Not gonna happen until there's money to be made in space. Without that, they have no reason to go. This whole long term goal of the propogation of life thing is way too abstract for the people paying for spaceships. So you have to have real acheivable goals that will have a ROI within our lifetime. Which will come sooner if it's cheaper to get up there. So promote single-wall carbon nanotubes to make a space elevator which will bottom out the cost of entry into the space market.
I believe that there is the possibility of our return to the stone age due to peak oil. Not because we're not going to have cars or globalization, but because people will launch wars to secure the last drops.
My GOD would you just let it go already? iTunes, technology, the internet, gadgets, the effects of transferring from an analog system to digital, that's all you guys ever fucking talk about on slashdot. JESUS! It's like a broken record.
THAT'S IT! I'm getting my non-tech news from some other tech site!
You mean in total secrecy to everyone but top ranking military and political leaders until the product is debuted in the deaths of thousands. And afterwards all the research is consider state secrets which are closely guarded and other nations have to research and develop it on their own while we enjoy a monopoly on the the technology and use it excessively as a political power chip to force the capitulation of our enemies. You want fusion to be treated like that?
Don't worry, as soon as anything explodes, someone dies, or they find a "scientist" who can worry and fret, Foxnews will point out how Obama's DOE is funding crazy apocalypse engines.
I personally know a big oil guy who, with a couple of drinks in him, argued that if free energy were discovered tomorrow, then the whole economy of the world would collapse. Personally, I think he was just egocentric and had been hanging around too many refineries. Certainly his world and income would collapse. Of course, he simultaneously argued that oil production was used for so many applications that the world was dependent on it and could not function without it. To this day I'm a little confused how you can go broke from no longer being needed and take everyone that desperately needs you down with.
This was a silver tongued Texan salesman who kept expanding software requirements though, so everyething his says needs a fist-sized grain of salt with it.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that they would definitely try to kill this sort thing, and they would use the flimsiest of excuses, and actually belive their own bullshit. They would believe they're helping the world by nuking fusion projects.
It's more like being snarky. If you can't handle people being snarky, maybe you needed more social interaction with your peers as a child.
Child abuse is most certainly not exclusive of religion. There are verifiable examples of overlap. Indeed, I'd say that makes for good basis to be outraged about religious nutjobs abusing their kids. It's debatable whether or not filling a child with lies and grossly ill-equipping them to handle the real world falls under the definition of "harm".
Truth is neither subjective nor relative.
Also, I'm explicitly labeling the parent's belief as crazy - from my point of view. You see, cause I'm the one saying it.
Uh, do we have anyway to implant vat grown neurons into people in some meaningful way? Can we actually attach vat grown neurons to, uh, other neurons? This is going to be one of those "wait 5 years" breakthroughs isn't it?
Yeah, wow! I mean, nothing against you Greg, and it's good you're retired from all that, but it's like hearing an SS guard coming forward.
And you PRE-EMPTIVLY came forward for a good bootlicking? Really?
Also, this reminds me of an age-old story. No programmer could ever ethically write a nukeHiroshima() function.
They would be forced by professional ethics to write a nuke(int city) function which could take Hiroshima as a parameter.
Yeah, what's up with that?
Don't get me wrong, Google has MASSIVE potential for being evil. As does Microsoft. Which has actually been evil at various points in various ways. That potential comes with the power of brand recognition and coffers full of gold. But so far Google has not, in fact, been evil. There are probably some MS fanboys here who hate Google simply because it's threatening Microsoft. I imagine the same goes for the mac-boys, but I just can't see that happening too much. And then there are the freedom fighters and the (open opponents?) who distrust Google simply because it's a company. A corporation with shareholders.That's a fear I can understand, and more so each time the founders sell some stock, but you can't convict without a crime. It's good to be on guard, but this is ridiculous.
Nah, wait till college. It's a no fly zone for the helicopters.
Either they'll have an epiphany, their head will explode, or they'll come crying home to mommy.
The two are synonymous here in the midwest. Specifically private catholic schools. The "radicalness" varies, but I believed that was an effect due to how much the parents reinforced the bullshit, or failed to explain the bullshit. A few people explained it to me that the theology classes were just something you had to put up with. But I've never heard of a secular private high school or elementary school.... Until now.
Yeah, dealing with unsupervised peers, it sucks. The jerks gang up on the easiest target and destroy him. Friends back-stab friends for the merest gain. Cliches, circles, and gangs form and the have and have-nots are clearly defined.
In other words, it's a good lesson for dealing with a corporate environment.
Also, and this is just my experience, the home-schooled kids I knew were always even more socially incompetent then I. Of course none of them went to a "home schooling group", which I believe is simply called "private catholic school" over here.
