I know I'm not the only person here who has read Carl Sagan, as well as countless other scientists and futurists that beg us to think past our nose when it comes to the human race.
Our civilization has come to the point where we have the technological capability of establishing a permanent presence off this planet for the first time. I can't think of many more honorable and worthwhile goals than to get a bunch of us off this rock permanently.
Remember: 1/5000 chance of an extinction level event in our lifetime. If a few hundred years from now, an asteroid went BOOM on earth and we all died, no one could argue that we didn't have ample chance to protect the survival of our species.
A quick disclaimer: this should be simple logic, but the question keeps coming up about "money better spent elsewhere", so I have to get it out there.
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Finally. I think this is the right direction for NASA right now. Over the next ten years build up our knowledge of Mars, and culminate with having rocks sent back to us. I don't think the rocks are the important thing here -- if we can send a robot to Mars and have it come back safely, it's the first step to having a human go there and come back safely.
If NASA can do this and minimize the dumb mishaps, we'll be well on our way to getting people on Mars within 30 years.
Yes, I believe that, barring any civilization
ending war, the world will be under modified
capitalism, such as most of the world is now. The thing is, it's the best anyone's come up with yet. The more "pure" the capitalism, the more efficent the production of goods, and the more fair the distrubution of said goods (I understand that my definition of fair is going to be radically different than a socialists definition of fair).
Honestly, the only way I could ever see capitalism being phased out is far, far in the future, technology is lifted to such a level that consumer goods are essentially free. The "Star Trek" economy, if you will. Things like food, energy, and shelter are so incredibly cheap, the need for money goes away. Barring that, though, capitalism will stay. The purer the better.
I think what this comes down to is just a smallish software company, probably running software/hardware designed for small loads, running into an unseen problem. I do not have any privileged knowledge about what exactly brought that poor sysadmin's servers down, but I suspect it was just several thousand thinking netizens wanting to help. More than likely, the threats were isolated, and not the thrust of the whole. I agree with Theo. This is a victory to savor for all the people that want to believe that you can make a difference. You can.:-)
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I know I'm not the only person here who has read Carl Sagan, as well as countless other scientists and futurists that beg us to think past our nose when it comes to the human race.
Our civilization has come to the point where we have the technological capability of establishing a permanent presence off this planet for the first time. I can't think of many more honorable and worthwhile goals than to get a bunch of us off this rock permanently.
Remember: 1/5000 chance of an extinction level event in our lifetime. If a few hundred years from now, an asteroid went BOOM on earth and we all died, no one could argue that we didn't have ample chance to protect the survival of our species.
A quick disclaimer: this should be simple logic, but the question keeps coming up about "money better spent elsewhere", so I have to get it out there.
---
Finally. I think this is the right direction for NASA right now. Over the next ten years build up our knowledge of Mars, and culminate with having rocks sent back to us. I don't think the rocks are the important thing here -- if we can send a robot to Mars and have it come back safely, it's the first step to having a human go there and come back safely.
If NASA can do this and minimize the dumb mishaps, we'll be well on our way to getting people on Mars within 30 years.
Yes, I believe that, barring any civilization
ending war, the world will be under modified
capitalism, such as most of the world is now. The thing is, it's the best anyone's come up with yet. The more "pure" the capitalism, the more efficent the production of goods, and the more fair the distrubution of said goods (I understand that my definition of fair is going to be radically different than a socialists definition of fair).
Honestly, the only way I could ever see capitalism being phased out is far, far in the future, technology is lifted to such a level that consumer goods are essentially free. The "Star Trek" economy, if you will. Things like food, energy, and shelter are so incredibly cheap, the need for money goes away. Barring that, though, capitalism will stay. The purer the better.
-Card carrying Libertarian
I think what this comes down to is just a smallish software company, probably running software/hardware designed for small loads, running into an unseen problem. I do not have any privileged knowledge about what exactly brought that poor sysadmin's servers down, but I suspect it was just several thousand thinking netizens wanting to help. More than likely, the threats were isolated, and not the thrust of the whole. I agree with Theo. This is a victory to savor for all the people that want to believe that you can make a difference. You can. :-)