Folks, please stop editorializing via modding. There is nothing flamebaity [sic] about this post. Grow a pair and reply instead. Sheesh:P. Wish I had mod points left.
Possibly. Or, just like the Schroedinger cat "paradox" was a mocking satire by S. to show the absurdity of applying his work to macroscopic objects like cats, this thing could be a satire on how ridiculous the application of the Drake "equation" to the SETI* is. Or, to be fair, even if the terms in the Drake equation are accepted to be correct, the idea that the individual probabilities (especially in the biological aspects) are anything but a wild guess is laughable.
______
I use it as an acronym here, not as the name of the organization.
Responding to an AC is a sign of boredom on my part (I need to get a life:P) but you insist on repeating as many mistakes as the original AC I was responding to. "Academia"? Seriously? Do you then claim to have surveyed every single academic field in existence? I don't. I can only speak about a few (physics and material sciences among them).
I gave a specific example and cited my source (at least qualitatively - some people who actually work in R&D departments in an industrial setting). You insist on spouting statements to the contrary that are not supported by any evidence that I have seen so far.
I will go one step further and paraphrase the same source I alluded to earlier: industry has given up on original research that is estimated to take more than 3-4 years (as I've already mentioned) and (here comes the new stuff) instead outsources the job to academic departments (in the United States at least, I dunno about the rest of the world). The specific field is lighting technology and the company is an industry leader. In a sense, this is not a bad division of labor. The structure of industry today is such that it is internally difficult to justify long term research for developing new technologies but industry R&D is exquisitely competent at at optimizing and extending said novel tech once delivered. The Bell Labs paradigm is not the only one that can work. In fact, there are now partnerships between tech and business departments at US universities for exploiting discoveries (particularly in nanoscience).
About your last paragraph, I don't respond to sophomoric personal attacks. Last I looked, this wasn't 4chan:P. I'd feel dirty all over *shudder*. Suffice to say that you guess wrong:p.
Also, I can only shake my head sadly at people who see a few problems with an institution ("academia" or the peer review process for instance or even copyright as we've seen so long) and see no other choice but to completely dismantle it and start over with their own pet idea. Should I assume that your idea of dealing with a broken machine would be to return to the design stage instead of finding a clever way to fix it? Wishy washy nonsense.
I ought to kick myself for wasting my time addressing stillborn arguments.
Indeed:-). To be honest, I'm a bit anal this weekend - had to stay in due to a head cold. Makes me stir crazy and a bit bored and I... ah... posted a bit too much:p. Cheers, pip pip and all that;-).
Ach! multiple post FTL but you did get me on one point. I mistakenly wrote that I completely agreed. Clearly, if I then mention the degree of agreement, that is incorrect. Consider it corrected and thanks for pointing out the inconsistency.
You said you completely agree, and then you explained how you disagree. Are you trying to crossbreed poker bluffing techniques into public debate?
Not at all. I wasn't attempting to be snarky about it either. I completely agreed with the person I was replying to when he/she said:
As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
Is it now insensitive to expect that people understand at least the rudiments of something before venturing an opinion on it? Do you not see any middle ground between "people in the field" and "completely ignorant person talking about his/her ass"? I was simply clarifying the precise degree of my agreement with the poster. I would like to think that I'm past the age where every issue is simple enough to answer in terms of "I agree" or "you're an idiot";-). It is sad that attempting to be precise in an age of vague generalities is considered "poker-bluffing". I am hurt! I am wounded! I bleed *sigh*.
Also, while everyone has a right to make their opinion heard, only a few earn the privilege to be taken seriously. Think about that distinction. Parent was saying that everyone has the right to talk about science. I agreed and as a bonus, gave out some free advice to would-be posters on how they can be taken seriously instead of looking like a character on a SyFy B-movie. Someone gimme a medal what?:P
Well, that's a little bit like saying, "I lost a quarter over there by the wall, but I'm searching here because it's got better lighting"
There was this time period, way back when, when a couple guys with names like Kepler and Galileo, decided to look at planetary motion in a different light, taking it from a 'different angle' of the hows/whys celestial bodies would appear to spin in the night sky. maybe I'm off base, but sounds pretty much like someone looking at this in a different light, proposing a different theory that lines up with the cosmos.
