What people suffering from dementia really need is a cure for dementia. Almost all causes of dementia are either potentially treatable or preventable.
Its always the victim's fault. If only they ate right, exercised properly, and took the right maintenance drugs (or didn't take any depending on your view) why, we'd just live forever!
In fact in almost every case, physician-assisted suicide / euthenasia is or will relatively soon be a cop-out.
Whoa there fellow. You are going to need to produce some facts before declaring a fact. There are great difficulties parsing that sentence in the first place with future facts and cop outs.
Cancer, heart disease, stroke, and other leading causes of death are all within realistic shooting distance of advanced technologies and a new group of researchers that have finally figured out that aging is really the big disease that everyone has previously ignored but in fact is perhaps the only disease we really need to treat in most cases.
Oh hell - if we'd only known it was just that simple. I have some books from the early 1970's that read like your post. Those born then are approaching their 50's. In the meantime, we have to deal with the situation.
I didn't say asphalt shingles were good. They're more easily damaged, more easily torn off by high winds, and wear out faster than other roofing materials. They're used because they're the cheapest roofing material and they're easy to install and the building contractors who default to them don't really give a shit about what happens ten years down the road.
I had to chuckle when I thought of using that paragraph you wrote as an advertisement for shingles.
My money is on the big red button being pushed, with tears of joy knowing that the pusher is doing God's work, while thunderous applause and glee erupts as the faithful await the rapture that will occur in a few hours.
Wow, a basic opinion marked as troll. Attaboy moderator - we really need a I don't agree with you so you're a big cached mod.
I gre up with people who really wanted the earth to end. They were hoping really hard that they would be raptured, and wanted the prophecies to come true so they could be raptured, and for Armageddon to happen. It was sort of weird and scary being a kid that had to hear about when the state of Israel came about in 1948, that that was the seed for the final generation, and there's nothing like the experience of being a little kid in the 60's having to listen to a relative preach with excitement about how Isreal and Egypt was the start of the final reckoning of Armageddon.
So yeah, sometimes informative can be marked as troll.
Can you show me where they say " We use really cheap glass to keep costs down?"
Seiously people - look up some of the things they are doing with glass that is inexpensive enough to put in everyday things. I don't even know where to start, because I'm not certain if the deniers are trolling, shilling for coal, or just technologically uneducated.
We have glass in our windshields that has remarkably different properties than that in our back windows. We have gorilla type glass (depending on manufacturer) that is soaked in an ion exchange bath that makes it extremely tough. We have glass that is flexible. We have glass that can withstand whatever nature throws at it Just duckduckgo glass roof systems, and there is all you need to see, all manner of roofs, open to the elements, and surviving happily.
And here's the thing. If we take a gorrilla glass type glass, one might think that it's incredibly expensive to put it in that salt bath which runs around 750F or 400C. But the cheapest soda lime glass has to be put in an oven after manufacture, because if it itn's annealed for a length of time, it will shatter quite nicely.
So price is more involved with the size of the batch of glass rather than intrinsic expense.
So please folks, learn a little about technology before going all get off my damn lawn about it. The toughness and cheapness - or not - of this glass is only a small part of the process.
So, how many of those extra-rugged glass surfaces are inexpensive? How many? I dare you to answer.
The claims of this glass shingle is that it is relatively inexpensive. How does the cost of bullet-proof glass compare to the cost of a regular pane of window glass?
For one thing, they aren't claiming that the glass is inexpensive. They are claiming that it is strong. And glass can be remarkably strong. Depending on the use, it might be tempered, or toughened in an ion exchange bath during manufacture. There are all manner of new types of class, such as lotus glass, or even willow glass, which is flexible,
And yes, all these type of glasses are more expensive than plain old soda-lime annealed glass. But the distinction is pointless. Borosilicate glass is more expensive than soda-lime glass, but I don't see anyone complaining about the expense, or clamoring to replace it with soda lime, because it can handle the thremal shock oof oven to cold without shattering.
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior. I will assume that you are genuinely stupid instead of being a troll...
Do you see a lot of indoor atriums, greenhouses, sunroofs, etc or are you cherry picking to just be a jerk?
I think he might be just stupid enough to think that there are no glass roofs!
