Just a remark: --> if you say "mother f*cker" to an officer, you give them a reason to actually arrest you, even if they had no reason before. Best case, you'll be charged with one of those generic "disorderly conduct" violations.
AFAIK, adaptive optics is of no use in space. On top, sending a telescope of this size on a rocket, would probably require TNG level technology. (TOS level only if Scotty is around with some duct tape)
I admit i clicked on that, despite suspecting it was spam.
Well... I couldn't figure out whether the guy is a genius artist or an entertaining retard. Either way, there is something about it - it's a website that Eric Cartman could have set up, and that's no small thing.
doesn't mean the ancients were stupid, incapable of basic arithmetic, or unaware of more than a couple generations' worth of their own history.
Respectfully, you miss the point. Ancients were not "stupid" - they just didn't know that the world is very very old. We know this since relatively recently (and not everybody believes it, even today.)
Hence, their scale of "forever" was different than ours.
luddism anyone? just because a technology is available, it does not automatically make us more evil.
Along those same lines, you could argue that phone is inherently bad - as it is no substitute for comanionship. (phone is not bad: it is just an additional useful tool, to be used wisely)
So the trade-off that is being sacrificed here appears to be life-span, right?
Theoretically, given the right conditions and luck, I reckon a solar-powered rover could last for an indefinite time. Nuclear batteries seem to put a hard end-date to the mission timeline - in this case about two years.
One of the Mars landers crapped out this year because too much frost (albeit a layer of dry ice a couple of feet thick) snapped its solar panels. Prissy design is passe. Let's send up some gear that can do donuts.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your donuts-driven space exploration program *g*
Under this same logic, Egyptian pyramids are a total engineering failure, because most likely there was no requirement for them to last 4000+ years.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that they built those tombs exactly so that they *would* provide eternal shelter for the bodily remains, which the afterlife-god is somehow still dependent upon.
Fair point - what I am reasonably sure about, though, is the following. The ability to contemplate time spans in the order of the thousands years, is a modern one. I speculate that the idea of *eternity* that an Egyptian could have, probably translates into an engineering requirement of 'some generations'.
In retrospect, the Mars rover was build well outside design requirements, making it probably heavier and more expensive than absolutely necessary. Thus it was a design failure.
Under this same logic, Egyptian pyramids are a total engineering failure, because most likely there was no requirement for them to last 4000+ years.
The technology was not chosen - it appears to be more the motive behind the event. Turns out that MS, in fact, is the main sponsor of this thing, according to the website.
About 95% of the surveys I see on mainstream news outlets, have some type of severe or killer statistical flaw in the data, that should be entirely obvious to any mildly clever 4th grader. This one is no exception.
I still wonder if it is due to basic mathematical illiteracy, or to a headline-grabbing attitude. Either way, it's depressing.
The profiles are NOT private, nor there is anything "hacked" here.
This archive contains only the information that users made publicly available (consciously or not) - this stuff was just crawled from the web and put together in one large file.
There is no news here... if I were Apple or Cisco, I would crawl this public info myself, rather than relying on some dude that posted it on a torrent...
....but the "non-technical" person that starts with this type of mindset, I suspect, won't get too far. Learning anything complex and new requires enduring efforts and a strong will, plus a certain degree of intellectual curiosity, and a sense of purpose.
"Let's start learning something about X", especially if X is as broad as "technology" is too generic an intention, to fit what above.
It reminds me of man who goes at the library and says: "I have decided to get an education. Which books will get me educated?"
In the real world, however, process changes in any large organization tend to be slow, expensive, and messy.
It's often a NECESSITY to look for incremental optimizations and workarounds.
I saw a situation very similar to the one you are describing. A large organization with 1000+ points of sale, having to snailmail paper documents (i.e. contracts) to the headquarters - everyday.
Such contracts were produced/printed with a proprietary software solution, in which Cobol (!) code was a major part, plus a bunch of different databases, etc etc.
The type of thing: "Don't touch ANYTHING or it falls apart...". Despite this, for their needs, it was working pretty ok - wasn’t changed in may be 15 years or more.
Add to this: (1) old-ish/poorly trained staff, used to the very same UI since forever (2) the necessity to file the paper version anyways, since it carried signatures .
