A radical political party quickly takes over one of the mightiest industrialized nations in the world, rallies its citizens to world war and the dehumanization of a significant part of the population, and it was totally unorganized? Sorry, but I think your hate is blinding you so much that you've lost the ability to objectively see the situation.
No-one except everyone who's searching for asteroids...like Pan-Starrs, LINEAR, CSS, SDSS, and all those amateurs. If you're thinking we can't see asteroids between the earth and sun because of the sun's glare, you might want to go look at a sky chart and check to see if you can see Venus and Mercury in the night sky. And anyway, near earth asteroids aren't necessary always between the earth and sun, they cross outside the earth's orbit too.
And yet, this is how they make glass mirrors used in astronomy -- melting the glass in a large shell inside a furnace, then letting it cool while spinning..
While you can do this to get the approximate shape of the mirror, you still need to do additional grinding and polishing to get a nice reflective surface. I'm not sure if anyone does this, but all of us amateur mirror makers usually grind the desired shape into the glass with abrasives.
Not to mention that this other intelligent life may not even find us particularly interesting even if they know about us. We have a tendency to think that any other intelligent life out there will be sort of like us, but with better technology. The probability is that any life out there that is advanced enough to be aware of us, is millions or billions of years past the state we're at. After all, we've only been indistinguishable from lower mammals for several thousand years, and that's only if you look really closely. We've only showed any sort of mastery of the physical world for around a century or two (depending on your point of view). An alien intelligence may not even see us as anything more than an primitive animal not much more advanced that bacteria...especially if intelligence is as common as the Drake equation suggests.
You had me right up until the point you made it about race. I don't think that was it at all. There were plenty of white people down there too and if anything, the government looks even worse for failing to help to minorities and/or the poor in a disaster. I think it was just good old fashioned incompetence.
For the record: as a non-Christian (in the 'organized religion' sense), non-Jewish believer-in-god, I sure find atheists annoying as hell. These guys need to shut the hell up and stop being so critical of every semi-religious/spiritual statement people make.
For the record: as an atheist who doesn't go around criticizing religion, I sure find people who believe all atheists are Richard-Dawkins-wannabes annoying as hell. You people turned atheism into a dirty word. So much so that most atheists just call themselves agnostic to avoid being confused with an anti-theist.
[quote] So can nanotech create a healthier world, or is it just frightening Franken-food?"[/quote]
That depends on what's being done. You can't paint the whole thing with the broad brush of nanotech and say it's good or bad. The process you use must be made public so that the end product (and waste products) can be evaluated by the whole community as good or bad.
The vast majority of asteroid discoveries were also made by amateurs up until around 10 years ago when they started bringing up all the professional sky surveys. It's pretty hard to make any discoveries anymore unless you have a really big scope. Like 24 inches and up. But that's only going to last so long as the next generation survey scopes such as Pan-Starrs come online. Amateur asteroid photometry will probably be unaffected though.
There's also quite a lot of room for improvement in amateur scopes too. Right now there's a pretty significant barrier as far as decent imaging scopes for amateurs. 14 inches is about as big as most amateurs can reasonably afford. We can make much larger newtonian scopes, but putting them on a mount capable of long exposures is really really REALLY expensive. There's definitely room for a DIYer to make a difference here. Or the manufacturing of lighter mirrors...or tessellated mirrors. Or precision field derotation for alt-azimuth mounts.
that's actually not that difficult at all. Hydrogen bombs are uncontrolled fusion in action. Now, producing usable energy, however...
Well, according to the BBC article it says they build a "unique thermo-nuclear reaction device". Technically, NK could be referring to a hydrogen bomb.
This seems like such a huge deal when you put it that way, but really... so what?
Let's see how you feel after Sony's monitoring programs see how good you are at Starfighter and recruit you in their real world war against the Ko-Dan Empire. Meanwhile, your android replacement will be sleeping with your wife.
maybe content creators would understand that parodies like this downfall clip actually create interest in the original, and are really just a form of advertisement.
Too true. Youtube and these parodies must have driven rentals and sales of the DVD through the roof.
Am I going to find this kind of stuff down at a Hobby shop? I've never looked.
Probably not. You can google "ham radio equipment" or something like that. Ebay has lots of equipment too. Check out the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) website too (http://www.arrl.org/) for info too.
Well no actually, it looked like any normal IT support guy putting a machine back together, except most people don't even fumble and drop the RAM.
Exactly. I drop almost everything else. Power wires that you have to spend 30 seconds relocating in the jumble of other cables. Fans. The video card sometimes because the things are so heavy these days. Screws...especially screws. Have to hold the bloody case upside down to get them out. But RAM? No, that's about the easiest thing to get in there.
Slashdot Mirror
If you consider George Bush a moderate, I'd hate to see what you consider a non-moderate.
Anyone remember the good ol' days when NASA explored space?
That deserves a mod up.
A radical political party quickly takes over one of the mightiest industrialized nations in the world, rallies its citizens to world war and the dehumanization of a significant part of the population, and it was totally unorganized? Sorry, but I think your hate is blinding you so much that you've lost the ability to objectively see the situation.
Somehow, I think there are more threats to Earth down here than up there..
