No, I'd want my toaster to alert me, not my phone. I'd want my phone to alert me that YOU are trying to call me while I'm in the shower, giving me the pleasure of knowing that I'm not answering your call.
Here's the real issue. The "easy energy" is gone. If there were to be a collapse, regaining a technological society after would be incredibly difficult, because it's no longer possible to "suck oil out of the ground from a straw," to paraphrase someone else. One easing factor of regaining a technological society would be the presence of nearly-refined stuff in landfills - the strip-mines of the future. Energy will be the tough part.
No, what it means is that the software hasn't caught up to the hardware, yet. Until compilers and kernels/schedulers have time to react to Booledozer, we won't see what it's truly capable of. Since you're not interested in tracking such stuff, buy something more mainstream.
The interesting thing here is the lame excuses. Not that long ago, Intel managed to (nearly) simultaneously introduce both NetBurst and Itanium. AMD never would have survived such a debacle - there's serious question about whether they'll survive Booledozer, which hasn't yet gotten its chance with a proper compiler and scheduler. Yet Intel not only survived that disastrous dual introduction, they used their power an money to deny AMD's K8 the degree of business success it deserved to match its technical success.
Being able to shut off "secure boot" doesn't do a thing to make Windows 8 less secure. In order to boot Windows 8, secure boot has to be turned on. If being able to run the computer with secure boot turned off somehow compromises the integrity of the Windows 8 installation, then the entire concept is broken before it started. (Hint... You can always remove the hard drive and put it in a non-UEFI computer as a secondary drive. That's essentially equivalent to booting another OS on the same machine.)
At this point, I'd have to say that the first screwup is that from what I've heard, Microsoft messed up the kernel signing process and hasn't signed their kernels the "correct" way supported by general tools. One piece of correct solution is to allow RedHat and others to sign their kernels and LiveCDs. For this reason, Microsoft should NOT be the signing authority - they should just be another company submitting their software for signing.
I suspect that the real/better solution to this problem would be a little more smarts in the UEFI itself. I get a signed Gentoo LiveCD image which, because it's properly signed, will boot. I then install my Gentoo onto the hard drive and tell the UEFI-aware GRUB about the kernel I just compiled.
Then I restart the machine back to BIOS and tell it to talk to GRUB, find my new kernel, and "approve" it - I guess a local signing. After that, I can boot my kernel. It's more pain than it is today, but probably less pain than the old days of lilo and forgetting to run lilo after building a new kernel. When that happened I had to boot a LiveCD to fix it. With this the fix involves at most booting my old kernel and using UEFI BIOS.
Other responses to this have replied that RedHat and Google don't spend the campaign contribution $$$ that Microsoft does, and therefore Microsoft can buy Ju$tice here.
The other side of reality is that the server space is heavily Linux, much of that on workstation-class machines, but also many farms are based on commodity-class machines, too. So in this case, it's not just RedHat and Google complaining, it's also IBM, Oracle, Disney/Pixar, Dreamworks, atmospheric modeling people, the petrochemical industry, etc.
My prediction is that the workstation-class market will have the switch from the get-go. Almost all of the commodity-class market will not have the switch, per Microsoft's wishes. But not all - because a few of those commodity-class manufacturers will have special boxes, probably at a slight, but tolerable premium, for the above-mentioned companies. Those few manufacturers will pick up the Linux business, lock, stock, and barrel. After a few quarters of that, some other commodity-class manufacturers will introduce their "Linux-capable" boxes in order to grab that same premium. It'll "race to the bottom" after that.
The real question will then be how do the rest of us get our fingers on those "special Linux machines." At that point, we may not, but some motherboard vendor will realize that he can sell the "Linux-capable motherboard" at a slight premium to those who know that they will get crappy non-Windows support, and also let them shave the Windows support cost into their profit margin, too.
