If you want to have life you need a chemistry that is sufficiently complex to store information and to build structures.
That may depend on what constitutes "life". We have no idea what "consciousness" is, and even raise hypotheticals about whether a sufficiently complex computer could be called "alive". So even if we don't find life "like us", there still could be life out there, which is to say consciousness, but we may not recognise it until our own understanding of it matures.
Only after making an enormous mistake with serious consequences does a person (or company or industry or government) choose the better - but less satisfying to immediate desires - way. The greater the immediate desire, the more risk will be accepted.
We wouldn't have so many laws and regulations if it weren't the case that human beings simply love learning things the hard way.
As an aside, given those traits, I'm sceptical about our chances of doing anything useful in time to avert catastrophic climate change. We will, once again, make a huge mistake which future generations down the track will no doubt recognise and duly regulate against.
We all know the sonic screwdriver does complicated things with technology, and we don't need to know the details.
I'd prefer that doesn't equate to "technobabble" though, like the language in Star Trek. Mystery is fine, not everyone knows how a microwave oven actually heats food ("it's microwave radiation of course" one would say, still without knowing *how*) and less how a carburettor works in the common car. It's all "magic".
But there's consistency - we don't say, "quick, microwave the carburettor so we can get outta here!" IMO, good sci-fi knows the audience won't lose disbelief if the rocks look like styrofoam, but we will if it's not consistent and takes the genre "seriously" (incl. comedies like the wonderful Galaxy Quest).
Just want to say that is a fantastic explanation. It probably explains to some degree what being "in the zone" means for programmers. It's like when you're really immersed in a good book, so to speak. You're engaging your creativity and thinking only about the world in front of you.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it harder to concentrate on coding when there is talking around me, or even words in music (except music I've very familiar with, so my brain isn't trying to interpret the words anew). I've always thought this is because coding engages the language centres of the brain. Just as it's hard to follow two simultaneous conversations, it's hard to code and hear someone speaking at the same time.
I think you've touched on the *kind* of creativity that good coding requires. Not necessarily the same kind as a painter or musician, but the kind that allows one to work with concepts and the symbols representing them. The kind that makes it easy to keep a "meaning" in mind (what you "want to say") and create the linguistic structure in order to get it across.
Read TFA, and it's like watching Fox News. Correlation doesn't prove anything.
How does the size of military units (specific ones no less, it's not like all military units are the same size) have to do with maintaining stable social circles?
How does real-world social interaction (actual social capital) compare with people you don't know and never met following you on twitter?
You can always find numbers in the world which correlate. The number of galaxies in the universe is about the same as neurons in our brain. Correlation high, significance low.
But, you should, of course test against real world conditions [...] Resist the temptation to want to see how the web site looks before it's finished.
Firstly, you should know what the site is going to look like anyway, and secondly those are a bit contradictory - if you wait till it's "finished" (whatever that means in the real world) till you start testing, you're in for a lot of rewriting.
Back in the real world, we develop for the audience our application has. If it's an in-house app for IE6, that's what you have to take into account, or get another job.
Look at the Google search page. CSS as part of the web page, and tables used for some layout. Shock horror. The rule is whatever works best for your app and its audience. That might be 80% standards and 20% custom fudge.
They are breaking the law and disrupting the business of the public.
Really? Yawn. As if our laws and daily business can't take a few detours here and there. Rosa Parks was breaking the law when she decided not to sit at the back of the bus. She thankfully disrupted the business of the public.
The minute the status quo becomes more precious than the hurly burly of social change, we will have lost our way. For better or worse, the world is imperfect. Laws are imperfect. Our way of life is imperfect.
Complete chaos is not the answer of course, but look at things in perspective. Occasional disruption to the signal is rarely such a bad thing, and often it's just what we need.
I have fond memories of going to Radio Shack to find components for some little project, or components to build some sort of weird audio adapter; but no more.
I think it's a combination of 2 things. Technology changing so fast that keeping heaps of stuff in stock is bad for business (ask any computer parts store), and that - as you mentioned - you can order these electronic parts on the net. Like books, they're small, packable and cheap to ship.
