Well this seems like a fitting place to plop down one of Clarke's predictions. Space elevators. If you can have a material light enough, strong enough, and long enough, you can string it down to earth from geosynchronous orbit, and an equal amount of mass outwards and the centripetal force will simply let it hang there. With that you can have a climber that raises itself at it's leisure.
Single-wall carbon nanotubes approach that tensile strength density requirement.
Now, even assuming that portion of the puzzle is solved, there are still sizable issues to overcome. Going 90mph straight up will still take 4 days to get to geosynchronous orbit.
And powering the thing, even with the relaxed schedule and the ability to rest and charge, is still a really big problem. Powering the thing with beamed energy is looking like the best idea so far. And that's pretty wasteful. But it's better, and cheaper then rockets. And with that you can get material up to space on the cheap. It'll turn the price-tag of thousands of dollars per kilogram into hundreds of dollars per kilogram.
So don't be a negative nancy and say that there's simply nowhere else to look for energy. There are still plenty of ways that we can make the world a better place though scientific progress.
And as Author C. Clarke said, the first space elevator will be built 50 years after people stop laughing at the idea.
we all would be moving around in our own personal pod and walking anywhere would be a thing of the past and that eventually, our bodies would mutate to where we'd have no legs.
It's different in the big cities, but out here in the midwest, everyone has a car and we drive everywhere. We still walk around once we get there, but by and far, if you want to go do something, anything, you go drive there. And subsequently, we're all getting fat, and can't really use our legs much anymore. Except those with enough free time to exercise.
Welcome to the future, not quite what you expected, but close enough.
Also, just why the hell do you think that cheap power (and technological progress in general) would "kill our economy". Let's say that we have mystical oil replacement that magically just runs forever. Some oilmen are out of work. A lot of despots in Africa and the middle east have a really hard time. But suddenly, the price to ship things bottoms out. The COST to ship is reduced, so the shipping industry is making money hand-over-fist, even though they're charging half as much. Overall there is a NET GAIN for the economy. That's progress. Where does the economy get killed?
Houses built in the good-old-days weren't any better. The crappy houses just fell down since then and only the good ones remain. If you don't like crooked walls, stop living in cheap houses.
It's flaunting wealth. It could be anything. Polished cow-turds, weaved grass, tanned skin of whatever. As long as it'll impress the Johnsons. And really, the only thing that impresses the Johnsons is wealth. If cow-turds were scarce, rich people that enjoy flaunting their wealth would make counter-tops of it, and other similarly pointless activities. Often at the determent of the purpose of the thing.
Best way to deal with this? You can't stop people from pissing away their worth, it'll just make it more scarce and therefore more attractive. No. Be the hipster and call bullshit on the johnsons effect and look down on people that burn cash just for fun. For the good of civilization.
The wife and I recently had a fight over this because I said that people that buy Harley bikes are being wasteful. Apparently I'm a skinflint now.
And the front door increasingly diminishes to the garage door because we drive everywhere. You get some weird layouts as architects try to get their houses to be contortionists, bending to meet the needs of various bygone and predicted ages.
Good points, but I disagree with your "complex" vs. "simple" distinction. It's arbitrary and there's no real fundamental difference between those groupings. It doesn't help describe the problem. It's the same sort of difference between cliche action stories vs high-end artsy stories. Different target audience, and important for marketing people, but they're both still stories.
Same way with "complex" vs. "simple" games. You can make a casual FPS or RTS, and you can make a hardcore puzzle game. And they sell to different markets, but they're still both games.
Given that, your distinction boils down to "story" vs "game mechanics". Most games have both with a focus on one or the other.
I think you need to take a step back and and be aghast at a presidential candidate "being told" who to take on as his vice-president. If that scenario happened, then who exactly is running the show?
Most of Washington is pretty clueless when it comes to technology in general. Hell, that goes for most of the populous.
But congress specifically is atrociously bad. And I think it's mostly an age factor. They simply didn't grow up with this stuff. They're rooted in the old ways. McCain is a fine guy. I didn't vote for him, but he's a good guy to have in congress. I just wouldn't trust him with handling this sort of problem. In the least.
