It's hard to say if a military dictatorship would last very long-- generations, that is. I suppose one could argue that it's happened in the past, but the people on board would presumably know a thing or two about history and wouldn't stand for something like that. Predicting the behavior of random selection of the population (in any situation) is easier than predicting the behavior of a group who would volunteer for such a journey (and their offspring). It would certainly have to be volunteer; if it were not, it would be prisoners, and one can imagine that they would likely self destruct in less than a week. So I agree, probably the best solution would be some sort of hibernation.
Or... ooo, what about jacking in all the people into a Matrix:-) And instead of Agents you had friendly, talking penguins who were quick on their feet, could dodge bullets and loved to dance (and they wear sunglasses and ear pieces).
>>we could do that, but the odds of us being screwed over by either a gamma ray burst or some other dangerous >>interstellar space event would be pretty high.
Actually, the odds of something like that happening would in fact be pretty slim (similar to the probability of the earth getting destroyed by such an event). I think the odds of the "crew society" destroying themselves = 30 years into the mission would be much higher. Didn't Douglas Adams have something like this in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books?
>Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well?
You are not compensating artists for their work by purchasing their music. It is rare (VERY rare) that an artist will make a profit from sale of their music, and in fact quite a few of them lose money, even the successful artists. Music artists make their money -- and a great deal of money at that -- from performance (what other reason would they possibly have for traveling around, living out of a tour bus most of the year?). The money collected from the sale of their music goes to the record companies, to compensate them for pressing all those CDs, sending them all over the country/world, etc.
For musical artists, records serve one purpose: to promote their performances. Sharing music online, for free, serves this purpose more effectively and efficiently CD distribution or digital music sales. Don't forget, when you download a song, the artist is still given credit. The music is now going directly to you; the record companies don't like it because all of a sudden they have been relegated to the uncomfortable position of 'middle man'.
So remember, if you ARE actually interested in the success of a music artists, the best thing to do for them is to digitally distribute their music.
Well, I can tell you that this is completely bass ackwards. I've been a Windows user for most of my adult life, but been using Mac for the last 4-odd years (I'm writing this on a brand-new macbook pro). Mac support for cameras SUCKS!! My current digicam is a perfect example: I plug it into WindowsXP: *snap!* it reads it automatically. I plug it into my 8 year-old Pentium-II running Debian Linux: *snap!* it reads it automatically. I plug it into my MacBook: *spinning wheel*... no dice. It turns out that I cannot read it as an external storage device, instead I have to import the pictures using ONLY iPhoto (which is a horrible piece of software, btw). It's not just the mac-intels... G5's do the same thing. What's even worse (I find, after reading into the problem) is that Mac KNOWS about this problem and refuses to fix it (with this particular camera model) because otherwise there would be no reason to use iPhoto.
The only advantage I see in getting a Mac is for work applications (that is, if your work lends itself to a unix-like environment) and you don't want to go through the headache of configuring hardware drivers on a linux system (e.g. on a laptop). But for typical "home" use, Mac is next to worthless. And that's being generous.
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You must be new to slashdot. Either that, or you have a terrible case of 'captainobviousitis'.
It's hard to say if a military dictatorship would last very long-- generations, that is. I suppose one could argue that it's happened in the past, but the people on board would presumably know a thing or two about history and wouldn't stand for something like that. Predicting the behavior of random selection of the population (in any situation) is easier than predicting the behavior of a group who would volunteer for such a journey (and their offspring). It would certainly have to be volunteer; if it were not, it would be prisoners, and one can imagine that they would likely self destruct in less than a week. So I agree, probably the best solution would be some sort of hibernation.
:-) And instead of Agents you had friendly, talking penguins who were quick on their feet, could dodge bullets and loved to dance (and they wear sunglasses and ear pieces).
Or... ooo, what about jacking in all the people into a Matrix
Ok, i need to cut back on the weed.
>>we could do that, but the odds of us being screwed over by either a gamma ray burst or some other dangerous >>interstellar space event would be pretty high.
Actually, the odds of something like that happening would in fact be pretty slim (similar to the probability of the earth getting destroyed by such an event). I think the odds of the "crew society" destroying themselves = 30 years into the mission would be much higher. Didn't Douglas Adams have something like this in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books?
>Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well?
You are not compensating artists for their work by purchasing their music. It is rare (VERY rare) that an artist will make a profit from sale of their music, and in fact quite a few of them lose money, even the successful artists. Music artists make their money -- and a great deal of money at that -- from performance (what other reason would they possibly have for traveling around, living out of a tour bus most of the year?). The money collected from the sale of their music goes to the record companies, to compensate them for pressing all those CDs, sending them all over the country/world, etc.
For musical artists, records serve one purpose: to promote their performances. Sharing music online, for free, serves this purpose more effectively and efficiently CD distribution or digital music sales. Don't forget, when you download a song, the artist is still given credit. The music is now going directly to you; the record companies don't like it because all of a sudden they have been relegated to the uncomfortable position of 'middle man'.
So remember, if you ARE actually interested in the success of a music artists, the best thing to do for them is to digitally distribute their music.
Well, I can tell you that this is completely bass ackwards. I've been a Windows user for most of my adult life, but been using Mac for the last 4-odd years (I'm writing this on a brand-new macbook pro). Mac support for cameras SUCKS!! My current digicam is a perfect example: I plug it into WindowsXP: *snap!* it reads it automatically. I plug it into my 8 year-old Pentium-II running Debian Linux: *snap!* it reads it automatically. I plug it into my MacBook: *spinning wheel*... no dice. It turns out that I cannot read it as an external storage device, instead I have to import the pictures using ONLY iPhoto (which is a horrible piece of software, btw). It's not just the mac-intels... G5's do the same thing. What's even worse (I find, after reading into the problem) is that Mac KNOWS about this problem and refuses to fix it (with this particular camera model) because otherwise there would be no reason to use iPhoto. The only advantage I see in getting a Mac is for work applications (that is, if your work lends itself to a unix-like environment) and you don't want to go through the headache of configuring hardware drivers on a linux system (e.g. on a laptop). But for typical "home" use, Mac is next to worthless. And that's being generous.