2003 Challenges for SAMBA team
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Samba Turns 10
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Unfortunately, the SAMBA team has a much bigger challenge on the horizon.
Microsoft is just biding thier time and waiting for the ultimate outcome of the Napster and other laws that forbid fair use, reverse engineering, etc.
My personal prediction for 2002-2003 year is that SAMBA will end up in the fryin pan with a letter from Microsoft's cronies/lawyers telling them they are in violation of and that they must cease operations immediately.
Same goes for a lot of other open source projects.
I think the Open Source community should preempt the money establishment and prepare for the day when projects and servers can distribute free software without being so centralized as they are today. (i.e. SourceForge).
I won't get into what I think the rammifications are should SourceForge ever becomes seriously compromised. (i.e. a new project Opens up and voila', the source code to Windows 2000 is downloadable....)
The past year has been the worst year of patents, MULA, EULA, RIAA and DMCA crap I have ever seen.
More shananigans no doubt will be the rule of thumb for 2003, but only this time, there won't be so much confusion, as recent ignorant courts have made some very very dangerous precedents.
Microsoft is just waiting for enough of them to accumulate before they hit the Open Source community with 2 Billion dollars funding a horde of lawyers that will forever do away with critical key software the OpenSource community relies on. (i.e. SAMBA, Linux Kernel, X-Windows, etc.)
It very well maybe that Europe will see the rebirth of Open Source as such crap doesn't go over very easily in Europe. (i.e. the ludicrous idea of software patents.)
Engineering problems are problems that fall under a domain of discrete solutions, which have very specific algorithms by which they are solved.
Object Oriented Design doesn't work to well with discrete solutions because, in part, the design philosophy is one of generalization.
That is why Linus for example holds to the belief that OOD principles in system level software is wasteful, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because there is no need to write the functions of a scheduler for as OS anything other than what it is.
However, that doesn't mean that all aspects of OOD, such as reuse, simplicity, and maintainability don't have anything to offer to discrete solutions. Just that OOD can't realize all the benefits a discrete solution to a problem can give you. Also, should you decide to choose an OOD for a discrete solution for an OS kernel or tracking asteroids, you have to realize hopefully through experience what the relative meager benefits are in doing so for your discrete OOD solution.
That doesn't mean you can't try though!
For example, at the moment I am writing an extension to a number of problems to track asteroids for a telescope via computer automagically.
Most of the tracking software was or is originally written in FORTRAN and is in the book "Fundamentals of Celestial Mechanics" by JMA Danby. Publisher is William-Bell by the way.
RK5 methods are highly specialized mathematical algorithms specifically tailored for N body problems in calculating or predicting orbits. They are for the most part functionally reduced to FORTRAN IV in the form of highly NON OOD function libraries.
(It is not OOD because the functions rely on a number of shared data structures which is a no no in OOD. As a result, since code is not easily isolated between data and function calls, it is VERY hard to figure out the source code by hand and very structured design oriented.)
Also, might I add, checking the answers are literally BEYOND your ability as a human being EVEN WITH a calculator! For example, an RK5 method might have over 1,000 iterations of a integration or differential mathematical procedure. There is simply no way you could check it by hand. I solve this problem by using Mathematica, from Wolfram Research. I transpose the algorithms from Fortran into Mathemtica until I get the right numbers and to make sure I understand exactly what the algorithm is doing.
I then transpose it to Java, which is the target platform and Object Design language I am using to forever banish the constant rewriting of code from computer to computer!!!
Java has been a GOD SEND to astronomy by the way in cutting costs! Especially for a society that woops and screams about cutting all scientific research while at the same time spending hundreds of millions too see Harry Potter. (How sad. I hope one of these rocks doesn't fall on your city anytime soon.)
However, lets not be decieved. For although OOD and OOP practices in generalization of programs yields better reuse, in principal, each specific method of an object is built using well known Structured Design practices.
So, with that I set out to generalize a highly specific piece of code and layer on top of it, an OOD that would attempt to turn what appears to be a highly specific set of functions in FORTRAN that solves a standard N Body problem, with a set of Objects which define what an "N-body" IS as well as the functions that can give the solution to that bodies orbit.
The goal is to maximize the ability of OOD to simplify the understanding and theoretically increase the reliability of the very complex code. This is the benefits I am looking for rather, that OOD promises and delivers in building complicated programs. Notice I am not interested in reusability.
So although resuse is meaningless to me in this context, I still want those advantages of an OOD design, maintainability, and more reliable code on a level that structured design/functional approach can't give me.
What is interesting is the "IS" part. In standard structured design which FORTRAN is readily able to implement any algorithm, you have isolated discrete function calls that operate on global data sets.
With an OOD approach, however, I found at least that OOD does provide the following benefits:
1) Taking the simple FORTRAN function library and building it around a unified object that represents the many different properties of the asteroid simplifies the understanding of the algorithms involved.
I wish it could do the same for the mathematics, but that part is still very hard, no matter what language you use.
2) The OOD principles of reuse don't really help here. Primarily because in the context of the problem, there is only one solution. I highly doubt people could reuse this in other ways than it was intended. Except of course, to calculate the orbit of another body.
3) The OOD characteristic of privatization of data organized the code in ways that made the source code, not only easier to understand, but also unexpectedly suggested ways to improve the implementation of the computer algorithms to do the mathematics.
Unlike a GUI library, the spectrum of reusability is much narrower in this case. As I said before, because the computing requirements for the application in question are so highly specific. It is highly unlikely they could be used for any other purpose, except calculating the orbit of a different body. I guess that is SOME reuse.
A GUI library however, you can use a OK button code in all sorts of applications from word processors to web pages, to spreadsheets...using Java for example which is what I am using.
So to summarize this is what I have learned:
1) OOD principles in discrete areas of engineering or system level operating system design have lots of pitfalls, and require a careful consideration of the clear benefits of OOD vs the performance requirements of the application.
Primarily, because OOD is expensive upfront, and lets face it. If you are not going to get all the benefits from that expense, why use it? In may case, I didn't benefit from the generalization of code, for other application use other than the very strict focus on other specific applications of orbital calculations.