Plus I need to write my Congress-critters. This Microsoft move is curiously soon after they've been released from Antitrust oversight. Maybe it's innocent and in the name of security and all of that, but the timing really stinks. Of course my Congress-critters don't give a hoot that I can't build and boot my own kernel. But I'd hope that they understand that we're shoving yet another piece of science and technology overseas, away from the US, reducing our competitiveness. The tinkerers who become future scientists and engineers will be on foreign shores, as well as those new ideas, products and business opportunities that my not fit into Microsoft's business plans. THAT's what I'll emphasize in my letters.
wrt #4 - I remember hearing on the news a few years back that a guy transporting bull semen died while on the job. The dewar of liquid nitrogen tipped and spilled, "diluting" the air in the enclosed van. (It was winter and the windows were closed.) Also some time back, workers on one of the shuttles died when they went into some engine compartment that had been previously flooded with helium.
In both cases, the issue is that you pass out without warning. Your breathing reflexes and warnings are triggered by buildup of excess CO2, not by lack of oxygen. You're still breathing long enough to flush the CO2 normally, but you're not getting any oxygen, and that's what kills silently.
I pay special attention to this because one of my old desires has been to fast-freeze fresh strawberries in liquid nitrogen, then move them to a conventional freezer for storage. Strawberries never freeze/thaw well because of the crystallization of the water content. I've wondered if liquid nitrogen would freeze them fast enough to avoid this.
I once looked into getting some, and decided it was too expensive to mess around with. Even though it's billed as "cheaper than milk," that must be in larger quantities. Plus you need to rent the dewar to transport it. Plus they won't give it to you in anything other than an open-bed truck. (See bull-semen reference above.)
And it's obvious that since his business plan has failed, the data he was peddling is worthless, and no possible good could be done by releasing it. In fact, it discredits the entire idea of reporting on evil by Established Power.
So therefore, from here on out, we should trust our Leaders and what they say.
I'm glad we've figured this out, finally. Some of the things I was hearing from Wikileaks were kind of worrisome.
There are 2 basic threads to anti-anthropogenic global warming arguments...
The first is, "It's not really happening, you've cherry-picked your data and/or misinterpreted it." and the refutation usually seems to consist of cherry-picked data with very specific interpretations.
The second is, "It's not anthropogenic, it's natural, because of..." with some reason or other.
For the moment I won't take sides on either thread, but I'm going to take very serious issue with the second. However I get the very distinct feeling with both threads that the real message is, "Since global warming is not real / not anthropogenic, we don't need to modify our actions. We can keep our fossil-fuel-based energy and transportation, unmodified." (and business models, might I add...)
But assuming you're on the second thread, and assuming you're saying that global warming is real, just not man-caused, it must be apparent that we simply cannot keep going the way we are. We must come to grips with a changing environment. Global warming means more energy into the atmosphere, and that means more water evaporates and moves from place to place. Some places get even more water, some places get even less, storms get stronger, and it's not even a smoking-gun kind of thing, it's statistical. No new killer drought or killer flood or killer tornado, just a slow ramp on the severity and frequency of the ones we have.
All the while people living in marginal areas get stressed, our agricultural systems get stressed, our emergency response systems get stressed. It's not "a disaster", it's more of the disasters we've had all along.
Not planning for it, not studying it very carefully to understand the extent, not taking some action to mitigate it, is hiding our head in the sand, and waiting to get smacked in the butt.
When you get flattened by a giant rock, you're just as dead if the rock rolled off a cliff as if it was dropped by a crane. One is "natural", the other "anthropogenic", but you're still dead.
I picked up this trick in an undergrad lab from a professor, though he didn't quote it by name. Pour LN2 out of the container onto the palm of your hand - it steams and falls out onto the floor. The key is to position your palm so that nothing collects there - everything rolls off - and not to do it for too long, because even though there is a vapor barrier that, it is chilling your hand.
It looks pretty neat though, and has a lot of wow factor to someone who doesn't understand that it can easily be done safely.
Gee, that sounds rather alarmist too - from the other direction.
I rather think that adapting to climate change creates opportunities along with causing problems. I see most of the objections as coming from people who want to continue the same easy, profitable business models that their pappy and grandpappy used.