Perhaps, but there is a basis for outrage against religious nutjobs abusing their kids, filling their heads with lies, and "casting the demons out". It's actually kind of a weekly theme on Fark.
I can understand wanting to teach your kids specific things. And I can vuagely understand wanting to keep them away from other things. But to keep them completely ignorant of the social mainstream thought? That's just stupid.
If you really want your kids to hold a crazy set of beliefs, then tell them to go to school, listen to the "lies", and teach them to fake understanding. That will at least give them the ability to interact with society. And hey, if that little seed of truth manages to weedle it's way past your indoctrination and grow in their heads, maybe your crazy ideas are just crazy.
I'm "manically" anti-corporate because they do not have my interest at heart and I have very limited power over them. And they have a ludicrous amount of power over me. I am very much dependent on them for all sorts of things. Now, I can trust a corporation as far as I (and the masses) can back-stab it and defect to their main competitor. That whole free-market thing really does work, as long as you have competition and open and fair markets. In such industries where there are naturual monopolies, a culture of corruption, a oligarchy of ruling powers, or good ol' fashion rober barons then the free market falls apart and we the people pay for it either in terms of cash or quality. In those cases, yes, I want my government, the one I control, to step in and regulate, or trust-bust, or privatize.
At first I didn't think we needed any laws on the books about network neutrality. I thought that would do more harm then good. Shit EXACTLY like this in the article. But then Comcast was found to be throttling P2P, and then lied about it, and no one did a damn thing. For all the rage that went down on slashdot, the masses didn't even notice, and Comcast didn't even flinch. But hey, they got sued and actually lost! And the fine was a slap on the wrist. Or even worse, a nice orderly list of everyone of those dirty file sharers for a nominal fee.
But it comes down to who do you trust more:
Corporations or Government?
Actually, I believe they have a contract with me to provide me internet service, which includes torrents. Sure, they can break that contract, but there are repercussions. But they do not have infinite rights to do anything they please because they are a private company.
Except that there's hardly any choices (oh, I'm sorry that NEW YORK CITY has attracted some business, my mistake) and an oligarchy of 5 companies which all scratch each others' back doesn't make for competition. And the majority of the people don't know how the internet works or what network neutrality means. And most of those that do can only guess if their connection is being infringed. You know, when it "feels sluggish". It's a very very small subset that actually checks to see if their traffic is unmolested. Then there's the subset that would correctly identify when the ISP is screwing them.
And when comcast was caught red-handed throttling p2p connections, how many people shunned them and went to a 56Kbps competitor?
You know, I had a revelation the other day. I used to scoff at your type. The ones that believed in the holy trinity of the cognitive; the brain, the mind, and the soul. And for years I would scoff at your ideas and say that it's simply all the brain, and that everything else doesn't really exist. Then I thought about the chinese room a bit. Before I would say that, of course the man doesn't know chinese, but the book does.
And then it hit me. It's not the book, nor the words, nor the ink on the page, but the pattern of the book that understands chinese. And the parallel here is that the human brain is just meat that holds a pattern, a configuration, a setting of synapses, chemicals, and whatnot. The mind is not the brain, the brain is not the mind, but the mind exists within the brain.
Similarly, part of that pattern is the bit that gives us our conscious/gutcheck/insticts/morals/etc. which makes up the soul. It's not that these things don't exist, but that they've been improperly defined.
But anyway, scoff scoffity scoff, we've got three laws that should be able to handle that issue.
The original dinosour did some stuff and split off into groups like triceratops and velocirapters. One of those groups split off into birds. All of life is a giant tree and you cannot escape your roots.
You are a homo sapien, a primate, a mammal, and an animal.
Birds are something, something, a dinosaur, and an animal.
You are not a bird or a dinosaur, all birds are dinosaurs, some dinosaurs are birds, both you and are animals. You want a chart?
I don't really remember being told anything was really impossible. Even pure fiction like warp drives and transporter beams (ducks the incoming trekkie armada) were one of those "we'll have to wait and see" sort of things. There's always the cop out of "not in your lifetieme", but that's lame.
My father said he never thought the Berlin wall would come down, or that Soviet Russia would collapse, but I grew up a geek and took nothing as static. I'm actually really interested if anyone else has any specific outcomes that they were told was impossible or would never happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Not gonna happen until there's money to be made in space. Without that, they have no reason to go. This whole long term goal of the propogation of life thing is way too abstract for the people paying for spaceships. So you have to have real acheivable goals that will have a ROI within our lifetime. Which will come sooner if it's cheaper to get up there. So promote single-wall carbon nanotubes to make a space elevator which will bottom out the cost of entry into the space market.