2) Reusability in the broad spectrum of coding using OOD in discrete applications in certain fields don't buy you much, because it is rarely a requirement that the code be generalized for resuse. In fact, it is just the opposite, it is highly specific, and only for a given solution.
Such is the case with Operating Systems and discrete engineering applications or scientific applications, for the above reasons.
3) Finally OOD can however, provide clues into relationships of an algorithm to its data not normally gleemed through the narrow lens of structured design. Specifically, such as cited above such revelations may provide clues in how to store data more effectively and reduce memory consumption.
Therefore even if you are specifically choosing structured design as an implementation framework for your computer algorithms, OOD might shed new light on how to code a structured design solution more effectively to handle data storage and its reuse.
Which coould save disk space, cpu time, memory requirements..etc.
I think a lot of posts discussed green house gases in general but, really, I don't think the amoutn of gas has changed all that much.
If you take a look at the orbital mechanics of Mars over hundreds of thousands and millions of year, this sort of warming naturally occurs.
It has nothing to do with the production of gases, like I said, they are already there.
But Mars, as it goes around the sun and its orbit naturally cycles over time to being closer or further away from the sun causes these warm ups.
Due to the fact that Mars has a high eccentricity factor it its elliptical orbit, these warm ups are far more pronounced than say, Earths are.
I know a lot of discussion about Global Warming has centered on Human activity, but in Mars case, it is just a cycle or phase it goes through in its orbit about the sun over large spanses of time.
Might I add that there is no technical reason I can think of to discontine Win95 support.
I can think of lots of applications and software I will still be using under Win95 even when the Win98 deadline comes AT THE TIME I bought Windows 95 and the computer it runs on.
The only possible reason why I can think of, that Microsoft wants to dump 95 is that it can juice more cash out of a user base that will not benefit one iota, and quite possibly break all of thier software when they do upgrade to XP.
The enourmous costs of using XP or even 2000 if you consider a company or person still has 95, with just upgrading the hardware can be a deterrant itself.
One of the strengths of Linux is, at this very moment, the same commercial distro you buy, or even kernel you install, will run on a 486 machine no problemo.
True, but so will the app software.
Think about that for a moment.
I can still run a 1995 version of some astronomy software on any distro back till then, and it won't change any time soon.
Can I still run my App on win95 now that Microsoft won't sell the OS, support the OS?
I highly doubt my app, or in this instance Total Annihilation, will run on XP. Haven't tried it though, but I bet it wouldn't.
So not only do you need a new machine, new os, you need new application software.
This tiresome and very lucrative business model Microsoft has forced on corporate America is not a requirement, technically, to insure "innovation" moves forward.
Another argument furthered by Microsoft, in that in order for "innovation" to move forward you must replace your OS and apps and hardware within a few years of a release of our OS or we will not provide you with new fixes is also tiresome.
This simply doesn't happen in the UNIX world. I have tons of apps in the early 90's I am happily still running on Apollo hardware at the moment.
I can point to very few Windows apps that do this.
So my point is this is a scam. When are people going to wake up and stop spending untold millions every 2 year microsoft release cycle for what amounts to be diminishing returns and higher prices from Microsoft.
Enourmous 15 inch display, ATI high speed 3D to make those MESA OpenGL video extensions scream on X and a very rugged design.
Plus IBM's warranty which is the best in the business.
Although, it did set me back $4200 bucks when I bought it, but if you want a machine to do Oracle, Java, Linux and network development/troubleshooting it canb't be beat.
Or type it in sh before you launch Mozilla from the command line.
-Hack
First Impressions 2.4.10 from 2.4.8
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Linux Kernel 2.4.10
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· Score: 4, Interesting
My System:
Redhat 7.1
X 4.0.2
Hardware IBM ThinkPAD A21p PIII 850/512MB
1) Graphics performance for my M3 ATI processor in my IBM Thinkpad has quite frankly increased a great deal. This is way obvious do to the rapid spinning of my OpenGL plugin for XMMS.
MESA demo's show a 23% speed improvement. Especially tunnels mesa demo frame rate.
VWARE shows a drastic improvement in sound processing ability on my thinkPAD when I use 2.4.10. I am not sure why, 2.4.8 was a good improvement but 2.4.10 is even better.
(Gotta have my ArtBell...)
2) Virtual memory now shrinks its pool considerably when free memory is used up and you start to quit processes.
I loaded Oracle 8.1.7, VMWARE 2.0, Forte' , Bugseeker, and my website up, and MySQL. I was short 170 Megabytes of memory and the virtual swap space handled it very well.
Wasn't slow at all, at least too me. I then logged out and quit all my apps after running some non trivial tests.
I did notice my SWAP shrunk from 170 to 30MB when I logged out and shut everything out.
This is very good, I haven't tested whether or not the kernel will kill a process that takes all memory and is obnoxious about memory, without killing the machine. I would like this feature as normally Linux will just die.3) Startup time was faster by 5 seconds with no changes. I am not sure why, probably do to the memory management fixes.
My use of VMWARE suggests some rather dedicated speed improvments to the basic software.
If you have 2.4.8, you have little reason and everything to gain by upgrading to 2.4.10.
Speed, more effective VM, and graphics are improved noticably.
Science is going to slow to a crawl in the 21st century in the US because of patents.
Look to China, Europe for new advances in scientific understanding in these areas.
Forget about the US, we are already WAY behind in cancer research, genetics research.
The primary cause is patents.
Meanwhile more and more people in this contry die of these diseases every day simply because the science can't move faster than what the lawyers say so.
1) They teach thier children hatred from day ZERO in the name of thier bastard "religion" that brings destruction on 2000 years of civilisation and progress.
2) They shoot thier guns in the air and cry for more blood on TV.
3) They have wreacked havoc on countless nations with thier travesties hijacking planes, and bombing innocent people for decades now! I
Personally have had enough of this shit.
Enough is enough.
Time to start rounding them up and putting them someplace where they can't hurt people. Once we get rid of the governments, the countries and the organizations doing these sorts of terrorist activities, it should be a much quieter place.