Once upon a time it was the big chain stores which caused little stores to close, now the internet is causing even chains to close, where the items fit well for an internet market. I hated Borders for causing our local bookstores so much grief, yet loved it for the range. Now I feel sorry for them as well. But it's hard to feel "attached" to a web site, even Amazon. Stores give local people jobs.
The whole situation is sad, regardless of the online advantages. I wonder what life will be like in a future where no businesses are around long enough to become familiar with, apart from faceless monoliths too large to be personal?
multiple workspaces, the ability of your applications to share their data with each other, even the simplest things like changing the color of your window decorations
As a Windows person, these don't really amount to much. Maybe I'm missing why multiple workspaces are so great, but the general user will only have a handful of windows open, usually all maximised. I'm a developer and don't have a problem using 10+ windows. (With the help of a free little tool that lets me rearrange them logically on the task bar.)
Sharing data - the average user will be using Office, or an equivalent, and occasionally perhaps a CSV export or most likely cut & paste.
Windows decorations... ok, you got me there.:) I feel people eventually don't bother much with desktop backgrounds, because generally windows are maximised all the time - you hardly ever see the desktop during the day!
This is why MS is also having trouble getting past XP. Even they can't name killer features that the average user will want above what is working very well for them right now. IMO Linux is up against this as well, no matter how pretty it looks, and MS would have to fuck up royally several times (more) for that to change.
However, *devices* is where I see the battle going on. But, ironically, iOS and Android have made more inroads into public awareness in a single year than Linux has in all its existence. Linux will have to watch out for Android, in a way. I think the sudden profusion of OS's is going to make Linux look like a non-starter in comparison. Different products I know, but the public don't know that. And so Linux will stay a specialised OS for servers and serious geeks only, with Apple and Google OS's taking over where Windows can't cut it.
I'd like to see one aimed at a bunch of pseudonyms with disposable email addresses. I mean the only reason this is a problem is because people go daftly entering their *real name* in fields labelled "Your Name".
Whatever happened to the wonderful internet I knew where you had no idea, and didn't really care, who someone really was? Hopefully people will wise up and stop using their real identity, then they can injunct till they turn blue and it won't stop people talking about whatever the hell they want to, as that's our right after all.
In the end, the massive good that comes from free public discourse way overrides the inconvenience to idiotic celebrities who, after all, owe their fame and fortune to people talking about them.
I'm having this interesting experience with Slashdot, where before I click the link to TFA, I have a look at the +5 comments to see if it's a complete waste of time or not. I've adopted this behaviour over time as very often the quality of comments are a good judge of the article and just as, if not more, interesting.
I'm one of those who comment without reading TFA, but almost 50% of the time now I never click through to it based on the comments. So the higher the quality of comments, the less likely I'm going to read TFA. If I'm not the only one doing that, then surely Slashdot's audience has the inherent tendency to destroy its business model. Which is about as Faustian as a brain in a jar.
you probably wouldn't go to the trouble of returning the laptop just because there's a bit of glare on the screen
Probably not the average home user, but myself and a few professional friends have returned laptops for the screen - but not this issue in particular.
We all wanted matte screens, and at the time (few years ago) some did have em, namely the HP professional series. The problem was there was no *consistency of quality*! You know how some screens look "sparkly" and others are nice and "smooth". The LCD screen in the showroom would be different to what we bought, though it was the exact same laptop model.
I've returned two laptops over the years for this issue, and in one case I decided to take the showroom unit instead of playing LCD roulette.
One thing I'll say for Apple, their LCDs are consistent - you know what you're buying.
I don't approve of censoring the internet for any reason.
No reason at all? Not kiddy porn? Snuff? Calls to violence and killing of individuals? If that is your stance, doesn't it seem to be the opposite and equally nonsensical extreme to heavy-handed censorship? What is your reasoning for no censorship at all?