I agree that the subject of green high-energy technology is difficult, and am ambivalent toward nuclear power. If we weren't generating domestic electricity with designs dictated by naval constraints and weapons technology I'd feel a lot better about it. There are better, safer, and cleaner ways to generate electricity with nuclear power - but none of them are getting serious consideration.
I'll make a bit of a generalization here... Suggestions of conservation come up now and thing, things like insulation, tire inflation, mileage, etc, generally to a hue and cry of outrage. Somehow we have this warped perception in the US that energy consumption is a right, almost a duty. Completely ignoring any climate issues for the moment, IMHO energy consumption should be viewed as a COST, and therefore a thing to be minimized. Heck, I'd far rather see energy costs minimized than employee costs. It might even help this economy if we put more money into people and less into fuel.
So no, I don't think that climate adaptation, properly done, would destroy western civilization. A few business models certainly, perhaps gleefully, since those are some of the same people telling me I have no right to my job, but apparently they have a right to their business model?!?
"If climate change is real" doesn't care whether the climate change is anthropogenic or natural. When the fan starts getting brown, it doesn't matter how it happened - people get hurt.
It's entirely possible that casual interstellar travel is impossible, at least for biological entities.
Let that sentence soak in for a moment. Someone wants the Enterprise to go somewhere, for some reason, so it goes. Worf wants to go to some sort of Klingon competition, so he hops into a warp-capable shuttle and goes. Luke needs to go to Dagobah to see Yoda, (twice) so he hops into his X-wing and goes.
For sake of this post, "slow-boat" is coasting most of the way, "fast-boat" is warp speed, and "medium-boat" is relativistic speed.
We have such an optimistic view of interstellar travel. We have half an idea today what the energy budget for interstellar travel is like, and it's prohibitive to put people on even for a slow-boat, let alone a medium-boat. We don't even know how to make a fast-boat, but we know it'll take more energy. We have grand theories for some sort of warp drive, but so far all of them involve some form of exotic matter or other type of unobtanium, and the energy budget for manipulating that stuff is easily as extreme as the plain old ways we have barely half an idea how to do, like fusion drive. Even if the fast-boat is somehow possible, how do we meet the energy budget. They toss around numbers in Star Trek in technobabble units that are clearly supposed to be incredible. There's no hint of the source of the antimatter, other than that the accidental destruction of Praxis was disruptive at interstellar ranges.
At the same time, we have Ray Kurzweil going on about The Singularity. Even if Kurzweil is way too optimistic, the technology to achive the Singularity is far more comprehensible than that necessary for fast-boat interstellar travel. By that token, it may be that the only common interstellar travelers are uploads. Also by that token, by the time we can upload, ourselves, we will have the technology for medium-boat interstellar travel. It's a much smaller barrier, but also a game-changer in the whole First Contact question. Uploads don't need planets - they need energy and matter, both of which are more easily available from places other than a biosphere. Unless they're specifically interested in studying us, kind of like those biological entities they used to be, uploads fall into the "too-different" category.
However ignorant my responses may have been, it looks like someone with a bigger voice than mine has fallen into the same trap: https://www.xkcd.com/938/
Thank you for furnishing good information. In TFA I saw (or didn't read slowly enough) this line, "But the Penn researchers inserted a gene that made the white blood cells multiply by a thousand fold inside the body." and it led me to think that some of the old virus-like/HIV-like attributes were left in there. I kind of missed that fact that it was inserted behavior instead of "left in" behavior.
But I'm still not sure what "stops the therapy" when the job is done, since the white blood cells have been told to multiply.
"harmless" makes me think of the update about Earth that Ford Prefect made to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "mostly harmless".
* How absolutely perfect is the process which makes the HIV harmless? This sounds like it could turn into a "yield vs escape" issue during manufacture, where one escape becomes a case of AIDS. * How long do the modified white blood cells hang out in the body? * The deadly flu strains generally kill when the body's own immune system overreacts. It sounds like these people may have a "guaranteed to overreact" immune system
There used to be a pair of webcams showing the X33 build floor, and I used to track the progress. Usually rather glacial, but sometimes things moved along quite quickly. Separately there was a fair amount of information available about the aerospike engine and its testing. From what I remember, the delamination failure of the fuel tanks during testing did it in.