The only people who will be left are those willing to settle thier differences at the table, peacefully, like civilised human beings.
Not too mention the fact that once those sorts of precedents are set, people, nations will THINK TWICE before invading, bombing or killing innocent people.
I have been in contact with some SETI people, but most of them are outside the scientific base, and when I pose these problems to them, or point out responses to these pieces of evidence, when taken apart don't seem like much.
I mean after all? Metal in stars? Solar Wind research, populations and distribution of stars by types, and whether thier position in the galactic disk can discount enourmous populations of stars for sentient life, and perhaps even life itself.
They say, you are wrong, there is just too many stars out there!!
It is almost as though sometimes research dollars are funding the "process" and not the "science". After all, lots of money has, and still continues to go into SETI programs.
I am also just an amatuer. I should put that in quotes because well, you should see what my setup looks like I am building.
(I promise to make it all GNU when I am done with it.)
>You conceited f*ck!
>May I suggest looking around this planet to see >if there is anything that may suggest a previous >sentient species *cough*Easter Island*cough*. Or >perhaps a current parallel sentient species >*cough*dolphins*cough*, or even the fact that if >I wasn't human, I would (just like any other wild >animal that has experienced humans before) avoid >humanity with all my ability.
Ouch.
I never said Humanity was better than dolphins. I never said dolphins were stupid.
But I do not see dolphins pondering thier own existence and mortality, writing poetry, sending thier kind to the planets. Even, perhaps trying to communnicate with other creatures in the sea which may very well exist beneath Europa's surface ice. Which according to the latest magnetometer readings may have a salty ocean beneath all that ice.
> Sorry, it's just laughable to say that 80% of >the stars in our galaxy are too metal-poor to >harbor terrestrial planets. Same goes for the >implication that most locations in the Galactic >disk are too "dangerous" to support life. Most >stars in the Milky Way are shielded from the >Galaxy's core just as much as the Sun is.
You took this out of context. Which isn't fair.
Even if you are in the plane, and close to the core, you have a statistically higher chance of that system being sterilized by SuperNova events, and other nasty activity which comes from being closer to the core. Even if you are in the stellar plane, the local density of the solar neighborhood closer than say, 1/3rd of the way in will either fry your world solar system from super nova explosions, collide with another star system, or be susceptible to high energy core events, which even a gas cloud or coal sack in between will not protect you from these things.
It is strange though. I never mentioned anything about Tax Payer money about SETI. I simply mentioned 1 Billion which is a figure I got from a goverment report on SETI at JPL's site. Everyone is all of a sudden really defense, and for all the wrong reasons in my view because what is thier to get defensive about when there isn't any results from the research to date.
:-)
It would seem tax payer money is making less and less of a contribution to SETI and it is relying on more and more private sector funding anyhow.
Gosh I did say the earth existed for half this time. (6 billion years) Sorry, I am not very good at typing fast, and I do have a job you know.
I got mixed up in trying to point out the total time for formation and related processes, vs actual lifetime of Earth!:-)
I made a correction to that statement, and I hope everyone reads it.:-)
-gc
Our Sun is 4.5 Billion years of age, and it is estimated that the solar neightborhood or the gas cloud from which we get our solar system, took about 2 billion years to collapse.
Total time to create our solar system is about 6 billion years, half the 12-14 billion age of the known Universe.
Which means life finally arrived 6 billion years later after the formation of our Universe and then our solar system.
From what we are starting to know about stellar nurseries from Hubble it can take an aweful long time for a cloud of gas to collapse and form a system.
I am making the assumption it took 2 billion years for the original stellar gas cloud from which we formed got enough graviational muscle together to begin the final collapse of our solar system.
-hack
> 2. We don't know that sentient life is RARE. >It's very possible, but it's difficult to extract >our experience on one planet to the rest of the >Universe, don't you think? Even if sentient life >is RARE, why is that necessarily a BAD thing? If >we're the only ones, then that makes us pretty >important, in some sense.
So you are proposing that the physical laws that govern the path to life on our planet are somehow different elsewhere in the Universe and that Planet Earth really isn't a very good example?
You are not serious I hope.
I never said sentient life is a bad thing, you are right it makes us very very interesting. Besides, perhaps SOME sentient life MUST be first to arise in our galaxy, maybe we are it?
> 3. The Sun is a rather ordinary star. Yes, it is >more metal-rich than the average star in our >galaxy, but not by much. There are many millions >of stars in the Milky Way that are reasonably >similar to our beloved Sol.
The SUN isn't an ordinary STAR.
More and more research suggest most stars are binary, variable, or metal poor.
> 4. Low metal content does not make a star >"unstable" in any way. Heavy elements do not >significantly regulate fusion reactions. If >anything, they cause a lower burning efficiency, >which would make a star burn hotter, which would >make its lifetime shorter. There are no stars >with "No metals"; all stars have at least some >component of heavy elements. Finally, not to >nitpick, but stars form from interstellar >material, not intergalactic material.
I didn't explain this very well.
The idea is this. A star that has a very low mass like our sun (relatively speaking), with a relatively larger percentage of metal in the convecting portions of the star, provides a way that reduces instability over the lifetime of the star in as far as its local emissions in its solar neighborhood. It doesn't affect its burn rate. As we both know mass determines how long the star will ultimately live in each of its life cycles towards a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole. (Reduces the intensity of Solar Sun Spot activity and insures the magnetic field around the star stays a certain shape which makes it unlikely that a major solar weather event will expel material along the orbital plane the orbiting planets occupy). What the exact methods are for the transferal of energy and how more metal content, even at the fractions I am talking about which are very low, have on solar weather still needs research, I must admit.
But you can see how this can have all sorts of effects on worlds that do not have a star like ours, if this true outside our solar system. Consider what would happen to our atmosphere if a large unrestricted solar event about a star that had a weaker magnetic field that intercepts the orbital ecliptical plane of the this hypothetical solar system. Disasterous! Were that to happen directly in line with the earth, the earths atmosphere would be lost at the poles as high energy plasma heated it to escape velocity.
Even with a magnetic field, the Earth would not keep its atmosphere for very long when we are talking about Billions of years.