The thing I never hear spoken about (perhaps because it might be a depressing thought for SETI fans) is that, while it's not beyond imagining that other intelligent species can develop out there, the chances of us detecting them are staggering low, for lots of reasons that easily come to mind.
Taking Earth as an example. 4.5byr old, life only really taking off at the Cambrian, 540myr ago, when Earth is already half way to the grave (Sun will expire in 5byr). So given any "Goldilocks" planet around a sun like ours, only half it's life at most will be spent with any life on it.
Then there's climate events, like ice ages, which could be anything from 20-100kyrs apart but devastating to any established and densely populated technological civilisation.
Any intelligent species which survives its own immaturity would come to the conclusion that long-term survival and growth depends on becoming independent of the natural world, as "unnatural" as that sounds. A population will initially stabilise due to limits on life span and food production (ours will in 2100 at about 10bn people), but as technology develops and those natural limiting factors are "solved", population will inevitably increase again.
A civilisation with abundant food (obviously farming has been replaced by advanced GM or other methods), limitless energy (eg. fusion but probably a mixture of great things) and long life, faces a stark choice: Don't breed much anymore, or find new places to live.
Apart from being rather dismal, the former choice is not viable in the long term. The future on a single planet holds only an inevitable cycle of natural catastrophes, be it a meteor or climate change, undoing what they have achieved. Its own survival, political and social problems solved, the mature and stable civilisation will naturally look upwards, to the planets.
Now a civilisation during this period would be detectable. They'd have been transmitting radio in the past, as we do now. Once embarking on the colonisation of other planets, they'd be even more mindful of the possibility of other successful species like them and continuing to search and transmit.
But this period of time, where they are still "speaking our language" is very limited. A few thousand years at most. Because during that time, a species will change, inside and out. Having solved major problems, socially and technologically, working together and populating planets, they will see themselves no longer as "a species of a planet", bound and subject. They have become "citizens of space", self-determining and outward-looking, no longer identified with arbitrary limitations. I daresay such a civilisation would have different philosophies and priorities to us. Why would such a species want to find others who are, like us, still bound to their world, struggling, infighting, limited and immature?
Of course they want to find other life out there but, having the perspective of a strong, space-faring species, they would obviously prefer to contact others like them, or even more advanced, so they can learn new things. Confident, looking ever forward, their main question would not be a meek yet arrogant, "are we the only ones?" No, it would instead be a challenge to the universe and to themselves: "How do we contact those others who travel the stars? How do we achieve the next step for our species?" Those questions do not involve us.
All their prowess would be focussed on determining what kinds of communications and transport other advanced, multi-planetary species would be using. They would not be thinking "radio" anymore. They would be bent on discovering the deeper secrets of interstellar travel and communication. Indeed it would be an obsession because here they are, playing on the shore of an unlimited ocean. They must find a way to set sail, otherwise for all their great achievements, they
Watched the gameplay video, very impressive attention to expressions and body language, which is indeed a first I think in a game. But as usual it comes down to the gameplay. Hopefully at least it means this is a game with a good plot - that's rare enough.
I'm reminded of Deux Ex 2, which had a brilliantly immersive story in the game, no cutscenes, no need for amazing visuals to be evocative and engaging. IMO it's all in the execution, not the technology.
Saying that, I consider myself pretty devout Christian, and I watch porn even though I feel I really shouldn't.
Without things to feel guilty about in the world, is there point being religious? It would seem healthier though, to keep it down to murder, theft, etc. and not ridiculous things like enjoying being a sexually active human being and accepting that science is the best way to find out stuff.
There's real evil enough in the world to denounce. The rest is trivial and a distraction.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to have life you need a chemistry that is sufficiently complex to store information and to build structures.
That may depend on what constitutes "life". We have no idea what "consciousness" is, and even raise hypotheticals about whether a sufficiently complex computer could be called "alive". So even if we don't find life "like us", there still could be life out there, which is to say consciousness, but we may not recognise it until our own understanding of it matures.
It's fun watching human behaviour at work.
Only after making an enormous mistake with serious consequences does a person (or company or industry or government) choose the better - but less satisfying to immediate desires - way. The greater the immediate desire, the more risk will be accepted.