I believe that there is the possibility of our return to the stone age due to peak oil. Not because we're not going to have cars or globalization, but because people will launch wars to secure the last drops.
My GOD would you just let it go already? iTunes, technology, the internet, gadgets, the effects of transferring from an analog system to digital, that's all you guys ever fucking talk about on slashdot. JESUS! It's like a broken record.
THAT'S IT! I'm getting my non-tech news from some other tech site!
(Come on, he has a pertinent point here.)
You mean in total secrecy to everyone but top ranking military and political leaders until the product is debuted in the deaths of thousands. And afterwards all the research is consider state secrets which are closely guarded and other nations have to research and develop it on their own while we enjoy a monopoly on the the technology and use it excessively as a political power chip to force the capitulation of our enemies. You want fusion to be treated like that?
Don't worry, as soon as anything explodes, someone dies, or they find a "scientist" who can worry and fret, Foxnews will point out how Obama's DOE is funding crazy apocalypse engines.
I personally know a big oil guy who, with a couple of drinks in him, argued that if free energy were discovered tomorrow, then the whole economy of the world would collapse. Personally, I think he was just egocentric and had been hanging around too many refineries. Certainly his world and income would collapse. Of course, he simultaneously argued that oil production was used for so many applications that the world was dependent on it and could not function without it. To this day I'm a little confused how you can go broke from no longer being needed and take everyone that desperately needs you down with.
This was a silver tongued Texan salesman who kept expanding software requirements though, so everyething his says needs a fist-sized grain of salt with it.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that they would definitely try to kill this sort thing, and they would use the flimsiest of excuses, and actually belive their own bullshit. They would believe they're helping the world by nuking fusion projects.
I'm glad I got out of that industry...
No, but your parents believed in CLONING.
(yagetit?)
Fine, fine, I accept the mod. I still say eating babies is funny, but there's no excuse for misspelling "smartest". That's just dum.
It's more like being snarky. If you can't handle people being snarky, maybe you needed more social interaction with your peers as a child.
Child abuse is most certainly not exclusive of religion. There are verifiable examples of overlap. Indeed, I'd say that makes for good basis to be outraged about religious nutjobs abusing their kids. It's debatable whether or not filling a child with lies and grossly ill-equipping them to handle the real world falls under the definition of "harm".
Truth is neither subjective nor relative.
Also, I'm explicitly labeling the parent's belief as crazy - from my point of view. You see, cause I'm the one saying it.
So, AWESOME!
Uh, do we have anyway to implant vat grown neurons into people in some meaningful way? Can we actually attach vat grown neurons to, uh, other neurons?
This is going to be one of those "wait 5 years" breakthroughs isn't it?
Hey! It's not my fault that babies' skin makes the smarted neuron cells! I've got to eat too you know. (babies that is)
Yeah, wow! I mean, nothing against you Greg, and it's good you're retired from all that, but it's like hearing an SS guard coming forward.
And you PRE-EMPTIVLY came forward for a good bootlicking? Really?
Also, this reminds me of an age-old story. No programmer could ever ethically write a nukeHiroshima() function.
They would be forced by professional ethics to write a nuke(int city) function which could take Hiroshima as a parameter.
Yeah, what's up with that?
Don't get me wrong, Google has MASSIVE potential for being evil. As does Microsoft. Which has actually been evil at various points in various ways. That potential comes with the power of brand recognition and coffers full of gold. But so far Google has not, in fact, been evil. There are probably some MS fanboys here who hate Google simply because it's threatening Microsoft. I imagine the same goes for the mac-boys, but I just can't see that happening too much.
And then there are the freedom fighters and the (open opponents?) who distrust Google simply because it's a company. A corporation with shareholders.That's a fear I can understand, and more so each time the founders sell some stock, but you can't convict without a crime. It's good to be on guard, but this is ridiculous.
Nah, wait till college. It's a no fly zone for the helicopters.
Either they'll have an epiphany, their head will explode, or they'll come crying home to mommy.
The two are synonymous here in the midwest. Specifically private catholic schools. The "radicalness" varies, but I believed that was an effect due to how much the parents reinforced the bullshit, or failed to explain the bullshit. A few people explained it to me that the theology classes were just something you had to put up with. But I've never heard of a secular private high school or elementary school.... Until now.
Sure, but it took fifty three thousand four-hundred and twenty attempts.
Yeah, dealing with unsupervised peers, it sucks. The jerks gang up on the easiest target and destroy him. Friends back-stab friends for the merest gain. Cliches, circles, and gangs form and the have and have-nots are clearly defined.