What do you do? Sure, there are valid arguments to change it all, and start from scratch - web UI / cloud / VPN / insert-your-buzzword.
But at the end of the day, if you take the total cost, this would easily be a multimillion investment. And cause a lot of glitches in the business. And almost 100% piss off the staff ("I liked the old one better! It was nice and green! And what about this new mouse thingy?")
While you figure out the ramifications of a total overhaul, in the meanwhile you may still want to file the contracts as PDFs, instead of simply throwing them in a warehouse. And, the "meanwhile" could last years...
Correct. It did NOT happen in the last ten years, though. Your examples are all from a different era. Microsoft has seemingly lost the ability to eat the next-big-things (more or less since Ballmer got his job). And the stock price curve has reflected this.
Here's the link to the original paper. While not a specialist, the paper looks to me FAR from suggesting anything close to what the headlines claim. The "conclusions" of the paper state:
The presence of clay and carbonate in the Nili Fossae region suggests that biomarkers (if present) could have been preserved within these rocks, as they have been in the Pilbara region.
May be it's just the authors being understandably cautious on such a topic, on a peer-reviewed journal, with the language they are using. (I reckon it's more likely, though, that it's the headlines erring on the excitement.)
Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it. That's going to be the ugly truth when it gets here: "immortality" will only be for the rich. The rest of us will live and die like we always have.
At first sight, yes. However, when you break down the costs of paper books, you see that the 'physical' production is only a fraction of what makes the retail price. Editing, promotion, overheads, rights, etc, take a larger share of the _average_ book cost.
(of course this is less true for a bestseller, where you have higher promotion costs, but also a larger number of copies to allocate such costs to)
Slashdot Mirror
Just a remark:
--> if you say "mother f*cker" to an officer, you give them a reason to actually arrest you, even if they had no reason before.
Best case, you'll be charged with one of those generic "disorderly conduct" violations.
You are much better off staying calm and cool.
While I largely disagree with the two posts above, they don't fit my definition of trolling.
Starting a moderation fight based on different opinions, does not bring anyone much further with the debate. Nor with anything else.
AFAIK, adaptive optics is of no use in space.
On top, sending a telescope of this size on a rocket, would probably require TNG level technology. (TOS level only if Scotty is around with some duct tape)
I admit i clicked on that, despite suspecting it was spam.
Well... I couldn't figure out whether the guy is a genius artist or an entertaining retard.
Either way, there is something about it - it's a website that Eric Cartman could have set up, and that's no small thing.
doesn't mean the ancients were stupid, incapable of basic arithmetic, or unaware of more than a couple generations' worth of their own history.
Respectfully, you miss the point.
Ancients were not "stupid" - they just didn't know that the world is very very old.
We know this since relatively recently (and not everybody believes it, even today.)
Hence, their scale of "forever" was different than ours.
luddism anyone?
just because a technology is available, it does not automatically make us more evil.
Along those same lines, you could argue that phone is inherently bad - as it is no substitute for comanionship. (phone is not bad: it is just an additional useful tool, to be used wisely)
This whole trans-ocean flame-thread is silly - especially in the context of a space exploration discussion.
Greetings from Planet Earth.
Contaminating celestial bodies with terrestrial microorganisms, is against international law.
NASA tries to avoid it
So the trade-off that is being sacrificed here appears to be life-span, right?
Theoretically, given the right conditions and luck, I reckon a solar-powered rover could last for an indefinite time.
Nuclear batteries seem to put a hard end-date to the mission timeline - in this case about two years.
One of the Mars landers crapped out this year because too much frost (albeit a layer of dry ice a couple of feet thick) snapped its solar panels. Prissy design is passe. Let's send up some gear that can do donuts.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your donuts-driven space exploration program *g*
Under this same logic, Egyptian pyramids are a total engineering failure, because most likely there was no requirement for them to last 4000+ years.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that they built those tombs exactly so that they *would* provide eternal shelter for the bodily remains, which the afterlife-god is somehow still dependent upon.
Fair point - what I am reasonably sure about, though, is the following.
The ability to contemplate time spans in the order of the thousands years, is a modern one.