You missed the context of the line you quoted. That joke had nothing to do with maverick amateurs. Let me try again. The person I was responding to had said (and I paraphrase) that Arxiv is more accessible, to which I was pointing out that just because something is more accessible doesn't mean it is the best choice.
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
A million times, NO. Science is for everyone. That doesn't mean everyone is right, or everyone should be listened to, but *EVERYONE* has the right to talk about science, and even be wrong about science.
If instead, everyone was posting comments on the paper as part of the peer-review process, I'd agree. We want to weed out the comments there to those that sufficiently grasp the concepts involved. Hence the term, peer-review. Slashdot is not, however, peer-review. It's a news and social site for nerds. As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
IAAP and I completely agree with you. What GP should have written instead was:
"Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, inform yourself by reading about the subject before commenting out of your ass. Then post an insightful/interesting comment or question about or even loosely related to TFA (what a mad and novel idea!) instead of indulging in soap box grandstanding".
When someone says "academia" when they should say "my field" my bullshit sensors light up like crazy. Ironically, your posting as AC shows the fundamental flaw (EVEN in principle) in non peer-reviewed journals.
And industry has stopped doing original research for a long time now. I've heard tales of woe aplenty from people in so-called "R&D" departments who complain that development times greater than a presidential term of office are simple laughed at in industry these days. Industry has come a long way (mostly hellward:P) since the halcyon days of Bell Labs.
There are many problems with the academic peer review process. The problem you allude to probably even exists in some fields. For the most part, clever researchers find a way around them and visionaries try daily to try to change things for the better. And then there some who... leave academia, enter industry, get bored and post anonymous comments on message boards *cough*.
Well, that's a little bit like saying, "I lost a quarter over there by the wall, but I'm searching here because it's got better lighting".:-) But yes, in all seriousness you raise a valid point that it could be better reviewed this way but you have to ask - by whom? The whole idea of peer review is that you get "peers", who (provably) know a little something about the field. If you've ventured into the surreal world of physics fora on the intertubes, you will understand my reluctance to put any stock on such "open" reviewing.
Your criticism of "cliquishness(?)" would be valid if people were saying that you should grant Nature a greater benefit of the doubt as compared to Journal of Physics but the fact is that Arxiv is non-peer-reviewed and I've seen some doozies on there on par with the awesomely funny crap I get at my university email address (the crackpots mass mail their delusions to the entire faculty/grad student directory at large universities:-), a boon for a collector such as myself I must say!).
Having said all this, I have been given to understand (by my colleagues in high-energy theory - arguably the most prolific field on Arxiv) and I paraphrase here, that Arxiv is more like a bulletin board where they can pass ideas back and forth on far shorter time scales than in traditional publications. But when it comes to ideas that (they feel) have survived the maelstrom of brainstorming, the final product must be published in a peer reviewed journal as a first step (of many many many more) to entering the field's gestalt.
Think of Arxiv as Wikipedia's sandbox if you will;-).
As I explicitly wrote (and as you quoted above), I was asking ONLY about appliances (not notebooks or phones), yet your main example was about a laptop. I am of course, quite cognizant of the need for globally unique addresses for the latter. The medical device application was quite interesting and more in line with what I was talking about.
However, both were quite instructive for which I thank you:). I also found Anpheus' explanation quite useful and I recommend it to you.
In fact, it frequently amazes me how many identifiers a computing device uses today. For instance, given a chance to start from scratch, wouldn't it make sense to "prenatally" register a device's machine id as its global ip address? Maintaining such registries ought not to be too expensive. A consortium of top hardware manufacturers could easily take care of the cost, even keeping the existing agencies (IANA and the regional arms) at great benefit to them mind you - imagine being able to advertise a TRULY network-ready device. Charge non-contributing manufacturers a registry fee which they pretty much have to pay or suffer the ire of their customers who will then have to pay it post-purchase. I'm hardly a businessman but it really doesn't seem all that difficult considering the things they've shown themselves capable of. And before the cynicism shows up;-) I truly don't see who this DOESN'T profit.