We wouldn't have so many laws and regulations if it weren't the case that human beings simply love learning things the hard way.
As an aside, given those traits, I'm sceptical about our chances of doing anything useful in time to avert catastrophic climate change. We will, once again, make a huge mistake which future generations down the track will no doubt recognise and duly regulate against.
We all know the sonic screwdriver does complicated things with technology, and we don't need to know the details.
I'd prefer that doesn't equate to "technobabble" though, like the language in Star Trek. Mystery is fine, not everyone knows how a microwave oven actually heats food ("it's microwave radiation of course" one would say, still without knowing *how*) and less how a carburettor works in the common car. It's all "magic".
But there's consistency - we don't say, "quick, microwave the carburettor so we can get outta here!" IMO, good sci-fi knows the audience won't lose disbelief if the rocks look like styrofoam, but we will if it's not consistent and takes the genre "seriously" (incl. comedies like the wonderful Galaxy Quest).
Why doesn't everyone flip out when things like those are added to Group 2B?
You don't walk around with your coffee mug up against the side of your brain, do you?! No, I didn't think so.
I love those old 80's docos and their huge lapels!
Much better quality than what passes for a lot of docos these days.
Just want to say that is a fantastic explanation. It probably explains to some degree what being "in the zone" means for programmers. It's like when you're really immersed in a good book, so to speak. You're engaging your creativity and thinking only about the world in front of you.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it harder to concentrate on coding when there is talking around me, or even words in music (except music I've very familiar with, so my brain isn't trying to interpret the words anew). I've always thought this is because coding engages the language centres of the brain. Just as it's hard to follow two simultaneous conversations, it's hard to code and hear someone speaking at the same time.
I think you've touched on the *kind* of creativity that good coding requires. Not necessarily the same kind as a painter or musician, but the kind that allows one to work with concepts and the symbols representing them. The kind that makes it easy to keep a "meaning" in mind (what you "want to say") and create the linguistic structure in order to get it across.
Read TFA, and it's like watching Fox News.
Correlation doesn't prove anything.
How does the size of military units (specific ones no less, it's not like all military units are the same size) have to do with maintaining stable social circles?
How does real-world social interaction (actual social capital) compare with people you don't know and never met following you on twitter?
You can always find numbers in the world which correlate. The number of galaxies in the universe is about the same as neurons in our brain. Correlation high, significance low.
They should decide what features to use by looking at the browser usage of their user community and making their own cost/benefit calculations.
That's the most sensible comment I've read so far.
But, you should, of course test against real world conditions [...] Resist the temptation to want to see how the web site looks before it's finished.
Firstly, you should know what the site is going to look like anyway, and secondly those are a bit contradictory - if you wait till it's "finished" (whatever that means in the real world) till you start testing, you're in for a lot of rewriting.
Why, standards, of course.
Back in the real world, we develop for the audience our application has. If it's an in-house app for IE6, that's what you have to take into account, or get another job.
Look at the Google search page. CSS as part of the web page, and tables used for some layout. Shock horror. The rule is whatever works best for your app and its audience. That might be 80% standards and 20% custom fudge.
They are breaking the law and disrupting the business of the public.
Really? Yawn. As if our laws and daily business can't take a few detours here and there. Rosa Parks was breaking the law when she decided not to sit at the back of the bus. She thankfully disrupted the business of the public.
The minute the status quo becomes more precious than the hurly burly of social change, we will have lost our way. For better or worse, the world is imperfect. Laws are imperfect. Our way of life is imperfect.
Complete chaos is not the answer of course, but look at things in perspective. Occasional disruption to the signal is rarely such a bad thing, and often it's just what we need.
I have fond memories of going to Radio Shack to find components for some little project, or components to build some sort of weird audio adapter; but no more.
I think it's a combination of 2 things. Technology changing so fast that keeping heaps of stuff in stock is bad for business (ask any computer parts store), and that - as you mentioned - you can order these electronic parts on the net. Like books, they're small, packable and cheap to ship.