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior.
Since when aren't glass roof exterior? You shouhldn't act like people have reading com[prehension problems when you make tupid remarks like that.
You see, the glass roof has a part that is exposed to the outside that means it is an exterior. Outside? Exterior. NOt outside? Interior.
And you know what often happens to your asphalt shingles in a hailstorm and the resulting high winds that come along with them? The leave the roof and end up in the neighbors yard.
I guarantee you they don't use box cutters to cut terra cotta, slate, etc, which are the roofing this appears to be in competition with.
If you're considering putting up cheap asphalt shingles, then you're probably not even remotely the target market for these panels.
They make shingles that look like asphalt, slate, terra cotta, and even one that doesn't look traditional but is a smooth surface. The roof needs measured and the computer designs the tile shapes then the facility makes the shingles ships them to you, and I'm not certain of ht einstall process.
But it isn't complicated - just different. Kitchens are made in this fashion all the time, doors and other parts of houses are often custom made.
What it isn't is the old school method of sending a couple noobs up with a tile shovel, renting a dumpster to throw the old hsingles into replace any sheathing that rotted, then piece fitting around the different parts of the roof. Then again, the old school method isn't cheap, and just sits there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Warning, if you hate solar already, the first part is rah rah stuff that might enrage you. Go to around 8:29 and on, and they have some rather sparse details on the roofs. P
There's good reason to by conservative when building a house. So many things that look like wonderful new advances at the time turn out to be liabilities, such as asbestos in floor tiles and heating ducts. Or aesthetically nice buried heating oil tanks that rust through and turn your lot into a hazardous waste site.
Though both were considered standard items at one time, your point is valid. When we changed over to gas, we decided to dig up the oil tank after draining it. And the flaming arseholes who built the house had put a old school surface tank in. And it wasn't far from speringing a leak (placed in 1959)
Even now, granite countertops can introduce a measure of radioactivity into a house, but its all the rage - though blessedly dying off.
The major advantage of asphalt shingles is they can be placed with no high skill set. But as I found out the hard way on my roof, the installers can not be up to the task. The bottom race of shingles in the valley weren't placed correctly, and there was a small square opening which allowed watter to seep into the roof, and what would normally be a ceiling leak went into the outside wall and caused a lot of damage by the time I found it. So I don't have much time for the concept of how wonderful asphalt shingles are.
Your comment alludes to a more fundamental question of whether home owners could install these shingles themselves. While I would certainly rather pay someone to install a new roof, in the rural area I grew up in that was very rare. Even if you didn't have the skills you had a neighbor who could help.
I don't know if the physical labor of the install is possible, a good chance it is. But this is definitely not the sort of roofing job where zero skills are needed for old shingle removal, and minimal skills for putting the new shingles on, and you fit while you build.
This is more akin to kitchen design, where reasonably accurate measurements are needed, and in the higher end designs, custom fabrication is used. I re-did my kitchen recently, and both the design and install take more skills than roofing. And I did it all myself except for installing the countertops, for which I got my son to help. I didn't do it to save money, but to have fun with it. It's a gorgeous knotty hickory design that looks really nice - but I need to stop bragging.
Very few people would "waste their money" paying someone else to do their home maintenance.
For people more willing to spend their time than money (or who only have excess time not money) the ability to install it yourself is a huge part of the cost function.
I think it depends on if they are thinking of the job as putting on some new shingles, or if they are looking at it as installing a power source that just happens to be on the roof and looks like the shingles it will be replacing. I see a fair number of solar installations in the countryside around here, so there are definitely some rural folks who have already sprung for installs.
There will always be some folk who won't do this, they can use grid power.
maybe, but how are they going to carve plate glass to go around vents , chimneys, and antenna masts?
they use a box cutter on traditional stuff.
That's a very good question. There is a video, although not of the construction techniques, but showing regular asphalt shingle looking and slate around 8:29 for the asphalt and 9:10 for the french slate shingles. Also a few other styles later.
If you are not a believer in the greenhouse effect or hate solar power in general, I don't suggest watching the beginning.Its a rah rah piece until the places I noted.
But they definietely get do cutouts for chimneys and dormers with no problems. With a computer design for all of the tiles, vent stacks should be no issue either.