Ok, case in case in point, he doesn't understand network neutrality. The way he talks about it, NN is stricly regulatory legislature. He doesn't understand that NN
is the defacto way that the internet has functioned since it's inception. The debate is whether we should enforce that performance in regulations, but he never made that distinction. And he probably has these misconception simply because lobbyist are the ones that explained it to him. Or explained it to the person who explained it to him.
Scientist #2: Hmmm, you might be on to something...but what if it's not just the environment? What if it's some other natural evolution of another species that is now a predator to the bee?
Scientist #3: You idiot, that IS a factor of the environment! I agree with Scientist #1, fuck that shit. We want honey and our honey source is dwindling. So we're going to make a better honey source.
That's not control over pricing. That's control over purchasing.
But yeah, most TV rots your head. The same with cheap novels, mindless card games, and staring at the same plastic bush in the break room for the umpteenth time. There's high art and low art and non-art. Deal with it.
And yeah, the pricing scheme doesn't match the quality of the content by a long shot. I think you're right about there being a bubble in the entertainment industry. A lot of the old guard simply don't deserve it. I think it's deflating though as, well... young people use the Internet and old people clinging to old formats die off. Or get hip.
Yeah, didn't you know that most javascript is handled by cheap Chinese processors? It's a rampant problem in the industry, it's not exclusive to Javascript, but nobody is really willing to address the elephant in the room.
This is not about women's underwear. This is about having a level of basic human empathy, and realizing that because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.
Well, yes, I agree whole-heartedly.
But, we should have the ability/right/option to do it. Even if we shouldn't do it in the first place. And with a bell curve of humanity, it's pretty assured that given enough time and people that someone is going to go do it. And we should have the right to call that person an asshole. There is a line where it turns into harassment, there are deep cultural issues that need fixing (like Jim Crow laws), and there are some legit issues of national security. But in general, I'm all for personal liberty. Including the liberty to be an asshole.
I've more or less been a solo developer since I left college 5 years ago. My internship had two other developers, but I was given my own project. The first job had co-workers, and there was interaction, but by and far I had my projects and they had theirs. Occasionally they interacted and we had to talk about that. And in my most recent job I am the only person with a scrap of programming logic in the entire company.
So I'm kinda worried that I'm developing bad habits by growing in a monoculture of just me. It could be simple mistakes like knowing when to use a certain pattern, or large mistakes like thinking that making VBA tools are a good idea. But mostly I worry about what I just don't know about because I'm only one guy.
I'd really like to have a code review, but I can't release company code out there for anybody to see, and my own personal projects are... well... sloppy to say the least.
Yeah, listen to the captain.
What do you do if and when the market tanks? Faith in the market to provide all is deeply troubling and naive approach to running a government. In some cases, indeed most, the free market works best. But it needs competition. Where there are natural monopolies, or monopolies through consolidation, or simply an oligarch of the old-boys club, then the free market has failed. And some things are too vitial to leave to the free market. Military security, nuclear production, and feeding the masses.
Now, we don't need a crazy system where the state owns both your cows, it can simply regulate it with a couple of simple rules. Like, keep enough farms running to feed ourselves in a pinch.
Well, no, you don't even need that. Sealing the cockpit from the passengers ensures that a jet won't be controlled by any passengers. As assured as you can be of anything when it comes to security. That mitigates the risk and turns a national security issue to a horrible terrorist attack.
Hey guys, this might be "out there", but how about we try to act in such a way that no one would want to try and blow us up? That would only leave crazy people to worry about and they're usually not that resourceful.
...will only result in delays in bringing up safer newer plant designs.
Well, remember that the constant wave of new plant designs is what makes American nuclear expensive as hell. To build, to run, and to fix. Each plant is different because each plant had a dozen engineers trying something new and untested. It's a great way to learn new things, but it's really expensive to develop that many prototypes.
France, on the other hand, has a handful of designs with standards that they all adhere to.
I'm all for progress, but you have to pay the bills and coal is cheaper. Nuclear CAN be competitive, and safe, but not with this mindset that we constantly need new designs.
Also, building new plants that are safer does jack shit for the older plants that are less safe.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll be hilarious to see their souls crushed when it pops though. That's right, Glen Beck lied. Gee, what were the odds?
Well this seems like a fitting place to plop down one of Clarke's predictions. Space elevators. If you can have a material light enough, strong enough, and long enough, you can string it down to earth from geosynchronous orbit, and an equal amount of mass outwards and the centripetal force will simply let it hang there. With that you can have a climber that raises itself at it's leisure.