The only reason we have to rely on either third party clouds or port forwarding, VPNs, and all this other mess is because IPv4 wasn't adequate in size or security.
With IPv6, everyone will have globally routable IPs with IPSEC as a standard feature. We will see a wave of new devices and software to take advantage of this. Want to sync your phone with your laptop, and your laptop with your desktop? Easy. Even home users will be able to do it if the software exists, and it won't require a third party. You'd need to have your phone, desktop, and LAN in your local, "trusted" network at home, or manually copy enough info to set up the IPSEC, and then done. You take your laptop and phone on vacation, it gets its MIPv6 address, it then sets up a connection with your home IPv6 address. Your desktop doesn't need a VPN, it has strong certificates you transferred at home to do IPSEC. Your desktop doesn't need port forwarding, you set up your stateful firewall to allow IPSEC and existing connections in, but block all unsolicited, insecure connections. Your desktop doesn't even need DynDNS because the address space is large enough that you will almost certainly get a large, very large range of static IPs, and MIPv6 will even let your phone and laptop carry their IPs with them on supporting carriers. If that fails, you can set up DynDNS or something like that on your desktop, and never have to worry about it again.
The reason we need globally unique IP addresses is because:
1. NAT isn't security.
2. NAT is just as much propping up the network security industry as Congress is propping up.
Proper IPv6 will eliminate most of the need for VPNs, result in increased network resiliency and create new business opportunities. It's like going up a step on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yeah, we had fun scrounging around on the first couple layers, but making globally routable IPs standard gets you one step closer to self-actualization;)
And you're right, there is no reason a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world. That's why no one is recommending you remove stateful firewalls, no one is recommending you set your devices to promiscuously accept connections. Existing firewall technology, plus globally routable IPs, plus IPSEC equals win.
Thanks! Wonderfully lucid answer:). I'm filing this one away. And yes, it does make sense now.
Speaking purely about networked appliances (NOT notebooks or phones), why on earth would you ever need unique IP addresses (in the global sense?). One unique IP address for a home (the one that comes with the connection you usually pay for is fine), a nice router, DHCP and all the port numbers you could wish for. I'm not an IT person but I could easily wire up my lab/office using cheap commercial components so that I can remotely control/view data acquisition boxes. This is no different in principle from home appliances. If this is what you were talking about (I don't get IT jargon any more than you'll get physics jargon), why is this a kludge? There's no good reason why a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world - raises more problems than it solves.
In fact, if all you need is your appliances to talk to each other and maybe your laptop but NOT the outside world, you don't even need a firewall for that internal network. Eliminating a firewall would remove most (if not all) the minor annoyances of setting this stuff up. Hell, even a caveman could do it (TM).
They had plenty of food from the lush world on which they lived. So they didn't have iPods and cell phones and cars, does that really make humanity more advanced?
1. Food, water and shelter are basic necessities (add healing if you wish). This is a necessary but insufficient requirement for a species to be called advanced.
2. ipods, cellphones and cars are only marginally connected with humanity being more advanced (though some might argue that ipods are evidence for a lack of intelligent life on Earth but I digress:p). "Advanced" in GP's post means "technologically advanced" from the context but even philosophically speaking one implies the other for the simple reason that to make an iPod requires such arcane knowledge as a primitive species with little to no curiosity about itself or the larger universe around it could never have.
Put in a simpler way - a primitive species is one that uses telepathy. An advanced species is one that actively tries to figure out how it works.
The scene where they asked for forgiveness when they had to kill a predator basically laid it all out. They understood that there were necessities, but they would do them as needed to survive.