Ever heard the adage 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'? You don't see that many large glass surfaces around for a pretty good reason...
Glass has come a long, long way from a hundred years ago.
Ya, and the Hyperloop will be faster and cheaper than flying if no regulations or security are imposed.
I don't think that the hyperloop will work period. However, l don't think that means that nothing Musk is behind will work. That's how things go. Not all of Edison's projects worked - in fact he had a number of big failures. But the stuff that he and his team created that did work was pretty important.
One of the best ways to avoid failure is to not do anything, which is failure in itself,
That's obvious. If you had, you'd have noticed that they're comparing the price to terra cotta and slate roofs, not "impermeable sheats of $SOMETHING", and those materials are bulky, heavy, fragile and expensive.
And asphalt shingles aren't? Just because something is in popular uses doesn't mean it's actually good. The popular roofing materials are just used because they are used, and they used to be used su that's what we use.
In fact, I see one of the hurdles to overcome will be the housing market itself. Very conservative. This makes for a business opportunity for someone who isn't affected by olde farte syndrome.
I'm skeptical but traditional shingles do weigh enough that it *might* be possible. Plausible but unconfirmed.
Traditional shingles are also fragile, and labor intensive to install/remove. As well, they have a tendency to sprout leaks. So many re-shingling jobs I see have ended up with replacing sheathing as well.
There have been a lot of advances recently in solar manufacturing running apace with battery technology. I'm not completely familiar with the specific technology of his batteries, but we need look no further than those smartphones we are addicted to to get a hint.
I won't be an early adopter, just like with all my other technology, I wait to see if there are any birthing problems, but once that threshhold is passed, I'm there with bells on.
Agreed, I still want to find out how this product works in places like Warren Ohio, Joplin, Missouri, Greensburg Kanasas (Most Damaging Tornadoes I can think of off the top of my head) Where tornadoes while not "common" also aren't "rare" and as such roofs need to be able to sustain pre-tornado weather (including hail) at least a few times a year.
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
He seem to be rather optimistic. I gave it no more than a few hundred years.
I'm not quite so much. We have a group over here that wants the earth to end soon. Thier book of science says it needs to happen, and if it doesn't happen soon, they will be in a minority and it will be much more difficult.
My money is on the big red button being pushed, with tears of joy knowing that the pusher is doing God's work, while thunderous applause and glee erupts as the faithful await the rapture that will occur in a few hours.
...no, that's not at all what I'm getting at. I'm pointing out that the 'blue sky/rose-colored glasses/what-could-POSSIBLY-go-wrong' crowd is, as usual, ignoring the Murphy factor in an endeavor like this.
Don't confuse enthusiasm with the idea that there won't be problems. I don't even know anyone here who posits that idea.
I'm a little confused here, as I get the impression that you are trying to say that I'm one of those people. When in fact, the Yes men in the teams I've worked on - especially early in my career - have always thought I was a pessimist about everything until I saved their sorry asses, and worked harder than most to make sure the projects work. Later on, the Boss just told everyone new to shut the hell up and listen to me. As well as his favorite phrase "Dont try to Bullshit a Bullshitter."
In no way does that curb my enthusiasm for going to Mars. And after Mars, maybe some place else. Problems hell - I love problems. Opportunities to make things better. I suppose that sounds like one of those dumbass motivational posters.
Luckily for whoever is going, bigger brains than anyone on/. are thinking through What Can Go Wrong, and are making the best contingency plans they can.
Who knows - maybe some people working on these things are even on Slashdot.
If you are claiming that posting something that was similar to what someone else might have posted, that's a mighty low bar, and a real conversation stopper. Consider that rather than just contradict you, I offered a link to the machinery that is used to pick cotton. Anyone else try to helpfully educate you? Chillax my good man, and accept it for what it was, instead of getting your bowels in an uproar.
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Surely you jest? Your continuing argument is proof of my point. Safety culture is ascendant now, and almost everyone I know is more concerned about staying safe than doing anything the least risky. The interestinf part is that safety is now so inculcated that it is interfering with normal activities.
I catch shit all the time from friends and my wife catches shit from her friends because she "allows" me to engage in risky behavior.