I read this in a recent paper, which I will have to find if you are interested.
This is what I mean by an "unstable star", which is probably different than what you are thinking. (i.e. unstable as in affecting its burn rate rather than unstable as far as the local solar weather which I maintain stars with more metal content at relative masses of our star have a much more benign solar weather activity than stars with very little metal or non at all at the same mass level.)
>6. This bit of misinformation is why I just had >to reply. Ahem...
>SETI isn't using ANY taxpayer money. None. >Several years ago a republican congressman beat >his chest about the millions (NOT billions, as >you slander) of dollars we were pissing away on >little green men, so all federal funding of SETI >was ended. They continue operations today on >grants from private foundations (Notably, the >Packard foundation).
Who said I was talking about Tax payer money? List one sentence I said "Tax Payer Money was being wasted." SETI has during its lifetime got a lot of money from different sources.
And yes, since it was formed, SETI has gone through 1 BILLION dollars of funding, and you are right, some of it is tax payer money.
I didn't say BILLIONS either, I said BILLION as in singular.
> 7. The Sun is NOT in a special part of the >galaxy. Yes, it is shielded from the harmful >radiation at the galaxy center, but so is much of >the Milky Way disk, where over 90% of the Mily >Way's stars are. Stars do not get more massive as >you move toward the galactic center. I have no >idea where you get that from.
By Special I mean special for the sorts of things we are talking about, and that is to answer the question: Statistically speaking, what Star system has a better chance of creating a good home for life? At the core? Around the core? In the middle? 2/3rds out from the core? Or way and the heck on the tip of an arm? Outside the galactic plane? Inside the galactic plane?
This is what I mean by special location.
I disagree, with you about this. I firmly believe with what we know about mass distribution so far, that is, assuming our galaxy really is a typical spiral. (Recent evidence suggests we live in a barred spiral galaxy, not a true spiral or a drano galaxy as I like to call them.).
You don't want to be near the core, or in direct view of the core of a galaxy is you want to foster a long stable home for life. You don't want to be too far out either because it is shown that much of the mass on the edges of the arms of many other galaxies are metal poor. You want to be about 2/3rd's or so away from the core or in some location that has a relatively high metal count and loosely populated solar neighborhood. (i.e. over billions of years it would be a shame if another Star bumped into our sun, it would probably eject most of the inner planets into galactic space.)
I didn't say ET couldn't exist, remember? I said given the vast amount of time we are talking about ET might not exist in our time, or more than likely already came and went or WE are ET!!!
Rare SENTIENT life which is what I am talking about, not or is not the same as rare life. Like I said I think life isn't all that rare and I bet if we ever muster the vision to explore Jupitor's moons or put men on Mars, we will see fossilized life forms.
I have a running bet with my colleagues that the probe we send to Europa, if we can get below the ice sheets, will land, drill through the ice a couple of miles, pop out, and for the first 30 seconds we will explore around the ocean depths then, immediately be eaten by SOMETHING for a snack.
Houston. We have a problem, we lost our probe to a big 80 foot, watchamacallit.
1) The age of the Universe is estimated to be about 12-14 billion years old.
2) Earth has existed for about half that time and in all that time, through billions of years of Evolution, only ONE species has emerged sentient.
Half the lifetime of the known Universe, and on one planet, it took about half that time to make ONE species remotely sentient on earth, with BILLIONS of years to try, "eveolution" or whatever the process is you want to call it, got it right once and only once.
Sentient life, it would seem is pretty RARE. In fact, it would seem even in the most IDEAL conditions, such as Earth, it takes a HUGE amount of time to develop.
This is a very very BAD thing. Continue reading on to find out why.
3) We now know, that our Sun is NOT an ordinary star. How do we know that? Because we do spectroscopic studies and we can know the composition of nearby star systems, with no guess work.
These studies reveal that 80 percent of most stars, many of them are not candidates for worlds that would require life. They end up:
4) Having poor amounts of metal content. No metals means it is highly unlikely the star will be stable over its lifetime. Metals it would seem moderate the stars nuclear reactions, and keeps it radiating energy with very little variation of its lifespan.
This finding is relatively new, thanks to Linux Beowulf clusters.:-) (Well that and the defense department....get to that later.)
5) Stars that lack Metal cannot have formed from clouds of intergalactic material that contain any amount of heavy metals by definition. Why is that significant? It is significant because without heavy metals, planets, specifically rocky planets won't form around these stars. What you get is heavy Gas giant's like Jupitor or Saturn.
6) Doesn't look good so far and it gets very much worse I am afraid. It turns out that a galaxy is a very very hostile place to live in.
So what you say? It can't be that dangerous we are here? Right?
Yes, but consider this. You have heard arguments that there are billions and billions of stars in our galaxy....yadda yadda yadda=life should be everywhere and lets give another billion to SETI to find it.
7) No, I am afraid not my friends. You see the Sun and WHERE it is located is also VERY important, in our galaxy. You see those big dust clounds obscuring the core of our galaxy on a clear night called the Milky way? Consider them a security shield. In addition we are 2/3rd or more on the way out towards the outer middle of what we presume to be one of our galaxies arms. Very very far from the galactic core.
I won't get into the complete details, but the galaxy is a very very VERY dangerous place to live anywhere near the core.
Why is this important? It is important because the closer you move towards the center of our galaxy, the less likely you will have Stars that are stable for long periods, that do not expose thier accompanied planets (if any) to the extreme pasturizing effects of the galactic core, and dense stellar neighborhood. By definition, these populations of stars as one moves towards the center of the galaxy CANNOT be habitable because they have more materials available to them and are very large, have short life spans, and violently blow themselves up, along with the planets they carry, if any remember!
Short lifetime stars we know, cannot provide enough time for life to evolve to sentient states if the earth is any example, it took HALF the lifetime of the KNOWN UNIVERSE to produce ONE species.
Location, Location, Location. There may be billions and billions of stars, but it really doesn't matter. Most of them are not suitable, and we can prove that. It would seem, that a narrow band exists that goes around our galaxy that provides a habital region for the development of life. Very similair to the habital region around our own star, where luckily, earth is currently located, and I exist to type this!
