than contemplate this conundrum.
It's a movie script which was in the top 3 submitted to a screenwriting contest (Project Greenlight 3).
It's quite humorous and a very quick read.
Ben Affleck's production company has optioned it.
someone wants us to do his homework ^_^
May I ask just how "friendly" this convention gonna be?
Can I bring some of you cavemen with me back to the future if I come?
Thank you.
Everyone acts like a thousand years is the equivalent of "yesterday". The very concept that in thousands of years everyone will even know about one particular nerd party, is at best a joke.
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Unfortunately, this convention failed due to a lack of from future time travellers back when it occurred on May 7.
I'll be looking for a hot brunette to help me with Cheeseman's Theory of Emotional Energy.
(wait, before you mod me off-topic, watch the movie this comes from: Happy Accidents, the best romantic comedy sci-fi in the history of the universe.)
But won't the problem be that when nobody participates, the history will record that nobody participated and thus nobody will ever travel back to the event in fear of changing the history?
Suppose that it *is* advertised enough that people in the future would know about it and travel back. Would that mean that we'd see the time travelers in the time that *we* pass through it (as in, the first time we see the event)?
Because if we make it publicized now, then in the future when people travel back to the event, they will be traveling to this coming event.
So we'll know if it was successful immediately, because a time traveler (or many) will show up. How's that for instant gratification?
-Vendal Thornheart
I believe in the opposite theory, where there is only one possible instance of history. With the way all the molecules etc. are set up, ther's only one thing they can do, follow the current course they're taking and interact accordingly. Everything that can happen has already been pre-determined, and there's nothing that can change.
For example, if two molecules in space are on a direct collision course, there's no possible instance of history where they miss.
Check out the bumper stickers here:
http://catandgirl.com/store.php
Gotta love Cat and Girl.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
'Time Travel' be it forwards or backwards is impossible. Time is continuous. The past has been used and cannot be reused. The future will be reached but only at present course.
- Alpha & Omega
You're assuming they don't kill the people who were going to attend the events and take their place.
"If you were really a time traveler, why would you want to show up at a known place on a known date? The government would be waiting with an awesome arsenal of firepower, waiting to forcefully take your tools from you."
So read the newspapers one week later, and check there aren't any reports of a firefight, before attending.
Parent has been moderated as "Funny", but he is in fact correct: Time dilation
Do you think it's likely the government will take this seriously and place agents there? It's just an MIT party! Sure, they'll find out afterwards that there were time travellers at the party, but the government doesn't HAVE time travel so it'd be too late to do anything about it.
qntm.org
Terminator vs. Back to the Future
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Yeah you can. A new universe would come into being the moment you shot Hitler.
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
My time travel DID alter the future, though. I had planned on attending each and every one of these reunion functions for my lifetime, but my trip changed that opinion entirely...
I'm pro-accordion and I vote
I have traveled back in time to force myself not to read this post, in the hope to have this 10 minutes of my life back. Note to self : No not read this
Jesus is greek for Joshua... apparently Jesus's actual name... go fig - as the catholic church originally used greek as their official language until Pope Victor I changed it to latin (his native language).
BTW, if you want good alternate history regarding Jesus - I highly recommend Chrisopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".
BlackNova Traders
Perhaps future-folk will NOT show up at the party because they _know_ they would be captured by the feds.
The saddest poem
of course any timetraveller will not understand english language at all..
I don't know the future now. If I traveled to the past, would I know the future then? If not, how would I know where I came from? Would I end up thinking I was always there? Who can say there aren't many unaware travelers among us?
Like if anyone could go back in time and risk changing their future reality, they'd pick this conference to go back to? Come on, if I was going to go back, I'd either go to quietly witness some event or person (Like Jesus Christ), or really try to fix something (like prevent Hitler from getting into power.) It sure would be to go to some convention of nerds.
If no one from the future shows up does that mean that time travel will always be impossible?
Sure, that's what they'll want you to have thunk.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Time travelling is a logical impossibility. It's science fiction. I can't believe that some people, at *MIT*, are taking this seriously.
If you lick it you can fuck it. Give me a call, anytime.
jbanes@techie.com
608-524-2574
Jerason Banes
2701 E Main St. Lot 120
Reedsburg,WI,US 53959
I figured I'd be too busy this month to attend so I went last March. It was and will be fun.
Our entire civilization will have collapsed and I don't see anything that future archeologists unearthing being readable due to our current 'throwaway society'.
At least in the past we used rocks to write on.. Even they don't last forever...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Like this guy ! Man was that spam refreshing...