Thinking of pork or at least Congressional interference in the space program, I seem to remember hearing that *someone* actually wrote into NASA funding legislation that they would not be permitted to even THINK about the TransHAB module. Any idea who hated it so badly or why? I can only guess that the solid-body HAB module was slated to come from their district. Of course in typical irony, I don't believe the solid-body HAB module has ever gotten off the ground, while the TransHAB was bought out by Bigelow, and there are 2 reduced-scale versions on orbit.
According to the Republicans, all of our problems are the Democrat's fault. The current dismal state of the economy has nothing to do with the policies since 2000, and everything to do with Obama.
The "liberal media" echos this sentiment, so it must be true, right?
The difference is that you can make some of these things with no specialized equipment other than the 3d printer. In other words, for real-world-things you can now "look it up on the internet." It lowers the bar.
Any tinfoil hat I may wear is nothing compared to what some in DC may have. (Or maybe I saw too much of Colonel Flag in "MASH".) Besides, I suggested that behind the scenes there are commercial interests seeing the troubles of the RIAA and MPAA and would just as soon never see the physical world get there.
So how long before 3d printers are illegal? I'm sure stuff like the rap rep, or whatever it's called will continue to be OK. But the truly nifty stuff, the ones that can make a drone or other truly "interesting" things?
I'd expect the 3d printer technology to get "capped" at something below the level of TFA. It'll be in the name of "stopping terrorism", but behind the scenes there'll be some terrified parties in the commercial sector that don't want their profit models rendered obsolete.
For the Sci-Fi example, read Joe Haldeman's "The Forever Peace" and pay special attention to the "nano-forge" the the corrupt BS surrounding that.
9. If you survive this, carefully investigate the potential to move your entire company to free, as in speech, software. If the only licenses you have to comply with are GPL, BSD, etc, the BSA won't have anything to audit.
No problem at all. I was merely bringing things back into line the the Third Law. Using excess environmental heat is a great idea.
Personally I think it would be better if that same heat pump were using the geothermal wells as a heat dump during summer air-conditioning season, as well. That way our in-ground water reservoir remains closer to heat-neutral over the course of a year - pulling heat out in the winter and dumping it back in during the summer. If it's shallow, it probably doesn't matter for spit. If it's deep, it may be significant.
Your last 2 sentences are also true of both Reagan and GWB administrations. I commented earlier on this thread about many/most of Obama's expenses being "inherited" - 2 wars that were "off the books" that he finally put on proper accounting, the bank bailouts, and Medicare Part D. I'll agree that the stimulus was all his, though if I understand correctly, it hasn't all been spent. From what I've read, ObamaCare is either neutral or saves money, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The real problem is revenue. In the past half-century or so, the government has run on 19-20% of GDP. Right now it's trying to run on 15% of GDP, and isn't making it. There's been this big fight over the top tax bracket. Right now the top tax bracket is at the 3rd lowest in US history. The only 2 times it was lower were right before the Great Depression, and briefly during Regan's administration. (Reagan himself had that rate raised shortly after.) As a gross exaggeration, when the Democrats spend, they spend money - and when the Republicans spend, they spend revenue - in the form of tax cuts. Both tend to be self perpetuating, but the fervor right now strongly favors "Republican spending" over "Democratic spending", even though both are simply that - spending.
No on had heard of "The Matrix" as a plot line, either. Previews, reviews, and regular forms of publicity did their job. "Pushing Ice" has many of the elements necessary for a good movie, if well adapted. We've all heard of, and very likely played, "Battleship." Does that make it a good movie?
As a counter-example, though "Snow Crash" was a great novel, It couldn't possibly fit well into one movie, and it doesn't naturally break into parts. Too often the problem with making movies out of books is trying to crush a novel into 2 hours.
But thanks for the correction. His name is Alistair Reynolds, so I had the apostrophe in the wrong place for the possessive form.
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No, I'd want my toaster to alert me, not my phone. I'd want my phone to alert me that YOU are trying to call me while I'm in the shower, giving me the pleasure of knowing that I'm not answering your call.