So, no, life just can't pop up ANYWHERE in our galaxy and more than likey it can ONLY pop up in a very narrow field or band around a galaxy.
Each galaxy, should have its own band or habital region of stability where sentient life could evolve.
8) Oh my, and then we have the observations of a naturalist I am a fan of, Mr. Stephen J Gould. A quote from Mr. Gould:
"Sentient life has occurred in only one species over billions of years of life on this planet. It is not at all clear if this is a survival trait, as so many have put forth. Dinosaurs and thier kind ruled this planet quite successfully for 100's of millions of years and they didn't need intelligence at all, and in fact did quite well without it. Far better than we have and we have only been around for about 100 thousand or so years. In fact, long term, one could argue that sentient intelligence is a negative survival trait and actually hurts a species long term survival."
I could not agree more. We have debates that long term, with Nuclear Bombs in suitcases available now for your local nut case, intelligence is probably not a good thing if you are a life form and want to be here, or your decendents, 100 million years from now.
9) It gets even worse with current research comming down the pipe my friends, and well, then we have SETI and thier Radio antenna.
Stupid.
Why?
This is my opinion of course, given our current observations and understanding of how life works and why another billion should not go to SETI in the future, they already spent a Billion, with ZERO results, and I think it speaks volumes about current research into life at the moment.
Any life that has survived as long as it has on Earth, and develops sentient life forms, you have to understand, will not use Radio waves for communication. The time spans we are talking about are so enourmous, that the civilization we are looking for either has either died a long time ago or is so advanced, our preconcieved notions about what sorts or kinds of travel with our pitiful little science books, is at a child like understanding at best. If they do have those solutions, they won't use radio waves to communicate, it would take too long to manage a galactic empire on that scale.
They won't, Oh God, another DUMB idea, use lasers either. Stupid, idiotic, and DUMB.
Which is why SETI after plowing through about a billion dollars now, hasn't found DINGY.
And they won't find what they are looking for.
10) Now, during this whole discussion I point out why SENTIENT life is probably not very wisespread . Certainly not enough widepread to devote anothe r billion dollars to SETI to look for it.
I by no means, claim there is not life out there. I bet we find life in our general vacinity in our part of the galactic neighborhood because it would seem we are in a fine part of town, the Earth and the Sun. We probably will find life, or possibly hints that it at one time existed outside Earth.
I believe life is very resiliant and if given the right conditions, will spring up.
I don't claim to know why, but if it happened here, it can happen again someplace else nearby. Life has survived some enourmous catastrophes on this planet we call earth in the past, so it must be rather resilient and not easy to snuff out.
But given this series of arguments, I believe life is not as wide spread as we believe. What IS neat about this new evidence is it allows us to focus more of our searches, instead of what SETI is doing just pointing an antenna up in the air and waiting for a signal in any direction.
These are things SETI doesn't want you to know, and given what we know already, I would LOVE to see that money put to taming space for economic and peaceful uses.
We may disagree about SETI, but I bet we dont' disagree that having all of our eggs in one basket with nuts running around today and people killing each other, we should probably put a human outpost OFF OF THE PLANET. Just so we don't become a layer in the fossil record just like the dinosaurs.
Because that is something we CAN prevent and is a very very REAL danger every day.
Certainly a better investment than another billion for great screen savers, which is about what SETI is, in my opnion.
OpenGL is simply faaaabulous and quite obviously offers the environment only you could dream about on a 21inch monitor, and the latest NVidia card playing the all time, positively best 3D game ever concieved.
Which of course everyone on this board knows, is...
Homeworld!
:-)
You ARE the mothership when you have a 64MB Video card and a 21 inch Sony G500 monitor out there in "The Wastelands" in 4 player internet gaming mode on Won.
The tactical, combat and collaboration OpenGL gives to the game is spectacular.
Nothing is more breathtaking than to radio for Help! to your teammate while your outgunned and outnumbered as the two bastards decide to double team ya. On no! 5 Destroyers and 2 Heavy Cruisers?!! Heeeeeeeellllllllllpppp!!!
^%#@^&%#&
As your Mothership burns and the sniveling little idiots radio in, "Yeah, this guy sucks...."
Only to see them run like scared chickens duley beheaded when that moment comes....
Hyperspace Signature Detected.
No, it isn't just a frigate...
Sweet Mother of Pearl its the entire fleet!
Sweet Jesus! 3 Heavy Cruisers and 8 Destroyers comming out of Hyperspace like the calvery at 1600x1200 in 32bit Open GL mode!!!!
2 Minutes later the two assholes fleets are burning at high res and in 32bit color!
They didn't port anything I liked, and it would seem to me, the ports they did do, where not mainstream. (Selling many millions of copies.).
They should have immediately concentrated thier capital in cooperating with Blizzard.
Ports of Diablo II, Warcraft III, StarCraft I&II.
Oh, did I say Starcraft II? Sorry for the slip.
:-)
But seriously. Heavy Gear II was a step in the right direction in my opinion, but I would have liked to have seen Mech Warrior 4 and Mech Commander II ported more than Heavy Gear 2.
Most if not all the games they ported do not interest me in the slightest.
One can arue whether or not Microsoft would have cooperated with Loki, but I think they would have given the number of lawsuits to come, and the ones they are going to have to deal with currently, DOJ.
If I was going to do ports, for Linux, the company I would have concentrated on from the start, if they would listen, would be Blizzard.
It is a waste of time.
I am very surprised that precious resources in such a leading Open Source camp has been diverted into the game Microsoft wants to play.
We don't need.Net or the surprises Microsoft has in store for those suckers who get on the bandwagon for.Net.
We have Java, and it runs on any platform, and it works quite well as of 1.3, (Very very fast.)
This is just a made up product to keep people from writing Java apps. I repeat, there is not ONE single piece of technology adavantage you could get from writing a.Net business solution, except restricting yourself to running on a Microsoft platform.
Microsoft knows that any platform independant technology must be stopped and destroyed at all costs or the desktop they own will become irrelevant. By getting the Open Source communnity to divert resources to.Net slows down Linux's progress from the server room onto the Desktop.
