I actually did park my car on an anthill once, accidentally of course. The ants behaved just like humans and acted like they owned it: It took quite a while to get them all out, and they weren't happy about it. So I'd say this is a mistake any species can make.
The thing with inventions is that its very hard to know beforehand if it will be profitable or not.
Basically, all professionals who work creatively, be it inventors, artists or advertising people, work with quantity rather than quality. When they have enough quantity, they begin sorting it out for the quality.
My point is that if the quantity increases by 30%, the quality might not increase by as much, but it would be strange if it did not increase at all, because quantity is the foundation for quality. Without quantity, its almost impossible to get quality.
Lots of countries have the ability to send a warhead to the moon. Its much easier to attack the moon right now than it is to defend it. Now, one might wonder why any country would want to attack an installation on the moon, its not like one base there prevents another from being founded, and if a country has the technology to build a base there, it doesn't need the strategic value the moon might offer.
Which is kind of cool to think about... Imagine if rats have built a civilization about on par with our current civilization, but they are just a few years from this catastrophic event when they discover this pattern. And they are desperately searching the human ruins in hopes of finding some kind of technology to deal with this. It would make a good movie, I think.
You are right, to some extent. But I think that sending rovers to mars is just as much about human triumph as it is about science, for example.
And some science can't be done by robots. The way muscle and bone degrades in space could never have been discovered by robots. It could have been assumed, but never be actually proven.
The north american colonies had very few things in common with 19th century african colonies. The origins of the people who lived in them were different, the way they were formed, the century the were claimed, the philosophies justifying their creation, the way they were managed... Colonialism is indeed part of the fault, but that doesnt mean colonialism never turns into something good.
Giving the kids internet access and then filtering it to keep them away from the dangerous porn is like giving them bikes and then removing the wheels.
If they didnt want the children to have the freedom the internet offers, the shouldnt have equipped the computers with internet access. Soon the governments will also realize that wikipedia tells the children that their country kinda sucks, that there are all sorts of political views besides the ones their government approve of, and that there are some very simple ways to make powerful explosives.
Now, it won't come as a surprise when these governments also want to filter out wikipedia and google and all those other sites that only bring harmful stuff. The problem is that once you filter out google, wikipedia and porn, the internet has very little to offer for these children. They certainly don't shop online. Once the internet becomes sort of pointless, or atleast uninteresting, so will the computers.
At that point, no one will be satisfied with the results. The kids will not use the computers unless they're told to, and when they are, they will only do stuff they could have just as well done with a pen and paper. The leaders of the countries will se that their children are not learning any new skills with these computers, and OLPC themselves will see that the children are not using the computers the way they hoped.
Many of the country leaders don't actually want their people's kids to have computers, they just think they do. Soon they will see their mistake, and this project will die. Just like similar projects have been quite unsuccessful in the industrialized parts of the world.
Of course, the human body has never tried to copy anything, it just does what's both possible and demanded, and that's why its so effective. Now, if these researchers could do the same, im sure we'd soon live in a better world where robots did everything humans couldnt do. Oh well.
Well, thats only a problem if there's not enough illumination. As long as the lighting from the rest of the room prevents shadows on peoples faces, people will look just normal.
In my opinion, people look strange if there's a strong single light source, no matter where it comes from.
The alternative is 2 years, as I understand it. The problem is that Mars and Earth are only close to each other every second year or so. You have to go there as they are moving closer, and leave before they part too far again, or you have to stay there for another cycle.
Now, 30 days is a bit short, but 2 years is too long. 17 months, with 30 days on the planet, vs 40 months with 24 months on the planet.
Interesting, however, tests that take the takers attention away from the actual subject are not good. By giving takers these kinds of options, they will be filling their heads with statistics or whatever, when they should be thinking of bacteria or whatever.
Using foam in the exterior casing to "heal" holes has been around as long as I have. Now, I don't know if NASA uses that technology or not, but if they don't its not because its previously been impossible, but rather that its been deemed unsuitable to repair space stations that way. So I don't really see how this new technology would make any difference.
"If we really do see 200,000 every five years if a large percentage of these developing markets adopt a non-windows OS as their defacto install base"
But why would they want to do that? Warezed windows is free, more widely spread and supports all the games and software most people want. So what if its insecure? No OS is completely safe, and there are ways to get around that.
Bah, its got nothing to do with religion. Lots of non religious people get offended by people showing symbols such as the hammer and sickle or the swastika. They also get offended by people claiming to feel sexually attracted to children or animals.
Muslims find cartoons of muhammed offensive, agnostics and atheists find cartoons of child pornography offensive. "But nooo", the atheists say, "these things are so different they cannot be compared". But that's because their set of moral values are different from the Muslims.
Respect other peoples morals, or stop shoving your own down the throats of others. You cant do both and still call yourself tolerant.