My crimes? Hiking alone. 4 wheeling in the woods. Riding a motorcycle.
The question is whether this would be considered a sample size of one, or maybe a hundred - I never took an actual count of those who think I'm crazy.
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact.
It's a fact that you and a lot of others fear.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
And yet, humans crossed oceans on wooden sailing ships or trekked to the polar regions. And even live in some really remote places even now, some of which are just about as inhospitable as Mars. Places where if you are outside overnight, you gonna die. And black swan events are pretty much unpredictable by definition. I'm going to take a guess that you have some sort of concept of going to Mars as an old Mickey Rooney movie where he suddenly blurts out "Hey gang - let's make a musical!", and everyone just puts on the musical. All of this other Mars exploration has been stepping stones toward putting people on Mars and doing it as safely as possible.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
Don't transfer your fear onto me. I'm gonna die sometime anyhow. There will be cool stuff going on after I'm dead. My outlook on life and exploration is fundamentally beyond your understanding. Your's is not beyond mine however, as I deal with the fearful every day. And safety culture is working on making that all of us.
So relax, no one that I know of is going to kidnap you and put you on a slave ship to Mars. You can stay safe as you like. This is all just humans doing what some of us feel compelled to do. Explore, go places, do stuff. It isn't safe at the bottom of the ocean, or on the moon, or Mars. Or orbiting space stations, Or near volcanoes, or collecting fossils while perched on the side of a cliff.
Bu then - you don't have to do any of that stuff. Now have a safe day.
Fraud is still fraud, and lying to customers in order to swindle money out of them is fraud. What irritates me the most is even though this is now known to be going on no perps are being fined, jailed, or even investigated.
Sending people to jail is a form of regulation, and regulation in any form is bad.
Slashdot Mirror
What people suffering from dementia really need is a cure for dementia. Almost all causes of dementia are either potentially treatable or preventable.
Its always the victim's fault. If only they ate right, exercised properly, and took the right maintenance drugs (or didn't take any depending on your view) why, we'd just live forever!
In fact in almost every case, physician-assisted suicide / euthenasia is or will relatively soon be a cop-out.
Whoa there fellow. You are going to need to produce some facts before declaring a fact. There are great difficulties parsing that sentence in the first place with future facts and cop outs.
Cancer, heart disease, stroke, and other leading causes of death are all within realistic shooting distance of advanced technologies and a new group of researchers that have finally figured out that aging is really the big disease that everyone has previously ignored but in fact is perhaps the only disease we really need to treat in most cases.
Oh hell - if we'd only known it was just that simple. I have some books from the early 1970's that read like your post. Those born then are approaching their 50's. In the meantime, we have to deal with the situation.
Who the hell thinks "only" a $420 discount on comparable hardware and build quality isn't a great deal?
People who hate all Apple products.
Agree, let's hijack the thread and ask what's the top-o-the-line Linux laptop? Top notch hardware, etc but Linux?
It might be an Apple product too.
Contrary to what many here believe, Apple computers run Linux quite well, Windows quite well, and OSX quite well.
I didn't say asphalt shingles were good. They're more easily damaged, more easily torn off by high winds, and wear out faster than other roofing materials. They're used because they're the cheapest roofing material and they're easy to install and the building contractors who default to them don't really give a shit about what happens ten years down the road.
I had to chuckle when I thought of using that paragraph you wrote as an advertisement for shingles.
My money is on the big red button being pushed, with tears of joy knowing that the pusher is doing God's work, while thunderous applause and glee erupts as the faithful await the rapture that will occur in a few hours.
Wow, a basic opinion marked as troll. Attaboy moderator - we really need a I don't agree with you so you're a big cached mod.
I gre up with people who really wanted the earth to end. They were hoping really hard that they would be raptured, and wanted the prophecies to come true so they could be raptured, and for Armageddon to happen. It was sort of weird and scary being a kid that had to hear about when the state of Israel came about in 1948, that that was the seed for the final generation, and there's nothing like the experience of being a little kid in the 60's having to listen to a relative preach with excitement about how Isreal and Egypt was the start of the final reckoning of Armageddon.
So yeah, sometimes informative can be marked as troll.
OK, so it's expensive stuff, right ?