Single-wall carbon nanotubes approach that tensile strength density requirement.
Now, even assuming that portion of the puzzle is solved, there are still sizable issues to overcome. Going 90mph straight up will still take 4 days to get to geosynchronous orbit.
And powering the thing, even with the relaxed schedule and the ability to rest and charge, is still a really big problem. Powering the thing with beamed energy is looking like the best idea so far. And that's pretty wasteful. But it's better, and cheaper then rockets. And with that you can get material up to space on the cheap. It'll turn the price-tag of thousands of dollars per kilogram into hundreds of dollars per kilogram.
So don't be a negative nancy and say that there's simply nowhere else to look for energy. There are still plenty of ways that we can make the world a better place though scientific progress.
And as Author C. Clarke said, the first space elevator will be built 50 years after people stop laughing at the idea.
we all would be moving around in our own personal pod and walking anywhere would be a thing of the past and that eventually, our bodies would mutate to where we'd have no legs.
It's different in the big cities, but out here in the midwest, everyone has a car and we drive everywhere. We still walk around once we get there, but by and far, if you want to go do something, anything, you go drive there. And subsequently, we're all getting fat, and can't really use our legs much anymore. Except those with enough free time to exercise.
Welcome to the future, not quite what you expected, but close enough.
Also, just why the hell do you think that cheap power (and technological progress in general) would "kill our economy". Let's say that we have mystical oil replacement that magically just runs forever. Some oilmen are out of work. A lot of despots in Africa and the middle east have a really hard time. But suddenly, the price to ship things bottoms out. The COST to ship is reduced, so the shipping industry is making money hand-over-fist, even though they're charging half as much. Overall there is a NET GAIN for the economy. That's progress. Where does the economy get killed?
Houses built in the good-old-days weren't any better. The crappy houses just fell down since then and only the good ones remain. If you don't like crooked walls, stop living in cheap houses.
It's flaunting wealth. It could be anything. Polished cow-turds, weaved grass, tanned skin of whatever. As long as it'll impress the Johnsons. And really, the only thing that impresses the Johnsons is wealth. If cow-turds were scarce, rich people that enjoy flaunting their wealth would make counter-tops of it, and other similarly pointless activities. Often at the determent of the purpose of the thing.
Best way to deal with this? You can't stop people from pissing away their worth, it'll just make it more scarce and therefore more attractive. No. Be the hipster and call bullshit on the johnsons effect and look down on people that burn cash just for fun. For the good of civilization.
The wife and I recently had a fight over this because I said that people that buy Harley bikes are being wasteful. Apparently I'm a skinflint now.
And the front door increasingly diminishes to the garage door because we drive everywhere. You get some weird layouts as architects try to get their houses to be contortionists, bending to meet the needs of various bygone and predicted ages.
Good points, but I disagree with your "complex" vs. "simple" distinction. It's arbitrary and there's no real fundamental difference between those groupings. It doesn't help describe the problem. It's the same sort of difference between cliche action stories vs high-end artsy stories. Different target audience, and important for marketing people, but they're both still stories.
Same way with "complex" vs. "simple" games. You can make a casual FPS or RTS, and you can make a hardcore puzzle game. And they sell to different markets, but they're still both games.
Given that, your distinction boils down to "story" vs "game mechanics". Most games have both with a focus on one or the other.
I think you need to take a step back and and be aghast at a presidential candidate "being told" who to take on as his vice-president. If that scenario happened, then who exactly is running the show?
Most of Washington is pretty clueless when it comes to technology in general. Hell, that goes for most of the populous.
But congress specifically is atrociously bad. And I think it's mostly an age factor. They simply didn't grow up with this stuff. They're rooted in the old ways. McCain is a fine guy. I didn't vote for him, but he's a good guy to have in congress. I just wouldn't trust him with handling this sort of problem. In the least.
Ok, case in case in point, he doesn't understand network neutrality. The way he talks about it, NN is stricly regulatory legislature. He doesn't understand that NN is the defacto way that the internet has functioned since it's inception. The debate is whether we should enforce that performance in regulations, but he never made that distinction. And he probably has these misconception simply because lobbyist are the ones that explained it to him. Or explained it to the person who explained it to him.