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
What's happened has happened.
it is.
binary. it's as simple as that.
0101 -+-+
If it weren't for the time embargo act of 2293-2358, the longest lasting ban on time travel. It basically forbade time travel outside of that time period. Man... they had the coolest time travelers, and arguably the best drugs of all history.
"What you are forgetting is that in this day and age, more information is being recorded and stored each day than ever before.
In a hundred years, I would expect for us to at least have some sort of storage media that is unaffected by time."
Point well taken, but the summary said _thousands_ of years. In which case, sorry, nope.
Don't forget that a lot of information before had been engraved on metal, carved on wood (which is why runes look the way they look: they were designed for carving into wood), or inscribed on clay tablets and baked. And it still got lost.
Do you think someone's backups on CD will be more durable than that?
Also while we do record more data, also more data is lost every day.
A clay tablet is still readable in a hundred years if you still know the alphabet. Whereas nowadays can you tell me where can I buy an 8" disk drive for my PC, to read my old CP/M diskettes? Is there even a filesystem driver for any OS that can still read CP/M disks?
And after less than 2000 years time we needed a Rosetta Stone and some big pictograms to re-discover how to read the ancient Egyptian pictograms. Now think that we had just found a shiny plastic disk. Even if we figured out how to read it, you're left with a string of numbers that say _nothing_ about the actual text. Which combination of bits is Anubis-looking-left?
So I wouldn't expect that much data to survive us.
Plus there's a lot to be said about noise-to-signal ratio. Even if all the information did survive, after 1000 years we'd have a mountain of blogs, Counter-Strike clan pages, flamewars, etc. Trying to even search for anything through this data is like looking for the proverbial needle, only this time in a whole mountain of hay.
Do you really think anyone will look through that data for a nerd party? Or they'll be more interested in our wars?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I do have a nifty t-shirt from 2007 though.
Hopefully, some of the ten stainless steel dog tags will survive well into the future. I'll try to disperse them geographically.
"Worm or serpent with its tail in its mouth, symbolizing completion, perfection and totality, the endless round of existence."
.
.
Just like being your own father, or mother, or both.
(because Lister sleept with his female counterpart from a parallel universe, and being in that reverse universe, he was the one getting pregnant and had the baby, came back in time, put in in a box labeled "ouroboros" which he left under a pool table in the Aigbuth Arms pub. Perfection.)
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
To go through all the effort of risking life and limb to show up at such a lame event, avoiding the government agents, and nobody believes you are from the future anyway.
That's why I'm not going anyway. There's a much better convention held every year on the dark side of the moon anyway. We get quite a chuckle out of you losers on earth not being able to figure it out!
Dude, if the Government showed up with an array of awesome firepower, that alone would make it worth it for present people to attend the party.
That's who.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hey all, the convention was an absolute blast! Best time I'ver ever had.
I've been thinking along these lines lately, wondering if we all have it wrong because of how we observe the passing of time. We think that because we "remember" a previous event, we sequence our events, declare that time is a line and thus reversable. Yet, aren't memories just chemical reactions? We want to remember something, our neurons are firing in realtime to rebuild the picture of the event, we recall the event in realtime, and compare the two perceptions in realtime.
Imagine the universe is a giant state machine. It isn't that hard to picture, since we have lots of things in nature that have discrete states (electron levels, quantum objects, etc). Each "tick" of the machine is one plank interval of time, where we resolve things like momentum, accellerations, etc to create a new state based on the previous position of variables.
We still have things like "cause and effects", because effects are just the unwinding of the state engine based on the configuration a number of temporal ticks beforehand. We still have free will, because the "future" is literally unwritten... everything is a direct consequence of our actions in realtime.
How does one travel in time in an engine like this? Well, to "travel" you have to recreate the quatum states (positions, energy level, etc), and immerse yourself in the construct. There would be discontinuities in the state engine, and the only way to set that up is to exist outside of the processing to reconfigure the code... something we will not have the ability to do (for a long time, if ever).
The last thing that bugs me about conventional (ha!) time travel is the whole deal of conservation of energy. Futhermore, Energy with a duration (time) is Power. In order for you to move between timelines, are you not moving the mass and energy (that make up "you") into a closed system? In the traditional time travel model, you want to jump out of the "present", move to the past for a long duration, and jump back to shortly after "present". If spacetime is dimensional, then shouldn't the power (energy over time) spent in the past be equal to an amount of power extracted from the future? If the net energy of the universe from just before your jump ino the past is equal to just after you return to the present, is energy still conserved by definition? Maybe someone else would want to add their comments.