Here's the real issue. The "easy energy" is gone. If there were to be a collapse, regaining a technological society after would be incredibly difficult, because it's no longer possible to "suck oil out of the ground from a straw," to paraphrase someone else. One easing factor of regaining a technological society would be the presence of nearly-refined stuff in landfills - the strip-mines of the future. Energy will be the tough part.
No, what it means is that the software hasn't caught up to the hardware, yet. Until compilers and kernels/schedulers have time to react to Booledozer, we won't see what it's truly capable of. Since you're not interested in tracking such stuff, buy something more mainstream.
The interesting thing here is the lame excuses. Not that long ago, Intel managed to (nearly) simultaneously introduce both NetBurst and Itanium. AMD never would have survived such a debacle - there's serious question about whether they'll survive Booledozer, which hasn't yet gotten its chance with a proper compiler and scheduler. Yet Intel not only survived that disastrous dual introduction, they used their power an money to deny AMD's K8 the degree of business success it deserved to match its technical success.
Being able to shut off "secure boot" doesn't do a thing to make Windows 8 less secure. In order to boot Windows 8, secure boot has to be turned on. If being able to run the computer with secure boot turned off somehow compromises the integrity of the Windows 8 installation, then the entire concept is broken before it started. (Hint... You can always remove the hard drive and put it in a non-UEFI computer as a secondary drive. That's essentially equivalent to booting another OS on the same machine.)
At this point, I'd have to say that the first screwup is that from what I've heard, Microsoft messed up the kernel signing process and hasn't signed their kernels the "correct" way supported by general tools. One piece of correct solution is to allow RedHat and others to sign their kernels and LiveCDs. For this reason, Microsoft should NOT be the signing authority - they should just be another company submitting their software for signing.
I suspect that the real/better solution to this problem would be a little more smarts in the UEFI itself. I get a signed Gentoo LiveCD image which, because it's properly signed, will boot. I then install my Gentoo onto the hard drive and tell the UEFI-aware GRUB about the kernel I just compiled.
Then I restart the machine back to BIOS and tell it to talk to GRUB, find my new kernel, and "approve" it - I guess a local signing. After that, I can boot my kernel. It's more pain than it is today, but probably less pain than the old days of lilo and forgetting to run lilo after building a new kernel. When that happened I had to boot a LiveCD to fix it. With this the fix involves at most booting my old kernel and using UEFI BIOS.
Other responses to this have replied that RedHat and Google don't spend the campaign contribution $$$ that Microsoft does, and therefore Microsoft can buy Ju$tice here.
The other side of reality is that the server space is heavily Linux, much of that on workstation-class machines, but also many farms are based on commodity-class machines, too. So in this case, it's not just RedHat and Google complaining, it's also IBM, Oracle, Disney/Pixar, Dreamworks, atmospheric modeling people, the petrochemical industry, etc.
My prediction is that the workstation-class market will have the switch from the get-go. Almost all of the commodity-class market will not have the switch, per Microsoft's wishes. But not all - because a few of those commodity-class manufacturers will have special boxes, probably at a slight, but tolerable premium, for the above-mentioned companies. Those few manufacturers will pick up the Linux business, lock, stock, and barrel. After a few quarters of that, some other commodity-class manufacturers will introduce their "Linux-capable" boxes in order to grab that same premium. It'll "race to the bottom" after that.
The real question will then be how do the rest of us get our fingers on those "special Linux machines." At that point, we may not, but some motherboard vendor will realize that he can sell the "Linux-capable motherboard" at a slight premium to those who know that they will get crappy non-Windows support, and also let them shave the Windows support cost into their profit margin, too.