I know you aren't necessarily endorsing this attitude, merely stating that it occurs in the movie, but I would like to point out that if I were the animal being killed, I wouldn't give a good goddamn about my murderer's state of mind during my murder (notice I keep saying murder because that's what it would be from my point of view*). This "salvation fetish" and the terrible sense of guilt that precedes it (and which must be rationalized away) is probably one of the few things shared equally (though in different ways) by the once and present occupants of North America. The ONLY relevance of the killer's plea for forgiveness (and the inevitable, yet fictitious grant of said forgiveness in the killer's mind) is as a salve to the killer's conscience, without which a conscientious killer could not survive the guilt of having taken another life.
On a different note, Cameron has made me realize that the modern Luddite can be epitomized by the blogger who writes about the internet being evil, or the televangelist calling upon the faithful to denounce technology as Satan's toy. Amusing as hell:). "All technology except that which I'm comfortable with and approve of is evil and unnatural".
_________________
*full disclosure - I'm an unrepentant carnivore.
The gravity is weak enough and the atmosphere thick enough that you barely even need a parachute. In any case, the only thing rockets could do to the methane there would be to boil some of it - there's no free oxygen out there to react with.
Point taken (and very good point:)) but surely it's not that simple. If the boat's engine has a combustion chamber of any kind, surely there will be some oxygen on board. Oxygen leaking out near nozzles or methane/other hydrocarbons leaking IN could be just as bad. Of course, running any kind of engine inside a new kind of atmosphere means completely rethinking (or at least thinking through) the engine design and combustion chemistry. What's waterproof may not be proof against liquids with different physical and chemical properties.
Slashdot Mirror
I figured out a while back that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, I will be one of a handful of people with a running car...
You better pray that the mutations allow you to piss fuel in that case ;-)
Freakin' electrosensitives [sic] need to be put in a cage - perhaps ... dare I suggest ... a Faraday cage? Ninnies.
Folks, please stop editorializing via modding. There is nothing flamebaity [sic] about this post. Grow a pair and reply instead. Sheesh :P. Wish I had mod points left.
They think the world is all rainbows and poppies now, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Well, that explains a lot :).
Oh snap! :)
Possibly. Or, just like the Schroedinger cat "paradox" was a mocking satire by S. to show the absurdity of applying his work to macroscopic objects like cats, this thing could be a satire on how ridiculous the application of the Drake "equation" to the SETI* is. Or, to be fair, even if the terms in the Drake equation are accepted to be correct, the idea that the individual probabilities (especially in the biological aspects) are anything but a wild guess is laughable.
______
I use it as an acronym here, not as the name of the organization.
Responding to an AC is a sign of boredom on my part (I need to get a life :P) but you insist on repeating as many mistakes as the original AC I was responding to. "Academia"? Seriously? Do you then claim to have surveyed every single academic field in existence? I don't. I can only speak about a few (physics and material sciences among them).
:P. I'd feel dirty all over *shudder*. Suffice to say that you guess wrong :p.
I gave a specific example and cited my source (at least qualitatively - some people who actually work in R&D departments in an industrial setting). You insist on spouting statements to the contrary that are not supported by any evidence that I have seen so far.
I will go one step further and paraphrase the same source I alluded to earlier: industry has given up on original research that is estimated to take more than 3-4 years (as I've already mentioned) and (here comes the new stuff) instead outsources the job to academic departments (in the United States at least, I dunno about the rest of the world). The specific field is lighting technology and the company is an industry leader. In a sense, this is not a bad division of labor. The structure of industry today is such that it is internally difficult to justify long term research for developing new technologies but industry R&D is exquisitely competent at at optimizing and extending said novel tech once delivered. The Bell Labs paradigm is not the only one that can work. In fact, there are now partnerships between tech and business departments at US universities for exploiting discoveries (particularly in nanoscience).