It looks as they they have partially succeeded.
Our last best hope then lies with what KDE guys can come up with to get us the rest of the way.
While we leave the suckers at GNOME to wallow in thier grave errors.
Hack
Let me get this straight, a billion dollars later, a couple decades worth of enourmous computing power, and ZIPPO, no radio signals.
Now we are doing lasers?
Mmmm....lets see our planet is 5 billion plus years old, millions of species have evolved, only one arose out of all that time to become sentient enough to be curious about the universe to engage in technology endeavors.
5 Billion years? Millions of species? Obviously this intelligence thing is a complete FLUKE, a one in a 5 billion years stab in the dark.
Doesn't anyone find that odd?
In any case, most scientists believe there has to be many intelligent beings out there, yet they completely ignore the fact that we are IT on our own world and it NEVER happened previously!!
The one and only Darwinian trait, intelligence/technology arose in one and only one species in 5 BILLION years time, half the age of the know Universe!
There have been millions of species before us, that lived a lot longer and from all accounts of the fossil record and were a LOT more successful than homo sapiens. They didn't need intelligence either!
I think intelligence is so rare, that I am inclined to believe some of these spacemen stories that say we were visited and were modified in some way from domestic species. That seems much more likely given the fossil record.
The chances of intelligence happening on another planet seems extremely remote too me given this evidence (or lack there of aka SETI.).
Even if I do buy into the fact there is some intelligent civilization out there, they will have an understanding of physics, space and time that we as labratory rats can't possibly comprehend.
They most certainly won't be using Lasers or electromagnetic energy to communicate.
What is so dorky about the logic in this is that SETI admits that traveling to distant stars even at the speed of light would be impractical.
So what do they base there search on? The very impracticality of what they say can't be done!
I think from the start GNU Cash is a broken design. The last point I checked there was Perl, C, Python, and all kinds of strange combinations for the application.
Very few apps on Linux have such weird requirements. What GNU Cash needs is a total rewrite in Java, and make it a servlet design so it can be web based, far more portable and built with a object design that eliminates a lot of really bad code that is in there.
What I don't get is why people insist on using Administration or poorly built scripting languages to build applications for Linux.
As I see it, if you want to build a app now days, for the web, its server side java and XML.
If you want to build a game or Office Suite I would stick with c++. (i.e. Desktop Apps).
I wouldn't build it like Gnu Cash with umpteen different programming languages, many of them never designed to do what they are doing in GNUCash.
I mean, GOD, how can you track the bugs in something like this?! You would need 5 different debuggers running at the same time!
Mozilla is not just a browser. (I don't mean at the app level, such as the mail client, etc.)
It is much more than that. What is interesting I find about the process of Mozilla in and of itself is the fact that considering what had to be done 3 years ago, and looking at the quality of the code in the Tinderbox Seamonkey CVS tree, I am impressed with the design quality of the code compared to commercial efforts in this area.
(A rewrite wouldn't have been required if commercial efforts didn't produce such a poorly designed product.)
Obviously, a lot more thought went into the engineering and design of the browser first, before development began. I suspect, like a Tsunami that travels thousands of miles as a 1 inch high wave, hardly noticeable, Mozilla will really start to tower over other browsers in the next 6-9 months as it approaches shores of a 1.0 release. I am not talking about feature sets either.
The largest impact Mozilla could have in the areas of browsers could very well be cell/Yopi like devices that require easy to build sharp looking interfaces for embedded systems like PDA's with wireless internet access.
That is perhaps just one area, but with these thoughts in mind, a browser of this capability, available on all platforms, could very well break Linux and other operating systems onto the desktop in the next 3-4 years, making native apps a non requirement for doing business on the desktop.
For example, Linux is more than a match with Kernel 2.4.x for poor Microsoft 2000, in the server room. Not yet on the desktop though, but only because of the apps situation.
But in any case, if the mozilla team decided to stay focused on the 3 things below:
1) Speed.
2) Bugs.
3) Feature Set Freeze for the API/Browser apps.
If these things can be done over a 6-9 month period of time, I am sure the release 1.0 will be a very shiny product.
AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE TO RUN EVERYWHERE.
(BeOS, Linux, Windows, Sun, PDA's, Cell Phones, etc.)
More than a match for poor little IE.
That is the first thing that needs to be done to get rid of IE's growing influence, which if left unchecked, could make every dialup/cable session a very painful experience for one's checkbook with.NET just around the corner.
Microsoft has some very very nasty things planned during the.NExT 4 years for all of us should they succeed.
I really would hate to see a "Microsoft Internet" and a everyone else internet.
(The subtle currents part running through this drama...could be a rant, or the truth. You decide.)
We already are starting to see this sort of philosophy with patents. Scientific research is slowing to a crawl in BIOTECH, because information cannot be used, or obtained, while millions around the world are delayed the cures they need for diseases and die as a result. Pay as you go absurd patents don't do science any good, unless you want to take another THOUSAND YEARS to develop a cure for the common cold!
Obviously, a single organization with perhaps a few thousand employees is not going to do the research faster for ANYTHING vs. the millions of people world wide in BioTECH could do if and only if, they cold get access to the information they need to do research.
Sound familair? Welcome to.NET philosophy my friends.
Now, instead of taking a few hundred years to make advances in science, we can take a few THOUSAND years to do the same thing because 10 times the amount of people and infrastructure can't look at information unless they pay as they go!
We don't need one company controlling the entire internet with a default install out of the box that asks you to pay everytime you click on the mouse!
Philosophically, a lot hinges on Open Source development and the nets future to establish precedence that sharing information is far more economically attractive. Hopefully, will in the end, not only win out, but demonstrate that these sorts of philosophies (.NET, absurd biotech patents, etc.) lead to a great deal of misery for those that lack power and wealth in the world.
It is proposed in some of the more daring research pieces out there that time really, doesn't exist at all. In fact, it would be nice to just get rid of the whole concept of time.
In case you are wondering, the whole idea about string Theory is that we have no way to link observational results of experiments that deal with the very small and the very large.