I hope you're not suggesting that we just abandon all non-humanist spending and use it to feed the poor, or build wind turbines? I can understand (barely) diverting money from the human space program...it's fairly expensive. But a ground based telescope? If you don't think there's a threat to earth, just ask a dinosaur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event) or maybe ask Jupiter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9)
No-one except everyone who's searching for asteroids...like Pan-Starrs, LINEAR, CSS, SDSS, and all those amateurs. If you're thinking we can't see asteroids between the earth and sun because of the sun's glare, you might want to go look at a sky chart and check to see if you can see Venus and Mercury in the night sky. And anyway, near earth asteroids aren't necessary always between the earth and sun, they cross outside the earth's orbit too.
And yet, this is how they make glass mirrors used in astronomy -- melting the glass in a large shell inside a furnace, then letting it cool while spinning..
While you can do this to get the approximate shape of the mirror, you still need to do additional grinding and polishing to get a nice reflective surface. I'm not sure if anyone does this, but all of us amateur mirror makers usually grind the desired shape into the glass with abrasives.
Not to mention that this other intelligent life may not even find us particularly interesting even if they know about us. We have a tendency to think that any other intelligent life out there will be sort of like us, but with better technology. The probability is that any life out there that is advanced enough to be aware of us, is millions or billions of years past the state we're at. After all, we've only been indistinguishable from lower mammals for several thousand years, and that's only if you look really closely. We've only showed any sort of mastery of the physical world for around a century or two (depending on your point of view). An alien intelligence may not even see us as anything more than an primitive animal not much more advanced that bacteria...especially if intelligence is as common as the Drake equation suggests.
Is "h-congruous" a scientifically accepted term? I've only ever seen it when reading Peter F Hamilton's books.
I laughed and felt bad for him too. I'm not sure why you can't do both.
You had me right up until the point you made it about race. I don't think that was it at all. There were plenty of white people down there too and if anything, the government looks even worse for failing to help to minorities and/or the poor in a disaster. I think it was just good old fashioned incompetence.
So, since most people adhere to evolutionary theories - isn't killing off of species by other species part of evolution?
Yes, but evolution won't necessarily be kind to us if we do so. Evolution isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if its crosshairs are on you.
Perhaps it's time to make people get a "walkers license" before they are allowed to walk outdoors?
And perhaps they should be required to wear helmets too.
For the record: as a non-Christian (in the 'organized religion' sense), non-Jewish believer-in-god, I sure find atheists annoying as hell. These guys need to shut the hell up and stop being so critical of every semi-religious/spiritual statement people make.
For the record: as an atheist who doesn't go around criticizing religion, I sure find people who believe all atheists are Richard-Dawkins-wannabes annoying as hell. You people turned atheism into a dirty word. So much so that most atheists just call themselves agnostic to avoid being confused with an anti-theist.
[quote] So can nanotech create a healthier world, or is it just frightening Franken-food?"[/quote] That depends on what's being done. You can't paint the whole thing with the broad brush of nanotech and say it's good or bad. The process you use must be made public so that the end product (and waste products) can be evaluated by the whole community as good or bad.
So, if I throw a baseball, does that make me a rocket?
The vast majority of asteroid discoveries were also made by amateurs up until around 10 years ago when they started bringing up all the professional sky surveys. It's pretty hard to make any discoveries anymore unless you have a really big scope. Like 24 inches and up. But that's only going to last so long as the next generation survey scopes such as Pan-Starrs come online. Amateur asteroid photometry will probably be unaffected though.
There's also quite a lot of room for improvement in amateur scopes too. Right now there's a pretty significant barrier as far as decent imaging scopes for amateurs. 14 inches is about as big as most amateurs can reasonably afford. We can make much larger newtonian scopes, but putting them on a mount capable of long exposures is really really REALLY expensive. There's definitely room for a DIYer to make a difference here. Or the manufacturing of lighter mirrors...or tessellated mirrors. Or precision field derotation for alt-azimuth mounts.
that's actually not that difficult at all. Hydrogen bombs are uncontrolled fusion in action. Now, producing usable energy, however...
Well, according to the BBC article it says they build a "unique thermo-nuclear reaction device". Technically, NK could be referring to a hydrogen bomb.
This seems like such a huge deal when you put it that way, but really... so what?
Let's see how you feel after Sony's monitoring programs see how good you are at Starfighter and recruit you in their real world war against the Ko-Dan Empire. Meanwhile, your android replacement will be sleeping with your wife.
maybe content creators would understand that parodies like this downfall clip actually create interest in the original, and are really just a form of advertisement.
Too true. Youtube and these parodies must have driven rentals and sales of the DVD through the roof.
Your government is elected by the people you twit. How is it a "monopoly" when every 2 or 4 years you get to CHOOSE who is running the government?
Exactly. We have the option of Kang or Kodos.
How the fuck is this a troll? Seriously people have been dishing out the negative mods way to freely lately.
Am I going to find this kind of stuff down at a Hobby shop? I've never looked.
Probably not. You can google "ham radio equipment" or something like that. Ebay has lots of equipment too. Check out the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) website too (http://www.arrl.org/) for info too.
...and Floppies are the new punch cards...and punch cards are the new abacuses...and abacuses are the new ...what? Fingers and toes?
Well no actually, it looked like any normal IT support guy putting a machine back together, except most people don't even fumble and drop the RAM.
Exactly. I drop almost everything else. Power wires that you have to spend 30 seconds relocating in the jumble of other cables. Fans. The video card sometimes because the things are so heavy these days. Screws...especially screws. Have to hold the bloody case upside down to get them out. But RAM? No, that's about the easiest thing to get in there.