About your last paragraph, I don't respond to sophomoric personal attacks. Last I looked, this wasn't 4chan
Also, I can only shake my head sadly at people who see a few problems with an institution ("academia" or the peer review process for instance or even copyright as we've seen so long) and see no other choice but to completely dismantle it and start over with their own pet idea. Should I assume that your idea of dealing with a broken machine would be to return to the design stage instead of finding a clever way to fix it? Wishy washy nonsense.
I ought to kick myself for wasting my time addressing stillborn arguments.
Indeed :-). To be honest, I'm a bit anal this weekend - had to stay in due to a head cold. Makes me stir crazy and a bit bored and I ... ah ... posted a bit too much :p. Cheers, pip pip and all that ;-).
Flamebait? Seriously? For taking exception to unjustified generalities? *snort*
:P.
Ironic, considering the post I was replying to
Ach! multiple post FTL but you did get me on one point. I mistakenly wrote that I completely agreed. Clearly, if I then mention the degree of agreement, that is incorrect. Consider it corrected and thanks for pointing out the inconsistency.
You said you completely agree, and then you explained how you disagree. Are you trying to crossbreed poker bluffing techniques into public debate?
Not at all. I wasn't attempting to be snarky about it either. I completely agreed with the person I was replying to when he/she said:
As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
Is it now insensitive to expect that people understand at least the rudiments of something before venturing an opinion on it? Do you not see any middle ground between "people in the field" and "completely ignorant person talking about his/her ass"? I was simply clarifying the precise degree of my agreement with the poster. I would like to think that I'm past the age where every issue is simple enough to answer in terms of "I agree" or "you're an idiot" ;-). It is sad that attempting to be precise in an age of vague generalities is considered "poker-bluffing". I am hurt! I am wounded! I bleed *sigh*.
:P
Also, while everyone has a right to make their opinion heard, only a few earn the privilege to be taken seriously. Think about that distinction. Parent was saying that everyone has the right to talk about science. I agreed and as a bonus, gave out some free advice to would-be posters on how they can be taken seriously instead of looking like a character on a SyFy B-movie. Someone gimme a medal what?
Well, that's a little bit like saying, "I lost a quarter over there by the wall, but I'm searching here because it's got better lighting"
There was this time period, way back when, when a couple guys with names like Kepler and Galileo, decided to look at planetary motion in a different light, taking it from a 'different angle' of the hows/whys celestial bodies would appear to spin in the night sky. maybe I'm off base, but sounds pretty much like someone looking at this in a different light, proposing a different theory that lines up with the cosmos.
You missed the context of the line you quoted. That joke had nothing to do with maverick amateurs. Let me try again. The person I was responding to had said (and I paraphrase) that Arxiv is more accessible, to which I was pointing out that just because something is more accessible doesn't mean it is the best choice.
You assume the destination is more important than the journey, young Grasshopper.
Too many cowpies on this particular journey :p
Bravo! I lol'd :-)
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
A million times, NO. Science is for everyone. That doesn't mean everyone is right, or everyone should be listened to, but *EVERYONE* has the right to talk about science, and even be wrong about science.
If instead, everyone was posting comments on the paper as part of the peer-review process, I'd agree. We want to weed out the comments there to those that sufficiently grasp the concepts involved. Hence the term, peer-review. Slashdot is not, however, peer-review. It's a news and social site for nerds. As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
IAAP and I completely agree with you. What GP should have written instead was: "Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, inform yourself by reading about the subject before commenting out of your ass. Then post an insightful/interesting comment or question about or even loosely related to TFA (what a mad and novel idea!) instead of indulging in soap box grandstanding".
When someone says "academia" when they should say "my field" my bullshit sensors light up like crazy. Ironically, your posting as AC shows the fundamental flaw (EVEN in principle) in non peer-reviewed journals.
:P) since the halcyon days of Bell Labs.
... leave academia, enter industry, get bored and post anonymous comments on message boards *cough*.