As unromantic as it might sound, water will probably be the first stuff mined from asteroids, and the only stuff for a long time.
The thing is that bringing asteroids to the surface of the earth isnt easy, and even gold isnt really THAT expensive on earth. You have to launch mining equipment, mine the asteroid, bring the stuff to earth and then land it on earth. Add those things up, and it might not be worth it. Lastly, finding gold on an asteroid is unlikely.
Water on the other hand has many advantages. It can be found in very pure forms on asteroids, it is very easy to mine, requires no processing and it doesnt need to be transported safely to the surface of the earth, but can be sold directly in earth orbit.
After that, we might see metals mined that are useful in space and require very simple processing. I think the space industry will have to build around tourism and exploration for another 100 years before stuff can actually be imported to earth.
Not to mention that strong materials is actually a field where science has progressed a lot in the last 200 years. The important thing about carbon nanotubes isnt that they are the final solution to all our problems, but rather that we're still finding better solutions to our problems.
Maybe it turns out that carbon nanotubes can't practically make cables stronger than 50GPa. So what? Maybe the next super-material invented will be at 200GPa, and that'll be enough.
The only problems with that I see are 1) The lack of power on the moon. I don't think space elevators will be truly profitable without nuclear power, preferably at both ends of the tether, and nuclear power in space is probably inevitable, but at least 30 years away. Sure, there's solar power, but that would become a major limiting factor in many ways, and between the earth and the moon, the elevator would often be in the shade. 2) I'm still not convinced that there's anything of interest on the moon. I mean, a space elevator seems pretty pointless if we're only gonna hang around for a few years and collect some rocks. The wikipedia article mentions 100 climbers, each with a weight of 580 kg. That probably means a metric tonne or more mined every day for many years. You could make it smaller scale, but then you'd have to make each climber smaller, and that means they might not be large enough to carry anything useful down to the moon.
But purely as a research project? Sure, it would probably be both interesting and possible, but very expensive.
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I actually did park my car on an anthill once, accidentally of course. The ants behaved just like humans and acted like they owned it: It took quite a while to get them all out, and they weren't happy about it. So I'd say this is a mistake any species can make.
The thing with inventions is that its very hard to know beforehand if it will be profitable or not.
Basically, all professionals who work creatively, be it inventors, artists or advertising people, work with quantity rather than quality. When they have enough quantity, they begin sorting it out for the quality.
My point is that if the quantity increases by 30%, the quality might not increase by as much, but it would be strange if it did not increase at all, because quantity is the foundation for quality. Without quantity, its almost impossible to get quality.
Lots of countries have the ability to send a warhead to the moon. Its much easier to attack the moon right now than it is to defend it. Now, one might wonder why any country would want to attack an installation on the moon, its not like one base there prevents another from being founded, and if a country has the technology to build a base there, it doesn't need the strategic value the moon might offer.
Why would there be uranium there?
Besides, getting uranium to the moon isnt the most difficult part of nuclear power on the moon...
Which is kind of cool to think about... Imagine if rats have built a civilization about on par with our current civilization, but they are just a few years from this catastrophic event when they discover this pattern. And they are desperately searching the human ruins in hopes of finding some kind of technology to deal with this. It would make a good movie, I think.
You are right, to some extent. But I think that sending rovers to mars is just as much about human triumph as it is about science, for example.
And some science can't be done by robots. The way muscle and bone degrades in space could never have been discovered by robots. It could have been assumed, but never be actually proven.
It means 2020 will without a doubt be the year of the linux desktop.
The north american colonies had very few things in common with 19th century african colonies. The origins of the people who lived in them were different, the way they were formed, the century the were claimed, the philosophies justifying their creation, the way they were managed... Colonialism is indeed part of the fault, but that doesnt mean colonialism never turns into something good.
Giving the kids internet access and then filtering it to keep them away from the dangerous porn is like giving them bikes and then removing the wheels.
If they didnt want the children to have the freedom the internet offers, the shouldnt have equipped the computers with internet access. Soon the governments will also realize that wikipedia tells the children that their country kinda sucks, that there are all sorts of political views besides the ones their government approve of, and that there are some very simple ways to make powerful explosives.
Now, it won't come as a surprise when these governments also want to filter out wikipedia and google and all those other sites that only bring harmful stuff. The problem is that once you filter out google, wikipedia and porn, the internet has very little to offer for these children. They certainly don't shop online. Once the internet becomes sort of pointless, or atleast uninteresting, so will the computers.
At that point, no one will be satisfied with the results. The kids will not use the computers unless they're told to, and when they are, they will only do stuff they could have just as well done with a pen and paper. The leaders of the countries will se that their children are not learning any new skills with these computers, and OLPC themselves will see that the children are not using the computers the way they hoped.
Many of the country leaders don't actually want their people's kids to have computers, they just think they do. Soon they will see their mistake, and this project will die. Just like similar projects have been quite unsuccessful in the industrialized parts of the world.