I speculate that the idea of *eternity* that an Egyptian could have, probably translates into an engineering requirement of 'some generations'.
source?
In retrospect, the Mars rover was build well outside design requirements, making it probably heavier and more expensive than absolutely necessary. Thus it was a design failure.
Under this same logic, Egyptian pyramids are a total engineering failure, because most likely there was no requirement for them to last 4000+ years.
The technology was not chosen - it appears to be more the motive behind the event.
Turns out that MS, in fact, is the main sponsor of this thing, according to the website.
About 95% of the surveys I see on mainstream news outlets, have some type of severe or killer statistical flaw in the data, that should be entirely obvious to any mildly clever 4th grader. This one is no exception.
I still wonder if it is due to basic mathematical illiteracy, or to a headline-grabbing attitude.
Either way, it's depressing.
The profiles are NOT private, nor there is anything "hacked" here.
This archive contains only the information that users made publicly available (consciously or not) - this stuff was just crawled from the web and put together in one large file.
There is no news here... if I were Apple or Cisco, I would crawl this public info myself, rather than relying on some dude that posted it on a torrent...
....but the "non-technical" person that starts with this type of mindset, I suspect, won't get too far. Learning anything complex and new requires enduring efforts and a strong will, plus a certain degree of intellectual curiosity, and a sense of purpose.
"Let's start learning something about X", especially if X is as broad as "technology" is too generic an intention, to fit what above.
It reminds me of man who goes at the library and says: "I have decided to get an education. Which books will get me educated?"
That is 100% correct, in theory.
In the real world, however, process changes in any large organization tend to be slow, expensive, and messy.
It's often a NECESSITY to look for incremental optimizations and workarounds.
I saw a situation very similar to the one you are describing. A large organization with 1000+ points of sale, having to snailmail paper documents (i.e. contracts) to the headquarters - everyday.
Such contracts were produced/printed with a proprietary software solution, in which Cobol (!) code was a major part, plus a bunch of different databases, etc etc.
The type of thing: "Don't touch ANYTHING or it falls apart...". Despite this, for their needs, it was working pretty ok - wasn’t changed in may be 15 years or more.
Add to this: (1) old-ish /poorly trained staff, used to the very same UI since forever (2) the necessity to file the paper version anyways, since it carried signatures .
What do you do? Sure, there are valid arguments to change it all, and start from scratch - web UI / cloud / VPN / insert-your-buzzword.
But at the end of the day, if you take the total cost, this would easily be a multimillion investment. And cause a lot of glitches in the business. And almost 100% piss off the staff ("I liked the old one better! It was nice and green! And what about this new mouse thingy?")
While you figure out the ramifications of a total overhaul, in the meanwhile you may still want to file the contracts as PDFs, instead of simply throwing them in a warehouse. And, the "meanwhile" could last years...
Correct. It did NOT happen in the last ten years, though.
Your examples are all from a different era. Microsoft has seemingly lost the ability to eat the next-big-things (more or less since Ballmer got his job).
And the stock price curve has reflected this.
Here's the link to the original paper.
While not a specialist, the paper looks to me FAR from suggesting anything close to what the headlines claim.
The "conclusions" of the paper state:
The presence of clay and carbonate in the Nili Fossae region suggests that biomarkers (if present) could have been preserved within these rocks, as they have been in the Pilbara region.
May be it's just the authors being understandably cautious on such a topic, on a peer-reviewed journal, with the language they are using.
(I reckon it's more likely, though, that it's the headlines erring on the excitement.)
Is it just me, or the average age of /.ers is increasing?
Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it. That's going to be the ugly truth when it gets here: "immortality" will only be for the rich. The rest of us will live and die like we always have.
Unless you believe singularity will happen
and run it on hardware you designed and manufactured yourself
here's a typical breakdown:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13556_3-10250017-61.html
At first sight, yes.
However, when you break down the costs of paper books, you see that the 'physical' production is only a fraction of what makes the retail price.
Editing, promotion, overheads, rights, etc, take a larger share of the _average_ book cost.
(of course this is less true for a bestseller, where you have higher promotion costs, but also a larger number of copies to allocate such costs to)