Can you show me where they say " We use really cheap glass to keep costs down?"
Seiously people - look up some of the things they are doing with glass that is inexpensive enough to put in everyday things. I don't even know where to start, because I'm not certain if the deniers are trolling, shilling for coal, or just technologically uneducated.
We have glass in our windshields that has remarkably different properties than that in our back windows. We have gorilla type glass (depending on manufacturer) that is soaked in an ion exchange bath that makes it extremely tough. We have glass that is flexible. We have glass that can withstand whatever nature throws at it Just duckduckgo glass roof systems, and there is all you need to see, all manner of roofs, open to the elements, and surviving happily.
And here's the thing. If we take a gorrilla glass type glass, one might think that it's incredibly expensive to put it in that salt bath which runs around 750F or 400C. But the cheapest soda lime glass has to be put in an oven after manufacture, because if it itn's annealed for a length of time, it will shatter quite nicely.
So price is more involved with the size of the batch of glass rather than intrinsic expense.
So please folks, learn a little about technology before going all get off my damn lawn about it. The toughness and cheapness - or not - of this glass is only a small part of the process.
So, how many of those extra-rugged glass surfaces are inexpensive? How many? I dare you to answer.
The claims of this glass shingle is that it is relatively inexpensive. How does the cost of bullet-proof glass compare to the cost of a regular pane of window glass?
For one thing, they aren't claiming that the glass is inexpensive. They are claiming that it is strong. And glass can be remarkably strong. Depending on the use, it might be tempered, or toughened in an ion exchange bath during manufacture. There are all manner of new types of class, such as lotus glass, or even willow glass, which is flexible,
And yes, all these type of glasses are more expensive than plain old soda-lime annealed glass. But the distinction is pointless. Borosilicate glass is more expensive than soda-lime glass, but I don't see anyone complaining about the expense, or clamoring to replace it with soda lime, because it can handle the thremal shock oof oven to cold without shattering.
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior. I will assume that you are genuinely stupid instead of being a troll...
Do you see a lot of indoor atriums, greenhouses, sunroofs, etc or are you cherry picking to just be a jerk?
I think he might be just stupid enough to think that there are no glass roofs!
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior.
Since when aren't glass roof exterior? You shouhldn't act like people have reading com[prehension problems when you make tupid remarks like that.
You see, the glass roof has a part that is exposed to the outside that means it is an exterior. Outside? Exterior. NOt outside? Interior.
And you know what often happens to your asphalt shingles in a hailstorm and the resulting high winds that come along with them? The leave the roof and end up in the neighbors yard.
I guarantee you they don't use box cutters to cut terra cotta, slate, etc, which are the roofing this appears to be in competition with.
If you're considering putting up cheap asphalt shingles, then you're probably not even remotely the target market for these panels.
They make shingles that look like asphalt, slate, terra cotta, and even one that doesn't look traditional but is a smooth surface. The roof needs measured and the computer designs the tile shapes then the facility makes the shingles ships them to you, and I'm not certain of ht einstall process.
But it isn't complicated - just different. Kitchens are made in this fashion all the time, doors and other parts of houses are often custom made.
What it isn't is the old school method of sending a couple noobs up with a tile shovel, renting a dumpster to throw the old hsingles into replace any sheathing that rotted, then piece fitting around the different parts of the roof. Then again, the old school method isn't cheap, and just sits there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Warning, if you hate solar already, the first part is rah rah stuff that might enrage you. Go to around 8:29 and on, and they have some rather sparse details on the roofs. P
There's good reason to by conservative when building a house. So many things that look like wonderful new advances at the time turn out to be liabilities, such as asbestos in floor tiles and heating ducts. Or aesthetically nice buried heating oil tanks that rust through and turn your lot into a hazardous waste site.
Though both were considered standard items at one time, your point is valid. When we changed over to gas, we decided to dig up the oil tank after draining it. And the flaming arseholes who built the house had put a old school surface tank in. And it wasn't far from speringing a leak (placed in 1959)
Even now, granite countertops can introduce a measure of radioactivity into a house, but its all the rage - though blessedly dying off.