And industry has stopped doing original research for a long time now. I've heard tales of woe aplenty from people in so-called "R&D" departments who complain that development times greater than a presidential term of office are simple laughed at in industry these days. Industry has come a long way (mostly hellward
There are many problems with the academic peer review process. The problem you allude to probably even exists in some fields. For the most part, clever researchers find a way around them and visionaries try daily to try to change things for the better. And then there some who
I lol'd :-) but I'm not sure why. Mind explaining the allusion (if any)? I so hate feeling lost about web memes :-(.
Well, that's a little bit like saying, "I lost a quarter over there by the wall, but I'm searching here because it's got better lighting". :-) But yes, in all seriousness you raise a valid point that it could be better reviewed this way but you have to ask - by whom? The whole idea of peer review is that you get "peers", who (provably) know a little something about the field. If you've ventured into the surreal world of physics fora on the intertubes, you will understand my reluctance to put any stock on such "open" reviewing.
:-), a boon for a collector such as myself I must say!).
;-).
Your criticism of "cliquishness(?)" would be valid if people were saying that you should grant Nature a greater benefit of the doubt as compared to Journal of Physics but the fact is that Arxiv is non-peer-reviewed and I've seen some doozies on there on par with the awesomely funny crap I get at my university email address (the crackpots mass mail their delusions to the entire faculty/grad student directory at large universities
Having said all this, I have been given to understand (by my colleagues in high-energy theory - arguably the most prolific field on Arxiv) and I paraphrase here, that Arxiv is more like a bulletin board where they can pass ideas back and forth on far shorter time scales than in traditional publications. But when it comes to ideas that (they feel) have survived the maelstrom of brainstorming, the final product must be published in a peer reviewed journal as a first step (of many many many more) to entering the field's gestalt.
Think of Arxiv as Wikipedia's sandbox if you will
Interesting. I didn't know any of this. Thanks for the info.
As I explicitly wrote (and as you quoted above), I was asking ONLY about appliances (not notebooks or phones), yet your main example was about a laptop. I am of course, quite cognizant of the need for globally unique addresses for the latter. The medical device application was quite interesting and more in line with what I was talking about.
:). I also found Anpheus' explanation quite useful and I recommend it to you.
;-) I truly don't see who this DOESN'T profit.
However, both were quite instructive for which I thank you
In fact, it frequently amazes me how many identifiers a computing device uses today. For instance, given a chance to start from scratch, wouldn't it make sense to "prenatally" register a device's machine id as its global ip address? Maintaining such registries ought not to be too expensive. A consortium of top hardware manufacturers could easily take care of the cost, even keeping the existing agencies (IANA and the regional arms) at great benefit to them mind you - imagine being able to advertise a TRULY network-ready device. Charge non-contributing manufacturers a registry fee which they pretty much have to pay or suffer the ire of their customers who will then have to pay it post-purchase. I'm hardly a businessman but it really doesn't seem all that difficult considering the things they've shown themselves capable of. And before the cynicism shows up
The only reason we have to rely on either third party clouds or port forwarding, VPNs, and all this other mess is because IPv4 wasn't adequate in size or security.
With IPv6, everyone will have globally routable IPs with IPSEC as a standard feature. We will see a wave of new devices and software to take advantage of this. Want to sync your phone with your laptop, and your laptop with your desktop? Easy. Even home users will be able to do it if the software exists, and it won't require a third party. You'd need to have your phone, desktop, and LAN in your local, "trusted" network at home, or manually copy enough info to set up the IPSEC, and then done. You take your laptop and phone on vacation, it gets its MIPv6 address, it then sets up a connection with your home IPv6 address. Your desktop doesn't need a VPN, it has strong certificates you transferred at home to do IPSEC. Your desktop doesn't need port forwarding, you set up your stateful firewall to allow IPSEC and existing connections in, but block all unsolicited, insecure connections. Your desktop doesn't even need DynDNS because the address space is large enough that you will almost certainly get a large, very large range of static IPs, and MIPv6 will even let your phone and laptop carry their IPs with them on supporting carriers. If that fails, you can set up DynDNS or something like that on your desktop, and never have to worry about it again.