It was so good to finally meet H.G. Wells there.
I don't get it. I've read a lot of these posts and a bunch of them keep talking about going back in time and killing Hitler.
Why always him and not someone else? Did he show up to this Time Travelers' Convention and annoy a lot of people or something? If so, it's your own fault for inviting all time travellers and you should have seen this coming by simply reading a newspaper from May 8, 2005.
Karma: NaN
I'm just happy that we'll finally know where Carmen Sandiego is.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
We're just limited to going foward in time. Being alive is the same as traveling through time.
We could all be killed. With every time traveller ever pointing their machine at the same space-time coordinates they'll all crash into eachother. Who knows what kind of fuel they use and what the consequences of a leak will be.
Let's assume for one moment that time travel is possible, and that's its discovered by people at some indeterminate point in the future (or past... ). Obviously time travellers don't interact with us. I haven't seen Hitler be assassinated recently... So either time travellers have some code of ethics that prevents them from changing history, or the Government heavily regulates time travel, or for some other reason interaction is impossible. Whatever, no-one will turn up to this party. Sounds like a lot of parties at MIT.
For a slightly different take on what to look for see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148007&cid=124 03702
Like any other experiment, one is exploring a parameter space, some experiments explore more of the parameter space than others, different experiments different parts. Your objections say that there are significant portions of the parameter space missing from the "fiduciary 4-volume" of the proposed experiment. My comments said the same. Still, its an experiment, and might as well be done as well as possible.
....because if it ever were possible, I'd come back and fix one little thing that I did wrong a few years ago. Or was that what I did?
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
I can picture myself playing a prank on these guys, showing up to the event in a homemade silver jumpsuit from the "future", only to be met by every other geek there with the same idea.
I'll bring a copy of Duke Nukem Forever as evidence and play it on a laptop with an Elbrus 6000 processor and a BitBoys Oy GPU.
Maybe several hundred Indians to say one Abrahms tank. Given the choice between Indian and tank crew, I'd choose crew, and still would prefer option c: not there at all.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Years ago when I took physics, we had a lecture or two on an interpretation of anti-particles as time-reversed particles, and annihilation reactions and pair-production reactions as time reversals. (For those interested in the real physics, do a google search on the title of this post). Anyway, it was good for a couple of BS over beer discussions. It did appear to allow time travel, but it didn't let you leave the time line to do it. While traveling back in time, you interact with the universe as if you're made of antimatter, which pretty much meant any time machine had to be a spacecraft. The energy requirements were enormously huge ( greater than twice your rest mass at both ends of the trip). There is a real problem avoiding hitting yourself on the way back (which would be bad), but it looked like it actually did permit the travel.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
to know how many time travellers did show up at the party ?
Were there any alien time travellers ?
Well, maybe they did show up but the government is suppressing the facts and Scully and Moulder should go after them !
Or it was too early for them to reveal us the truth, but they will probably shown up at the next convention. Soooooooo, here is my announcement to all time travellers, please, I call a convention for time travellers with a well-done bbq steaks and fresh beer at my backyard, May 1, 2005 at Austin, TX !
You can bring friends and relatives too!
See ya little green fellas.
Anyone time travelling backward would pass on lethal viral strains to all they came into contact with.
Okay, so the page states that they need our help getting the word out. But there's no rush -- hell, we've got lifetimes to get the word out and it'll still be as effective as ever! But we need something really big. Maybe if we carve the coordinates and timestamp into a hillside in South America so that it can be read from space, then maybe it'll work? It's got to be big and lasting otherwise all of our efforts will have as much impact as Taco Bell's big giveaway a few years back.
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
Very bizarre, that the future found it easier to build a time machine than to port time_t to 64 bits.
Maybe all the bits get used up in the intervening time, and are therefore scarce in 2036. That would also explain the need for an old bit-conserving IBM 5100.
You can blame that on Bush and his Texas Rancher buddies. Even after news footage leaked about several mad cows found in Texan herds, they still deny it's mad cow disease. No way to prove it one way or the other, as the USDA conveniently discarded the neural tissue without testing, and refused to test the live animals being reported on. The claim by USDA inspectors was that it WAS NOT mad cow disease, and thus did not warrant expensive testing. This dispite the fact that the quarantined cattle in the footage had trouble standing and was frothing -- sounds like MC disease to me.
Trust me. I went and it sucked. It sucked so bad that I went back in time to stop myself from going in the first place.