The major advantage of asphalt shingles is they can be placed with no high skill set. But as I found out the hard way on my roof, the installers can not be up to the task. The bottom race of shingles in the valley weren't placed correctly, and there was a small square opening which allowed watter to seep into the roof, and what would normally be a ceiling leak went into the outside wall and caused a lot of damage by the time I found it. So I don't have much time for the concept of how wonderful asphalt shingles are.
Your comment alludes to a more fundamental question of whether home owners could install these shingles themselves. While I would certainly rather pay someone to install a new roof, in the rural area I grew up in that was very rare. Even if you didn't have the skills you had a neighbor who could help.
I don't know if the physical labor of the install is possible, a good chance it is. But this is definitely not the sort of roofing job where zero skills are needed for old shingle removal, and minimal skills for putting the new shingles on, and you fit while you build.
This is more akin to kitchen design, where reasonably accurate measurements are needed, and in the higher end designs, custom fabrication is used. I re-did my kitchen recently, and both the design and install take more skills than roofing. And I did it all myself except for installing the countertops, for which I got my son to help. I didn't do it to save money, but to have fun with it. It's a gorgeous knotty hickory design that looks really nice - but I need to stop bragging.
Very few people would "waste their money" paying someone else to do their home maintenance.
For people more willing to spend their time than money (or who only have excess time not money) the ability to install it yourself is a huge part of the cost function.
I think it depends on if they are thinking of the job as putting on some new shingles, or if they are looking at it as installing a power source that just happens to be on the roof and looks like the shingles it will be replacing. I see a fair number of solar installations in the countryside around here, so there are definitely some rural folks who have already sprung for installs.
There will always be some folk who won't do this, they can use grid power.
maybe, but how are they going to carve plate glass to go around vents , chimneys, and antenna masts?
they use a box cutter on traditional stuff.
That's a very good question. There is a video, although not of the construction techniques, but showing regular asphalt shingle looking and slate around 8:29 for the asphalt and 9:10 for the french slate shingles. Also a few other styles later.
If you are not a believer in the greenhouse effect or hate solar power in general, I don't suggest watching the beginning.Its a rah rah piece until the places I noted.
But they definietely get do cutouts for chimneys and dormers with no problems. With a computer design for all of the tiles, vent stacks should be no issue either.
Ever heard the adage 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'? You don't see that many large glass surfaces around for a pretty good reason...
Glass has come a long, long way from a hundred years ago.
Ya, and the Hyperloop will be faster and cheaper than flying if no regulations or security are imposed.
I don't think that the hyperloop will work period. However, l don't think that means that nothing Musk is behind will work. That's how things go. Not all of Edison's projects worked - in fact he had a number of big failures. But the stuff that he and his team created that did work was pretty important.
One of the best ways to avoid failure is to not do anything, which is failure in itself,
I didn't read TFA
That's obvious. If you had, you'd have noticed that they're comparing the price to terra cotta and slate roofs, not "impermeable sheats of $SOMETHING", and those materials are bulky, heavy, fragile and expensive.
And asphalt shingles aren't? Just because something is in popular uses doesn't mean it's actually good. The popular roofing materials are just used because they are used, and they used to be used su that's what we use.
In fact, I see one of the hurdles to overcome will be the housing market itself. Very conservative. This makes for a business opportunity for someone who isn't affected by olde farte syndrome.
I'm skeptical but traditional shingles do weigh enough that it *might* be possible. Plausible but unconfirmed.
Traditional shingles are also fragile, and labor intensive to install/remove. As well, they have a tendency to sprout leaks. So many re-shingling jobs I see have ended up with replacing sheathing as well.
There have been a lot of advances recently in solar manufacturing running apace with battery technology. I'm not completely familiar with the specific technology of his batteries, but we need look no further than those smartphones we are addicted to to get a hint.
I won't be an early adopter, just like with all my other technology, I wait to see if there are any birthing problems, but once that threshhold is passed, I'm there with bells on.
Agreed, I still want to find out how this product works in places like Warren Ohio, Joplin, Missouri, Greensburg Kanasas (Most Damaging Tornadoes I can think of off the top of my head) Where tornadoes while not "common" also aren't "rare" and as such roofs need to be able to sustain pre-tornado weather (including hail) at least a few times a year.
Traditional shingles set a very very low bar.