Once upon a time it was the big chain stores which caused little stores to close, now the internet is causing even chains to close, where the items fit well for an internet market. I hated Borders for causing our local bookstores so much grief, yet loved it for the range. Now I feel sorry for them as well. But it's hard to feel "attached" to a web site, even Amazon. Stores give local people jobs.
The whole situation is sad, regardless of the online advantages. I wonder what life will be like in a future where no businesses are around long enough to become familiar with, apart from faceless monoliths too large to be personal?
There are too many stupids in this nation for the buying habits of the smart to influence the stupid.
Still, it's a fine line...
People are dying already.
I hope you don't mean the veterinarians.
multiple workspaces, the ability of your applications to share their data with each other, even the simplest things like changing the color of your window decorations
As a Windows person, these don't really amount to much. Maybe I'm missing why multiple workspaces are so great, but the general user will only have a handful of windows open, usually all maximised. I'm a developer and don't have a problem using 10+ windows. (With the help of a free little tool that lets me rearrange them logically on the task bar.)
Sharing data - the average user will be using Office, or an equivalent, and occasionally perhaps a CSV export or most likely cut & paste.
Windows decorations... ok, you got me there. :) I feel people eventually don't bother much with desktop backgrounds, because generally windows are maximised all the time - you hardly ever see the desktop during the day!
This is why MS is also having trouble getting past XP. Even they can't name killer features that the average user will want above what is working very well for them right now. IMO Linux is up against this as well, no matter how pretty it looks, and MS would have to fuck up royally several times (more) for that to change.
However, *devices* is where I see the battle going on. But, ironically, iOS and Android have made more inroads into public awareness in a single year than Linux has in all its existence. Linux will have to watch out for Android, in a way. I think the sudden profusion of OS's is going to make Linux look like a non-starter in comparison. Different products I know, but the public don't know that. And so Linux will stay a specialised OS for servers and serious geeks only, with Apple and Google OS's taking over where Windows can't cut it.
There is an Anne Uumellmahaye on the phone for you.
A super-injunction is aimed at everybody.
I'd like to see one aimed at a bunch of pseudonyms with disposable email addresses. I mean the only reason this is a problem is because people go daftly entering their *real name* in fields labelled "Your Name".
Whatever happened to the wonderful internet I knew where you had no idea, and didn't really care, who someone really was? Hopefully people will wise up and stop using their real identity, then they can injunct till they turn blue and it won't stop people talking about whatever the hell they want to, as that's our right after all.
In the end, the massive good that comes from free public discourse way overrides the inconvenience to idiotic celebrities who, after all, owe their fame and fortune to people talking about them.
where nobody on the internet knew your real name.
Facebook has a lot to answer for, changing the paradigm like that.
I can't wait till people start wising up and go back to using pseudonyms and learn what disposable email addresses are for.
I'm having this interesting experience with Slashdot, where before I click the link to TFA, I have a look at the +5 comments to see if it's a complete waste of time or not. I've adopted this behaviour over time as very often the quality of comments are a good judge of the article and just as, if not more, interesting.
I'm one of those who comment without reading TFA, but almost 50% of the time now I never click through to it based on the comments. So the higher the quality of comments, the less likely I'm going to read TFA. If I'm not the only one doing that, then surely Slashdot's audience has the inherent tendency to destroy its business model. Which is about as Faustian as a brain in a jar.
I tend to use Web-mail, not Cloud-mail.
you probably wouldn't go to the trouble of returning the laptop just because there's a bit of glare on the screen
Probably not the average home user, but myself and a few professional friends have returned laptops for the screen - but not this issue in particular.
We all wanted matte screens, and at the time (few years ago) some did have em, namely the HP professional series. The problem was there was no *consistency of quality*! You know how some screens look "sparkly" and others are nice and "smooth". The LCD screen in the showroom would be different to what we bought, though it was the exact same laptop model.
I've returned two laptops over the years for this issue, and in one case I decided to take the showroom unit instead of playing LCD roulette.