Make sure they include the source. And remember, if you annex further lands into your Tibet you MUST free them as well.
Scientist #2: Hmmm, you might be on to something...but what if it's not just the environment? What if it's some other natural evolution of another species that is now a predator to the bee?
Scientist #3: You idiot, that IS a factor of the environment! I agree with Scientist #1, fuck that shit. We want honey and our honey source is dwindling. So we're going to make a better honey source.
Sign up with Wilhelm ISP for SCREAMING FAST netflix downloads!
That's not control over pricing. That's control over purchasing.
But yeah, most TV rots your head. The same with cheap novels, mindless card games, and staring at the same plastic bush in the break room for the umpteenth time. There's high art and low art and non-art. Deal with it.
And yeah, the pricing scheme doesn't match the quality of the content by a long shot. I think you're right about there being a bubble in the entertainment industry. A lot of the old guard simply don't deserve it. I think it's deflating though as, well... young people use the Internet and old people clinging to old formats die off. Or get hip.
Yeah, didn't you know that most javascript is handled by cheap Chinese processors? It's a rampant problem in the industry, it's not exclusive to Javascript, but nobody is really willing to address the elephant in the room.
This is not about women's underwear. This is about having a level of basic human empathy, and realizing that because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.
Well, yes, I agree whole-heartedly.
But, we should have the ability/right/option to do it. Even if we shouldn't do it in the first place. And with a bell curve of humanity, it's pretty assured that given enough time and people that someone is going to go do it. And we should have the right to call that person an asshole. There is a line where it turns into harassment, there are deep cultural issues that need fixing (like Jim Crow laws), and there are some legit issues of national security. But in general, I'm all for personal liberty. Including the liberty to be an asshole.
It's kinda funny how much one coward will post to hold up his end of an empty argument. I count, what, 4 that are probably all you?
It's also interesting how many of those people in your list would have been burned at the stake/ostracized had they said else wise.
I've more or less been a solo developer since I left college 5 years ago. My internship had two other developers, but I was given my own project. The first job had co-workers, and there was interaction, but by and far I had my projects and they had theirs. Occasionally they interacted and we had to talk about that. And in my most recent job I am the only person with a scrap of programming logic in the entire company.
So I'm kinda worried that I'm developing bad habits by growing in a monoculture of just me. It could be simple mistakes like knowing when to use a certain pattern, or large mistakes like thinking that making VBA tools are a good idea. But mostly I worry about what I just don't know about because I'm only one guy.
I'd really like to have a code review, but I can't release company code out there for anybody to see, and my own personal projects are... well... sloppy to say the least.
And yet it's still the only job they could land. Fantastic.
Yeah, listen to the captain.
What do you do if and when the market tanks? Faith in the market to provide all is deeply troubling and naive approach to running a government. In some cases, indeed most, the free market works best. But it needs competition. Where there are natural monopolies, or monopolies through consolidation, or simply an oligarch of the old-boys club, then the free market has failed. And some things are too vitial to leave to the free market. Military security, nuclear production, and feeding the masses.
Now, we don't need a crazy system where the state owns both your cows, it can simply regulate it with a couple of simple rules. Like, keep enough farms running to feed ourselves in a pinch.
Well, no, you don't even need that. Sealing the cockpit from the passengers ensures that a jet won't be controlled by any passengers. As assured as you can be of anything when it comes to security. That mitigates the risk and turns a national security issue to a horrible terrorist attack.
Hey guys, this might be "out there", but how about we try to act in such a way that no one would want to try and blow us up? That would only leave crazy people to worry about and they're usually not that resourceful.
Well the first example that came to my head was the cranium bomb from Shadowrun. Useful for keeping runners in line.
...will only result in delays in bringing up safer newer plant designs.
Well, remember that the constant wave of new plant designs is what makes American nuclear expensive as hell. To build, to run, and to fix. Each plant is different because each plant had a dozen engineers trying something new and untested. It's a great way to learn new things, but it's really expensive to develop that many prototypes.
France, on the other hand, has a handful of designs with standards that they all adhere to.
I'm all for progress, but you have to pay the bills and coal is cheaper. Nuclear CAN be competitive, and safe, but not with this mindset that we constantly need new designs.
Also, building new plants that are safer does jack shit for the older plants that are less safe.
As opposed to powering American suburbia with oil from the middle-east and Venezuela?