Plus I need to write my Congress-critters. This Microsoft move is curiously soon after they've been released from Antitrust oversight. Maybe it's innocent and in the name of security and all of that, but the timing really stinks. Of course my Congress-critters don't give a hoot that I can't build and boot my own kernel. But I'd hope that they understand that we're shoving yet another piece of science and technology overseas, away from the US, reducing our competitiveness. The tinkerers who become future scientists and engineers will be on foreign shores, as well as those new ideas, products and business opportunities that my not fit into Microsoft's business plans. THAT's what I'll emphasize in my letters.
wrt #4 - I remember hearing on the news a few years back that a guy transporting bull semen died while on the job. The dewar of liquid nitrogen tipped and spilled, "diluting" the air in the enclosed van. (It was winter and the windows were closed.) Also some time back, workers on one of the shuttles died when they went into some engine compartment that had been previously flooded with helium.
In both cases, the issue is that you pass out without warning. Your breathing reflexes and warnings are triggered by buildup of excess CO2, not by lack of oxygen. You're still breathing long enough to flush the CO2 normally, but you're not getting any oxygen, and that's what kills silently.
I pay special attention to this because one of my old desires has been to fast-freeze fresh strawberries in liquid nitrogen, then move them to a conventional freezer for storage. Strawberries never freeze/thaw well because of the crystallization of the water content. I've wondered if liquid nitrogen would freeze them fast enough to avoid this.
I once looked into getting some, and decided it was too expensive to mess around with. Even though it's billed as "cheaper than milk," that must be in larger quantities. Plus you need to rent the dewar to transport it. Plus they won't give it to you in anything other than an open-bed truck. (See bull-semen reference above.)
That already happened, long ago.
-----------------
1 - Take care of your customers.
2 - Take care of your employees.
3 - The profits will take care of themselves.
T.J. Watson, Jr.
Does anyone care to compare her with Carly Fiorina?
That's the real disa^H^H^H^H check we need.
And it's obvious that since his business plan has failed, the data he was peddling is worthless, and no possible good could be done by releasing it. In fact, it discredits the entire idea of reporting on evil by Established Power.
So therefore, from here on out, we should trust our Leaders and what they say.
I'm glad we've figured this out, finally. Some of the things I was hearing from Wikileaks were kind of worrisome.
There are 2 basic threads to anti-anthropogenic global warming arguments...
The first is, "It's not really happening, you've cherry-picked your data and/or misinterpreted it." and the refutation usually seems to consist of cherry-picked data with very specific interpretations.
The second is, "It's not anthropogenic, it's natural, because of..." with some reason or other.
For the moment I won't take sides on either thread, but I'm going to take very serious issue with the second. However I get the very distinct feeling with both threads that the real message is, "Since global warming is not real / not anthropogenic, we don't need to modify our actions. We can keep our fossil-fuel-based energy and transportation, unmodified." (and business models, might I add...)
But assuming you're on the second thread, and assuming you're saying that global warming is real, just not man-caused, it must be apparent that we simply cannot keep going the way we are. We must come to grips with a changing environment. Global warming means more energy into the atmosphere, and that means more water evaporates and moves from place to place. Some places get even more water, some places get even less, storms get stronger, and it's not even a smoking-gun kind of thing, it's statistical. No new killer drought or killer flood or killer tornado, just a slow ramp on the severity and frequency of the ones we have.
All the while people living in marginal areas get stressed, our agricultural systems get stressed, our emergency response systems get stressed. It's not "a disaster", it's more of the disasters we've had all along.
Not planning for it, not studying it very carefully to understand the extent, not taking some action to mitigate it, is hiding our head in the sand, and waiting to get smacked in the butt.
When you get flattened by a giant rock, you're just as dead if the rock rolled off a cliff as if it was dropped by a crane. One is "natural", the other "anthropogenic", but you're still dead.
I picked up this trick in an undergrad lab from a professor, though he didn't quote it by name. Pour LN2 out of the container onto the palm of your hand - it steams and falls out onto the floor. The key is to position your palm so that nothing collects there - everything rolls off - and not to do it for too long, because even though there is a vapor barrier that, it is chilling your hand.
It looks pretty neat though, and has a lot of wow factor to someone who doesn't understand that it can easily be done safely.
Gee, that sounds rather alarmist too - from the other direction.
I rather think that adapting to climate change creates opportunities along with causing problems. I see most of the objections as coming from people who want to continue the same easy, profitable business models that their pappy and grandpappy used.