The downside with creating a truly realistic video game for this aircraft is that the enemy could use it as well.
Americas Army in contrast, was never about actually training anyone, it was just for promotional purposes.
Of course, the human body has never tried to copy anything, it just does what's both possible and demanded, and that's why its so effective. Now, if these researchers could do the same, im sure we'd soon live in a better world where robots did everything humans couldnt do. Oh well.
Well, thats only a problem if there's not enough illumination. As long as the lighting from the rest of the room prevents shadows on peoples faces, people will look just normal.
In my opinion, people look strange if there's a strong single light source, no matter where it comes from.
And sometimes a delayed game is bad and outdated.
Well, sometimes you get the feeling people who make pdf-files spend more time on the pdf than on the idea, so I think this was pretty refreshing.
Well, the definition of europe has varied over time, and there's always much debate around it.
The russians I've talked wouldnt mind at all that people didnt call them europeans, they simply see themselves as russians and nothing else.
And besides its a bit like "American". Europe is more and more becomming another word for the EU.
The alternative is 2 years, as I understand it. The problem is that Mars and Earth are only close to each other every second year or so. You have to go there as they are moving closer, and leave before they part too far again, or you have to stay there for another cycle.
Now, 30 days is a bit short, but 2 years is too long. 17 months, with 30 days on the planet, vs 40 months with 24 months on the planet.
Big deal. It enhances your traits in your children. It will make them even more similar to you, which from your perspective is a good thing.
Inbreeding is an exaggerated problem.
Interesting, however, tests that take the takers attention away from the actual subject are not good. By giving takers these kinds of options, they will be filling their heads with statistics or whatever, when they should be thinking of bacteria or whatever.
Using foam in the exterior casing to "heal" holes has been around as long as I have. Now, I don't know if NASA uses that technology or not, but if they don't its not because its previously been impossible, but rather that its been deemed unsuitable to repair space stations that way. So I don't really see how this new technology would make any difference.
"If we really do see 200,000 every five years if a large percentage of these developing markets adopt a non-windows OS as their defacto install base"
But why would they want to do that? Warezed windows is free, more widely spread and supports all the games and software most people want. So what if its insecure? No OS is completely safe, and there are ways to get around that.
Its a joke based on the hype around "web 2.0", which everyone knows sounds stupid. Now, laugh.
Bah, its got nothing to do with religion. Lots of non religious people get offended by people showing symbols such as the hammer and sickle or the swastika. They also get offended by people claiming to feel sexually attracted to children or animals.
Muslims find cartoons of muhammed offensive, agnostics and atheists find cartoons of child pornography offensive. "But nooo", the atheists say, "these things are so different they cannot be compared". But that's because their set of moral values are different from the Muslims.
Respect other peoples morals, or stop shoving your own down the throats of others. You cant do both and still call yourself tolerant.
As unromantic as it might sound, water will probably be the first stuff mined from asteroids, and the only stuff for a long time.
The thing is that bringing asteroids to the surface of the earth isnt easy, and even gold isnt really THAT expensive on earth. You have to launch mining equipment, mine the asteroid, bring the stuff to earth and then land it on earth. Add those things up, and it might not be worth it. Lastly, finding gold on an asteroid is unlikely.
Water on the other hand has many advantages. It can be found in very pure forms on asteroids, it is very easy to mine, requires no processing and it doesnt need to be transported safely to the surface of the earth, but can be sold directly in earth orbit.
After that, we might see metals mined that are useful in space and require very simple processing. I think the space industry will have to build around tourism and exploration for another 100 years before stuff can actually be imported to earth.
Not to mention that strong materials is actually a field where science has progressed a lot in the last 200 years. The important thing about carbon nanotubes isnt that they are the final solution to all our problems, but rather that we're still finding better solutions to our problems.
Maybe it turns out that carbon nanotubes can't practically make cables stronger than 50GPa. So what? Maybe the next super-material invented will be at 200GPa, and that'll be enough.
The moon is a good idea, and wikipedia has some information about it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator
The only problems with that I see are
1) The lack of power on the moon. I don't think space elevators will be truly profitable without nuclear power, preferably at both ends of the tether, and nuclear power in space is probably inevitable, but at least 30 years away. Sure, there's solar power, but that would become a major limiting factor in many ways, and between the earth and the moon, the elevator would often be in the shade.
2) I'm still not convinced that there's anything of interest on the moon. I mean, a space elevator seems pretty pointless if we're only gonna hang around for a few years and collect some rocks. The wikipedia article mentions 100 climbers, each with a weight of 580 kg. That probably means a metric tonne or more mined every day for many years. You could make it smaller scale, but then you'd have to make each climber smaller, and that means they might not be large enough to carry anything useful down to the moon.
But purely as a research project? Sure, it would probably be both interesting and possible, but very expensive.