One thing I'll say for Apple, their LCDs are consistent - you know what you're buying.
I don't approve of censoring the internet for any reason.
No reason at all? Not kiddy porn? Snuff? Calls to violence and killing of individuals? If that is your stance, doesn't it seem to be the opposite and equally nonsensical extreme to heavy-handed censorship? What is your reasoning for no censorship at all?
The thing I never hear spoken about (perhaps because it might be a depressing thought for SETI fans) is that, while it's not beyond imagining that other intelligent species can develop out there, the chances of us detecting them are staggering low, for lots of reasons that easily come to mind.
Taking Earth as an example. 4.5byr old, life only really taking off at the Cambrian, 540myr ago, when Earth is already half way to the grave (Sun will expire in 5byr). So given any "Goldilocks" planet around a sun like ours, only half it's life at most will be spent with any life on it.
Then there's climate events, like ice ages, which could be anything from 20-100kyrs apart but devastating to any established and densely populated technological civilisation.
Any intelligent species which survives its own immaturity would come to the conclusion that long-term survival and growth depends on becoming independent of the natural world, as "unnatural" as that sounds. A population will initially stabilise due to limits on life span and food production (ours will in 2100 at about 10bn people), but as technology develops and those natural limiting factors are "solved", population will inevitably increase again.
A civilisation with abundant food (obviously farming has been replaced by advanced GM or other methods), limitless energy (eg. fusion but probably a mixture of great things) and long life, faces a stark choice: Don't breed much anymore, or find new places to live.
Apart from being rather dismal, the former choice is not viable in the long term. The future on a single planet holds only an inevitable cycle of natural catastrophes, be it a meteor or climate change, undoing what they have achieved. Its own survival, political and social problems solved, the mature and stable civilisation will naturally look upwards, to the planets.
Now a civilisation during this period would be detectable. They'd have been transmitting radio in the past, as we do now. Once embarking on the colonisation of other planets, they'd be even more mindful of the possibility of other successful species like them and continuing to search and transmit.
But this period of time, where they are still "speaking our language" is very limited. A few thousand years at most. Because during that time, a species will change, inside and out. Having solved major problems, socially and technologically, working together and populating planets, they will see themselves no longer as "a species of a planet", bound and subject. They have become "citizens of space", self-determining and outward-looking, no longer identified with arbitrary limitations. I daresay such a civilisation would have different philosophies and priorities to us. Why would such a species want to find others who are, like us, still bound to their world, struggling, infighting, limited and immature?
Of course they want to find other life out there but, having the perspective of a strong, space-faring species, they would obviously prefer to contact others like them, or even more advanced, so they can learn new things. Confident, looking ever forward, their main question would not be a meek yet arrogant, "are we the only ones?" No, it would instead be a challenge to the universe and to themselves: "How do we contact those others who travel the stars? How do we achieve the next step for our species?" Those questions do not involve us.
All their prowess would be focussed on determining what kinds of communications and transport other advanced, multi-planetary species would be using. They would not be thinking "radio" anymore. They would be bent on discovering the deeper secrets of interstellar travel and communication. Indeed it would be an obsession because here they are, playing on the shore of an unlimited ocean. They must find a way to set sail, otherwise for all their great achievements, they
this is potentially game-changing
Watched the gameplay video, very impressive attention to expressions and body language, which is indeed a first I think in a game. But as usual it comes down to the gameplay. Hopefully at least it means this is a game with a good plot - that's rare enough.
I'm reminded of Deux Ex 2, which had a brilliantly immersive story in the game, no cutscenes, no need for amazing visuals to be evocative and engaging. IMO it's all in the execution, not the technology.
Saying that, I consider myself pretty devout Christian, and I watch porn even though I feel I really shouldn't.
Without things to feel guilty about in the world, is there point being religious? It would seem healthier though, to keep it down to murder, theft, etc. and not ridiculous things like enjoying being a sexually active human being and accepting that science is the best way to find out stuff.
There's real evil enough in the world to denounce. The rest is trivial and a distraction.