The reason we need globally unique IP addresses is because:
1. NAT isn't security. 2. NAT is just as much propping up the network security industry as Congress is propping up .
Proper IPv6 will eliminate most of the need for VPNs, result in increased network resiliency and create new business opportunities. It's like going up a step on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yeah, we had fun scrounging around on the first couple layers, but making globally routable IPs standard gets you one step closer to self-actualization ;)
And you're right, there is no reason a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world. That's why no one is recommending you remove stateful firewalls, no one is recommending you set your devices to promiscuously accept connections. Existing firewall technology, plus globally routable IPs, plus IPSEC equals win.
Thanks! Wonderfully lucid answer :). I'm filing this one away. And yes, it does make sense now.
Speaking purely about networked appliances (NOT notebooks or phones), why on earth would you ever need unique IP addresses (in the global sense?). One unique IP address for a home (the one that comes with the connection you usually pay for is fine), a nice router, DHCP and all the port numbers you could wish for. I'm not an IT person but I could easily wire up my lab/office using cheap commercial components so that I can remotely control/view data acquisition boxes. This is no different in principle from home appliances. If this is what you were talking about (I don't get IT jargon any more than you'll get physics jargon), why is this a kludge? There's no good reason why a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world - raises more problems than it solves.
In fact, if all you need is your appliances to talk to each other and maybe your laptop but NOT the outside world, you don't even need a firewall for that internal network. Eliminating a firewall would remove most (if not all) the minor annoyances of setting this stuff up. Hell, even a caveman could do it (TM).
They had plenty of food from the lush world on which they lived. So they didn't have iPods and cell phones and cars, does that really make humanity more advanced?
1. Food, water and shelter are basic necessities (add healing if you wish). This is a necessary but insufficient requirement for a species to be called advanced. :p). "Advanced" in GP's post means "technologically advanced" from the context but even philosophically speaking one implies the other for the simple reason that to make an iPod requires such arcane knowledge as a primitive species with little to no curiosity about itself or the larger universe around it could never have.
2. ipods, cellphones and cars are only marginally connected with humanity being more advanced (though some might argue that ipods are evidence for a lack of intelligent life on Earth but I digress
Put in a simpler way - a primitive species is one that uses telepathy. An advanced species is one that actively tries to figure out how it works.
The scene where they asked for forgiveness when they had to kill a predator basically laid it all out. They understood that there were necessities, but they would do them as needed to survive.
I know you aren't necessarily endorsing this attitude, merely stating that it occurs in the movie, but I would like to point out that if I were the animal being killed, I wouldn't give a good goddamn about my murderer's state of mind during my murder (notice I keep saying murder because that's what it would be from my point of view*). This "salvation fetish" and the terrible sense of guilt that precedes it (and which must be rationalized away) is probably one of the few things shared equally (though in different ways) by the once and present occupants of North America. The ONLY relevance of the killer's plea for forgiveness (and the inevitable, yet fictitious grant of said forgiveness in the killer's mind) is as a salve to the killer's conscience, without which a conscientious killer could not survive the guilt of having taken another life.
:). "All technology except that which I'm comfortable with and approve of is evil and unnatural".
On a different note, Cameron has made me realize that the modern Luddite can be epitomized by the blogger who writes about the internet being evil, or the televangelist calling upon the faithful to denounce technology as Satan's toy. Amusing as hell
_________________
*full disclosure - I'm an unrepentant carnivore.
The gravity is weak enough and the atmosphere thick enough that you barely even need a parachute. In any case, the only thing rockets could do to the methane there would be to boil some of it - there's no free oxygen out there to react with.
Point taken (and very good point :)) but surely it's not that simple. If the boat's engine has a combustion chamber of any kind, surely there will be some oxygen on board. Oxygen leaking out near nozzles or methane/other hydrocarbons leaking IN could be just as bad. Of course, running any kind of engine inside a new kind of atmosphere means completely rethinking (or at least thinking through) the engine design and combustion chemistry. What's waterproof may not be proof against liquids with different physical and chemical properties.