Here is an example:
A solar system, or a future solar system starts to form out of a gas cloud. Billions of miles across, it steadily collapses, planets start to form, and finally at its center gravity induces Nuclear Fusion.
The problem is that we have equations that can describe N body problems...(Although we cannot solve them.) By body I mean, planets, stars moons, in orbit about themselves and the newly formed star.
The problem is these physical observations start to break down when we want to explain the fusion, subatomic and even quantum mechanical aspects of the very small and what part it played during the collapse of the dust cloud.
So, we have to use a different sort of mathematics and set of equations to describe the orbits of the planets, then another completely different set of mathematics assumptions to explain how fusion works.
What String Theory promises, is to combine these two worlds into one set of compact equation/equations that you can derive or describe the orbit and interaction of the dust clounds characteristics from the formation of the planets, to the ignition of the star at its center, to its death as a strange object as a white dwarf, neutron star, or even a black hole in a Super Nova explosion.
String Theory promises this but it is not clear it can deliver yet. With new computing technology in the next 100-300 years, many of the kinds of mathematical computations required to solve some of the equation sets to eliminate certain dead ends in the paths of String Theory will emerge.
In reality, computing power limits what we can do now at the moment, with this sort of question.
I spend nights looking at the twisted code of my own organizations enourmous effort to track neio's Near Earth Impact Objects (NEIO.ORG) and it would be beautiful to posess a mathematics that is more elegant than Newtons theory, or even Einstein's.
One Equation or set of Equations that describe Gravity, Time, Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and basic behaviour of particle matter would be the supreme achievement of our species.
If we can prove, we have the intelligence to posess the keys to the Universe, no lock will be out of our reach.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the SAMBA team has a much bigger challenge on the horizon.
Microsoft is just biding thier time and waiting for the ultimate outcome of the Napster and other laws that forbid fair use, reverse engineering, etc.
My personal prediction for 2002-2003 year is that SAMBA will end up in the fryin pan with a letter from Microsoft's cronies/lawyers telling them they are in violation of and that they must cease operations immediately.
Same goes for a lot of other open source projects.
I think the Open Source community should preempt the money establishment and prepare for the day when projects and servers can distribute free software without being so centralized as they are today. (i.e. SourceForge).
I won't get into what I think the rammifications are should SourceForge ever becomes seriously compromised. (i.e. a new project Opens up and voila', the source code to Windows 2000 is downloadable....)
The past year has been the worst year of patents, MULA, EULA, RIAA and DMCA crap I have ever seen.
More shananigans no doubt will be the rule of thumb for 2003, but only this time, there won't be so much confusion, as recent ignorant courts have made some very very dangerous precedents.
Microsoft is just waiting for enough of them to accumulate before they hit the Open Source community with 2 Billion dollars funding a horde of lawyers that will forever do away with critical key software the OpenSource community relies on. (i.e. SAMBA, Linux Kernel, X-Windows, etc.)
It very well maybe that Europe will see the rebirth of Open Source as such crap doesn't go over very easily in Europe. (i.e. the ludicrous idea of software patents.)
Engineering problems are problems that fall under a domain of discrete solutions, which have very specific algorithms by which they are solved.
Object Oriented Design doesn't work to well with discrete solutions because, in part, the design philosophy is one of generalization.
That is why Linus for example holds to the belief that OOD principles in system level software is wasteful, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because there is no need to write the functions of a scheduler for as OS anything other than what it is.
However, that doesn't mean that all aspects of OOD, such as reuse, simplicity, and maintainability don't have anything to offer to discrete solutions. Just that OOD can't realize all the benefits a discrete solution to a problem can give you. Also, should you decide to choose an OOD for a discrete solution for an OS kernel or tracking asteroids, you have to realize hopefully through experience what the relative meager benefits are in doing so for your discrete OOD solution.
That doesn't mean you can't try though!
For example, at the moment I am writing an extension to a number of problems to track asteroids for a telescope via computer automagically.
Most of the tracking software was or is originally written in FORTRAN and is in the book "Fundamentals of Celestial Mechanics" by JMA Danby. Publisher is William-Bell by the way.
RK5 methods are highly specialized mathematical algorithms specifically tailored for N body problems in calculating or predicting orbits. They are for the most part functionally reduced to FORTRAN IV in the form of highly NON OOD function libraries.
(It is not OOD because the functions rely on a number of shared data structures which is a no no in OOD. As a result, since code is not easily isolated between data and function calls, it is VERY hard to figure out the source code by hand and very structured design oriented.)
Also, might I add, checking the answers are literally BEYOND your ability as a human being EVEN WITH a calculator! For example, an RK5 method might have over 1,000 iterations of a integration or differential mathematical procedure. There is simply no way you could check it by hand. I solve this problem by using Mathematica, from Wolfram Research. I transpose the algorithms from Fortran into Mathemtica until I get the right numbers and to make sure I understand exactly what the algorithm is doing.
I then transpose it to Java, which is the target platform and Object Design language I am using to forever banish the constant rewriting of code from computer to computer!!!
Java has been a GOD SEND to astronomy by the way in cutting costs! Especially for a society that woops and screams about cutting all scientific research while at the same time spending hundreds of millions too see Harry Potter. (How sad. I hope one of these rocks doesn't fall on your city anytime soon.)
However, lets not be decieved. For although OOD and OOP practices in generalization of programs yields better reuse, in principal, each specific method of an object is built using well known Structured Design practices.
So, with that I set out to generalize a highly specific piece of code and layer on top of it, an OOD that would attempt to turn what appears to be a highly specific set of functions in FORTRAN that solves a standard N Body problem, with a set of Objects which define what an "N-body" IS as well as the functions that can give the solution to that bodies orbit.
The goal is to maximize the ability of OOD to simplify the understanding and theoretically increase the reliability of the very complex code. This is the benefits I am looking for rather, that OOD promises and delivers in building complicated programs. Notice I am not interested in reusability.
So although resuse is meaningless to me in this context, I still want those advantages of an OOD design, maintainability, and more reliable code on a level that structured design/functional approach can't give me.
What is interesting is the "IS" part. In standard structured design which FORTRAN is readily able to implement any algorithm, you have isolated discrete function calls that operate on global data sets.