I agree that the subject of green high-energy technology is difficult, and am ambivalent toward nuclear power. If we weren't generating domestic electricity with designs dictated by naval constraints and weapons technology I'd feel a lot better about it. There are better, safer, and cleaner ways to generate electricity with nuclear power - but none of them are getting serious consideration.
I'll make a bit of a generalization here... Suggestions of conservation come up now and thing, things like insulation, tire inflation, mileage, etc, generally to a hue and cry of outrage. Somehow we have this warped perception in the US that energy consumption is a right, almost a duty. Completely ignoring any climate issues for the moment, IMHO energy consumption should be viewed as a COST, and therefore a thing to be minimized. Heck, I'd far rather see energy costs minimized than employee costs. It might even help this economy if we put more money into people and less into fuel.
So no, I don't think that climate adaptation, properly done, would destroy western civilization. A few business models certainly, perhaps gleefully, since those are some of the same people telling me I have no right to my job, but apparently they have a right to their business model?!?
One thing to keep in mind...
"If climate change is real" doesn't care whether the climate change is anthropogenic or natural. When the fan starts getting brown, it doesn't matter how it happened - people get hurt.
It's entirely possible that casual interstellar travel is impossible, at least for biological entities.
Let that sentence soak in for a moment. Someone wants the Enterprise to go somewhere, for some reason, so it goes. Worf wants to go to some sort of Klingon competition, so he hops into a warp-capable shuttle and goes. Luke needs to go to Dagobah to see Yoda, (twice) so he hops into his X-wing and goes.
For sake of this post, "slow-boat" is coasting most of the way, "fast-boat" is warp speed, and "medium-boat" is relativistic speed.
We have such an optimistic view of interstellar travel. We have half an idea today what the energy budget for interstellar travel is like, and it's prohibitive to put people on even for a slow-boat, let alone a medium-boat. We don't even know how to make a fast-boat, but we know it'll take more energy. We have grand theories for some sort of warp drive, but so far all of them involve some form of exotic matter or other type of unobtanium, and the energy budget for manipulating that stuff is easily as extreme as the plain old ways we have barely half an idea how to do, like fusion drive. Even if the fast-boat is somehow possible, how do we meet the energy budget. They toss around numbers in Star Trek in technobabble units that are clearly supposed to be incredible. There's no hint of the source of the antimatter, other than that the accidental destruction of Praxis was disruptive at interstellar ranges.
At the same time, we have Ray Kurzweil going on about The Singularity. Even if Kurzweil is way too optimistic, the technology to achive the Singularity is far more comprehensible than that necessary for fast-boat interstellar travel. By that token, it may be that the only common interstellar travelers are uploads. Also by that token, by the time we can upload, ourselves, we will have the technology for medium-boat interstellar travel. It's a much smaller barrier, but also a game-changer in the whole First Contact question. Uploads don't need planets - they need energy and matter, both of which are more easily available from places other than a biosphere. Unless they're specifically interested in studying us, kind of like those biological entities they used to be, uploads fall into the "too-different" category.
However ignorant my responses may have been, it looks like someone with a bigger voice than mine has fallen into the same trap:
https://www.xkcd.com/938/
Thank you for your informative posts.
Thank you for furnishing good information. In TFA I saw (or didn't read slowly enough) this line, "But the Penn researchers inserted a gene that made the white blood cells multiply by a thousand fold inside the body." and it led me to think that some of the old virus-like/HIV-like attributes were left in there. I kind of missed that fact that it was inserted behavior instead of "left in" behavior.
But I'm still not sure what "stops the therapy" when the job is done, since the white blood cells have been told to multiply.
"harmless" makes me think of the update about Earth that Ford Prefect made to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "mostly harmless".
* How absolutely perfect is the process which makes the HIV harmless? This sounds like it could turn into a "yield vs escape" issue during manufacture, where one escape becomes a case of AIDS.
* How long do the modified white blood cells hang out in the body?