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
He seem to be rather optimistic. I gave it no more than a few hundred years.
I'm not quite so much. We have a group over here that wants the earth to end soon. Thier book of science says it needs to happen, and if it doesn't happen soon, they will be in a minority and it will be much more difficult.
My money is on the big red button being pushed, with tears of joy knowing that the pusher is doing God's work, while thunderous applause and glee erupts as the faithful await the rapture that will occur in a few hours.
How is Putin going to keep in contact with Trump?
I thought he was moving in with the Don.
...no, that's not at all what I'm getting at. I'm pointing out that the 'blue sky/rose-colored glasses/what-could-POSSIBLY-go-wrong' crowd is, as usual, ignoring the Murphy factor in an endeavor like this.
Don't confuse enthusiasm with the idea that there won't be problems. I don't even know anyone here who posits that idea.
I'm a little confused here, as I get the impression that you are trying to say that I'm one of those people. When in fact, the Yes men in the teams I've worked on - especially early in my career - have always thought I was a pessimist about everything until I saved their sorry asses, and worked harder than most to make sure the projects work. Later on, the Boss just told everyone new to shut the hell up and listen to me. As well as his favorite phrase "Dont try to Bullshit a Bullshitter."
In no way does that curb my enthusiasm for going to Mars. And after Mars, maybe some place else. Problems hell - I love problems. Opportunities to make things better. I suppose that sounds like one of those dumbass motivational posters.
Luckily for whoever is going, bigger brains than anyone on /. are thinking through What Can Go Wrong, and are making the best contingency plans they can.
Who knows - maybe some people working on these things are even on Slashdot.
At least I can admit when I'm wrong.
If you are claiming that posting something that was similar to what someone else might have posted, that's a mighty low bar, and a real conversation stopper. Consider that rather than just contradict you, I offered a link to the machinery that is used to pick cotton. Anyone else try to helpfully educate you? Chillax my good man, and accept it for what it was, instead of getting your bowels in an uproar.
Now be nice, and enjoy the popcorn.
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Surely you jest? Your continuing argument is proof of my point. Safety culture is ascendant now, and almost everyone I know is more concerned about staying safe than doing anything the least risky. The interestinf part is that safety is now so inculcated that it is interfering with normal activities.
I catch shit all the time from friends and my wife catches shit from her friends because she "allows" me to engage in risky behavior.
My crimes? Hiking alone. 4 wheeling in the woods. Riding a motorcycle.
The question is whether this would be considered a sample size of one, or maybe a hundred - I never took an actual count of those who think I'm crazy.
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact.
It's a fact that you and a lot of others fear.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
And yet, humans crossed oceans on wooden sailing ships or trekked to the polar regions. And even live in some really remote places even now, some of which are just about as inhospitable as Mars. Places where if you are outside overnight, you gonna die. And black swan events are pretty much unpredictable by definition. I'm going to take a guess that you have some sort of concept of going to Mars as an old Mickey Rooney movie where he suddenly blurts out "Hey gang - let's make a musical!", and everyone just puts on the musical. All of this other Mars exploration has been stepping stones toward putting people on Mars and doing it as safely as possible.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
Don't transfer your fear onto me. I'm gonna die sometime anyhow. There will be cool stuff going on after I'm dead. My outlook on life and exploration is fundamentally beyond your understanding. Your's is not beyond mine however, as I deal with the fearful every day. And safety culture is working on making that all of us.
So relax, no one that I know of is going to kidnap you and put you on a slave ship to Mars. You can stay safe as you like. This is all just humans doing what some of us feel compelled to do. Explore, go places, do stuff. It isn't safe at the bottom of the ocean, or on the moon, or Mars. Or orbiting space stations, Or near volcanoes, or collecting fossils while perched on the side of a cliff.
Bu then - you don't have to do any of that stuff. Now have a safe day.
Fraud is still fraud, and lying to customers in order to swindle money out of them is fraud. What irritates me the most is even though this is now known to be going on no perps are being fined, jailed, or even investigated.
Sending people to jail is a form of regulation, and regulation in any form is bad.
Why would the name SyFy appeal to women?
It wouldn't. Marketing people are idiots.
This has the ring ot truth.