Spider Robinson, author of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, was contacted today about the Time Traveler's conference, and is instead attending the re-scheduled conference in Key West, FL, on September 10th, 2001 due to preferential US "climate."
"We're millions of miles from earth, inside a giant white face, what's impossible?"
I'm really surprised that nobody has mentioned http://www.primermovie.com/ Primer yet.
If people are interested in a fun SF book in which time travel is possible (Einstein, if you go faster than light this implies time travel is possible), and the reason why despite being this possible there is no actual time travel, read Singularity Sky by Charless Stross.
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
You're close on that point. Actually, there's no belief to it. People just enjoy constructing fantasies that involve the impossible because well ... they're impossible. Fantasy is just a vehicle for imagining things we cannot do. There's no real point fantasizing about doing something when you could do it for real (without adverse consequences).
Now compare several thousand Royal Marines appearing dressed as Cherokees while the Cherokees were making their plans......
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
True, but in this case the Royal Marine has camaflage, body armor, grenades, night vision, GPS, and about two hundred rounds of armor piercing ammo fired from a rifle with hundreds or yards of effective range. Not to mention foreknowledge of the attack and superior training and tactics.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Attention chrononauts!
Pick me up and take me to this. Bring some of your future beer.
It's not in Wikipedia. I don't think it happened.
assuming that time travel is possible and may exist in the future, and assuming that atime traveller comes to the covention and explains how to buld such a machine. wouldn't that mean that time travelexisted because it exited, and that it was never invented?
My new blog
Actually, Mr. Smart Guy, If the editors of wikipedia DIDN'T parrot everything they read on the internet wikipedia would be an editorial instead of an encyclopedia.
You are right on one point though, it has nothing to do with free speech. As for the guy with the underpants gnomes in his attic, if there were more then just your account of these creatures, and a group of people did infact believe you, yes you should be put in the wikipedia. Even if it is a dillusion many people share, the fact that a group of people share it deserves its place in a free encyclopedia.
If too many time travelers head for the same point in space-time, isn't the probability of collisions rather high?
This happened in a Far Side, as I remember; the caption was something like, "Tempers flare when Professors A and B set their time machines to the same coordinates", and there are two angry men yelling at each other from beside wrecked time machines, with dinosaurs in the background.
The egg came first.
Story one: Once, millions of years ago, there was a creature that was almost-not-quite-a-chicken. It bred with another almost-not-quite-a-chicken, and through genetic recombination, produced an egg, a chicken egg, that would hatch to produce the first chicken. Before that egg, there were no true chickens, so the egg came first.
Story two: Once, hundreds of millions of years ago, there was an insect/fish/reptile that laid an egg. There were no chickens around, so again, the egg came first.
Unfortunately, they open themselves up to impostors. How will they know which, of those in attendance, are really time-travelers?
The real way to tell is to reserve the meeting space... and then, only advertize it after the event has passed. That way, anybody who actually showed up (other than the organizers), are highly suspect as real time-travelers.
However, the fact that they didn't do this, I think, shows the lack of conviction that these organizers have that any real time-travelers will show.
We already have something that contains everything on the internet: the internet.
As for the guy with the underpants gnomes in his attic, if there were more then just your account of these creatures, and a group of people did infact believe you, yes you should be put in the wikipedia.
That's just it (I am that guy, btw), there isn't more than just an online account under a pseudonim to that story. As for people believing, well, that has never been much of a supporting argument; there's plenty of people who believe all sorts of stupid crap, it is certainly their right and some of them are probably right, the mere fact of believing is just not much of an argument one way or another.
Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely agree that this deserves a place in the encyclopedia. My problem with the article is that it grossly overstates the validity of these claims and is hugely biased. In fact wikipedia itself provides guidelines on why the type of language it uses is bad practice.
sic transit gloria mundi
The truth is, time travel is impossible. How do I know? Easy. And this simple truth is overlooked by many scientists etc. here goes:
We would already know if time travel will be possible in the future because time travellers from the future WOULD ALREADY BE HERE VISITING US! IT WOULD BE THE TRAVEL FAD OF THE FUTURE - AND OF COURSE THEY'D INTERACT WITH US AND FUCK UP HISTORY.but it's never happened. Because it's impossible.
Even if you subscribe to the "multiverse" theory that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, so if you go back and kill your father etc. when you return to your "time" you actually return to a new universe created by your actions, it still doesn't make any sense, because in the "real" universe, the one you left, nothing changed, so in that universe there was not time travel... Fuck my brain hurts.