* The deadly flu strains generally kill when the body's own immune system overreacts. It sounds like these people may have a "guaranteed to overreact" immune system
There used to be a pair of webcams showing the X33 build floor, and I used to track the progress. Usually rather glacial, but sometimes things moved along quite quickly. Separately there was a fair amount of information available about the aerospike engine and its testing. From what I remember, the delamination failure of the fuel tanks during testing did it in.
Thinking of pork or at least Congressional interference in the space program, I seem to remember hearing that *someone* actually wrote into NASA funding legislation that they would not be permitted to even THINK about the TransHAB module. Any idea who hated it so badly or why? I can only guess that the solid-body HAB module was slated to come from their district. Of course in typical irony, I don't believe the solid-body HAB module has ever gotten off the ground, while the TransHAB was bought out by Bigelow, and there are 2 reduced-scale versions on orbit.
According to the Republicans, all of our problems are the Democrat's fault. The current dismal state of the economy has nothing to do with the policies since 2000, and everything to do with Obama.
The "liberal media" echos this sentiment, so it must be true, right?
The difference is that you can make some of these things with no specialized equipment other than the 3d printer. In other words, for real-world-things you can now "look it up on the internet." It lowers the bar.
Any tinfoil hat I may wear is nothing compared to what some in DC may have. (Or maybe I saw too much of Colonel Flag in "MASH".) Besides, I suggested that behind the scenes there are commercial interests seeing the troubles of the RIAA and MPAA and would just as soon never see the physical world get there.
So how long before 3d printers are illegal? I'm sure stuff like the rap rep, or whatever it's called will continue to be OK. But the truly nifty stuff, the ones that can make a drone or other truly "interesting" things?
I'd expect the 3d printer technology to get "capped" at something below the level of TFA. It'll be in the name of "stopping terrorism", but behind the scenes there'll be some terrified parties in the commercial sector that don't want their profit models rendered obsolete.
For the Sci-Fi example, read Joe Haldeman's "The Forever Peace" and pay special attention to the "nano-forge" the the corrupt BS surrounding that.
9. If you survive this, carefully investigate the potential to move your entire company to free, as in speech, software. If the only licenses you have to comply with are GPL, BSD, etc, the BSA won't have anything to audit.
No problem at all. I was merely bringing things back into line the the Third Law. Using excess environmental heat is a great idea.
Personally I think it would be better if that same heat pump were using the geothermal wells as a heat dump during summer air-conditioning season, as well. That way our in-ground water reservoir remains closer to heat-neutral over the course of a year - pulling heat out in the winter and dumping it back in during the summer. If it's shallow, it probably doesn't matter for spit. If it's deep, it may be significant.
Your last 2 sentences are also true of both Reagan and GWB administrations. I commented earlier on this thread about many/most of Obama's expenses being "inherited" - 2 wars that were "off the books" that he finally put on proper accounting, the bank bailouts, and Medicare Part D. I'll agree that the stimulus was all his, though if I understand correctly, it hasn't all been spent. From what I've read, ObamaCare is either neutral or saves money, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The real problem is revenue. In the past half-century or so, the government has run on 19-20% of GDP. Right now it's trying to run on 15% of GDP, and isn't making it. There's been this big fight over the top tax bracket. Right now the top tax bracket is at the 3rd lowest in US history. The only 2 times it was lower were right before the Great Depression, and briefly during Regan's administration. (Reagan himself had that rate raised shortly after.) As a gross exaggeration, when the Democrats spend, they spend money - and when the Republicans spend, they spend revenue - in the form of tax cuts. Both tend to be self perpetuating, but the fervor right now strongly favors "Republican spending" over "Democratic spending", even though both are simply that - spending.
No on had heard of "The Matrix" as a plot line, either. Previews, reviews, and regular forms of publicity did their job. "Pushing Ice" has many of the elements necessary for a good movie, if well adapted. We've all heard of, and very likely played, "Battleship." Does that make it a good movie?
As a counter-example, though "Snow Crash" was a great novel, It couldn't possibly fit well into one movie, and it doesn't naturally break into parts. Too often the problem with making movies out of books is trying to crush a novel into 2 hours.
But thanks for the correction. His name is Alistair Reynolds, so I had the apostrophe in the wrong place for the possessive form.