In other words, it's a good lesson for dealing with a corporate environment.
Also, and this is just my experience, the home-schooled kids I knew were always even more socially incompetent then I. Of course none of them went to a "home schooling group", which I believe is simply called "private catholic school" over here.
Perhaps, but there is a basis for outrage against religious nutjobs abusing their kids, filling their heads with lies, and "casting the demons out". It's actually kind of a weekly theme on Fark.
I can understand wanting to teach your kids specific things. And I can vuagely understand wanting to keep them away from other things. But to keep them completely ignorant of the social mainstream thought? That's just stupid.
If you really want your kids to hold a crazy set of beliefs, then tell them to go to school, listen to the "lies", and teach them to fake understanding. That will at least give them the ability to interact with society. And hey, if that little seed of truth manages to weedle it's way past your indoctrination and grow in their heads, maybe your crazy ideas are just crazy.
Well sorta, but no.
I'm "manically" anti-corporate because they do not have my interest at heart and I have very limited power over them. And they have a ludicrous amount of power over me. I am very much dependent on them for all sorts of things. Now, I can trust a corporation as far as I (and the masses) can back-stab it and defect to their main competitor. That whole free-market thing really does work, as long as you have competition and open and fair markets. In such industries where there are naturual monopolies, a culture of corruption, a oligarchy of ruling powers, or good ol' fashion rober barons then the free market falls apart and we the people pay for it either in terms of cash or quality. In those cases, yes, I want my government, the one I control, to step in and regulate, or trust-bust, or privatize.
At first I didn't think we needed any laws on the books about network neutrality. I thought that would do more harm then good. Shit EXACTLY like this in the article. But then Comcast was found to be throttling P2P, and then lied about it, and no one did a damn thing. For all the rage that went down on slashdot, the masses didn't even notice, and Comcast didn't even flinch. But hey, they got sued and actually lost! And the fine was a slap on the wrist. Or even worse, a nice orderly list of everyone of those dirty file sharers for a nominal fee.
But it comes down to who do you trust more:
Corporations or Government?
Actually, I believe they have a contract with me to provide me internet service, which includes torrents. Sure, they can break that contract, but there are repercussions. But they do not have infinite rights to do anything they please because they are a private company.
Except that there's hardly any choices (oh, I'm sorry that NEW YORK CITY has attracted some business, my mistake) and an oligarchy of 5 companies which all scratch each others' back doesn't make for competition. And the majority of the people don't know how the internet works or what network neutrality means. And most of those that do can only guess if their connection is being infringed. You know, when it "feels sluggish". It's a very very small subset that actually checks to see if their traffic is unmolested. Then there's the subset that would correctly identify when the ISP is screwing them.
And when comcast was caught red-handed throttling p2p connections, how many people shunned them and went to a 56Kbps competitor?
You know, I had a revelation the other day. I used to scoff at your type. The ones that believed in the holy trinity of the cognitive; the brain, the mind, and the soul. And for years I would scoff at your ideas and say that it's simply all the brain, and that everything else doesn't really exist. Then I thought about the chinese room a bit. Before I would say that, of course the man doesn't know chinese, but the book does.
And then it hit me. It's not the book, nor the words, nor the ink on the page, but the pattern of the book that understands chinese. And the parallel here is that the human brain is just meat that holds a pattern, a configuration, a setting of synapses, chemicals, and whatnot. The mind is not the brain, the brain is not the mind, but the mind exists within the brain.
Similarly, part of that pattern is the bit that gives us our conscious/gutcheck/insticts/morals/etc. which makes up the soul. It's not that these things don't exist, but that they've been improperly defined.
But anyway, scoff scoffity scoff, we've got three laws that should be able to handle that issue.
Indeed.
The original dinosour did some stuff and split off into groups like triceratops and velocirapters. One of those groups split off into birds. All of life is a giant tree and you cannot escape your roots.
You are a homo sapien, a primate, a mammal, and an animal.
Birds are something, something, a dinosaur, and an animal.
You are not a bird or a dinosaur, all birds are dinosaurs, some dinosaurs are birds, both you and are animals. You want a chart?
I always colored them green.
I don't really remember being told anything was really impossible. Even pure fiction like warp drives and transporter beams (ducks the incoming trekkie armada) were one of those "we'll have to wait and see" sort of things. There's always the cop out of "not in your lifetieme", but that's lame.
My father said he never thought the Berlin wall would come down, or that Soviet Russia would collapse, but I grew up a geek and took nothing as static. I'm actually really interested if anyone else has any specific outcomes that they were told was impossible or would never happen.
albeit a very persistent one.