With an OOD approach, however, I found at least that OOD does provide the following benefits:
1) Taking the simple FORTRAN function library and building it around a unified object that represents the many different properties of the asteroid simplifies the understanding of the algorithms involved.
I wish it could do the same for the mathematics, but that part is still very hard, no matter what language you use.
2) The OOD principles of reuse don't really help here. Primarily because in the context of the problem, there is only one solution. I highly doubt people could reuse this in other ways than it was intended. Except of course, to calculate the orbit of another body.
3) The OOD characteristic of privatization of data organized the code in ways that made the source code, not only easier to understand, but also unexpectedly suggested ways to improve the implementation of the computer algorithms to do the mathematics.
Unlike a GUI library, the spectrum of reusability is much narrower in this case. As I said before, because the computing requirements for the application in question are so highly specific. It is highly unlikely they could be used for any other purpose, except calculating the orbit of a different body. I guess that is SOME reuse.
A GUI library however, you can use a OK button code in all sorts of applications from word processors to web pages, to spreadsheets...using Java for example which is what I am using.
So to summarize this is what I have learned:
1) OOD principles in discrete areas of engineering or system level operating system design have lots of pitfalls, and require a careful consideration of the clear benefits of OOD vs the performance requirements of the application.
Primarily, because OOD is expensive upfront, and lets face it. If you are not going to get all the benefits from that expense, why use it? In may case, I didn't benefit from the generalization of code, for other application use other than the very strict focus on other specific applications of orbital calculations.
2) Reusability in the broad spectrum of coding using OOD in discrete applications in certain fields don't buy you much, because it is rarely a requirement that the code be generalized for resuse. In fact, it is just the opposite, it is highly specific, and only for a given solution.
Such is the case with Operating Systems and discrete engineering applications or scientific applications, for the above reasons.
3) Finally OOD can however, provide clues into relationships of an algorithm to its data not normally gleemed through the narrow lens of structured design. Specifically, such as cited above such revelations may provide clues in how to store data more effectively and reduce memory consumption.
Therefore even if you are specifically choosing structured design as an implementation framework for your computer algorithms, OOD might shed new light on how to code a structured design solution more effectively to handle data storage and its reuse.
Which coould save disk space, cpu time, memory requirements..etc.
Then again, it may not!
-gc
I think a lot of posts discussed green house gases in general but, really, I don't think the amoutn of gas has changed all that much.
If you take a look at the orbital mechanics of Mars over hundreds of thousands and millions of year, this sort of warming naturally occurs.
It has nothing to do with the production of gases, like I said, they are already there.
But Mars, as it goes around the sun and its orbit naturally cycles over time to being closer or further away from the sun causes these warm ups.
Due to the fact that Mars has a high eccentricity factor it its elliptical orbit, these warm ups are far more pronounced than say, Earths are.
I know a lot of discussion about Global Warming has centered on Human activity, but in Mars case, it is just a cycle or phase it goes through in its orbit about the sun over large spanses of time.
-hack
Strikes again.
Might I add that there is no technical reason I can think of to discontine Win95 support.
I can think of lots of applications and software I will still be using under Win95 even when the Win98 deadline comes AT THE TIME I bought Windows 95 and the computer it runs on.
The only possible reason why I can think of, that Microsoft wants to dump 95 is that it can juice more cash out of a user base that will not benefit one iota, and quite possibly break all of thier software when they do upgrade to XP.
The enourmous costs of using XP or even 2000 if you consider a company or person still has 95, with just upgrading the hardware can be a deterrant itself.
One of the strengths of Linux is, at this very moment, the same commercial distro you buy, or even kernel you install, will run on a 486 machine no problemo.
True, but so will the app software.
Think about that for a moment.
I can still run a 1995 version of some astronomy software on any distro back till then, and it won't change any time soon.
Can I still run my App on win95 now that Microsoft won't sell the OS, support the OS?
I highly doubt my app, or in this instance Total Annihilation, will run on XP. Haven't tried it though, but I bet it wouldn't.
So not only do you need a new machine, new os, you need new application software.
This tiresome and very lucrative business model Microsoft has forced on corporate America is not a requirement, technically, to insure "innovation" moves forward.
Another argument furthered by Microsoft, in that in order for "innovation" to move forward you must replace your OS and apps and hardware within a few years of a release of our OS or we will not provide you with new fixes is also tiresome.
This simply doesn't happen in the UNIX world. I have tons of apps in the early 90's I am happily still running on Apollo hardware at the moment.
I can point to very few Windows apps that do this.
So my point is this is a scam. When are people going to wake up and stop spending untold millions every 2 year microsoft release cycle for what amounts to be diminishing returns and higher prices from Microsoft.
Hands down the best laptop to run Linux on.
Enourmous 15 inch display, ATI high speed 3D to make those MESA OpenGL video extensions scream on X and a very rugged design.
Plus IBM's warranty which is the best in the business.
Although, it did set me back $4200 bucks when I bought it, but if you want a machine to do Oracle, Java, Linux and network development/troubleshooting it canb't be beat.
-hack
In the mozilla startup script add:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
before you launch the binary.
Or type it in sh before you launch Mozilla from the command line.
-Hack
My System:
Redhat 7.1
X 4.0.2
Hardware IBM ThinkPAD A21p PIII 850/512MB
1) Graphics performance for my M3 ATI processor in my IBM Thinkpad has quite frankly increased a great deal. This is way obvious do to the rapid spinning of my OpenGL plugin for XMMS.
MESA demo's show a 23% speed improvement. Especially tunnels mesa demo frame rate.
VWARE shows a drastic improvement in sound processing ability on my thinkPAD when I use 2.4.10. I am not sure why, 2.4.8 was a good improvement but 2.4.10 is even better.
(Gotta have my ArtBell...)
2) Virtual memory now shrinks its pool considerably when free memory is used up and you start to quit processes.
I loaded Oracle 8.1.7, VMWARE 2.0, Forte' , Bugseeker, and my website up, and MySQL. I was short 170 Megabytes of memory and the virtual swap space handled it very well.
Wasn't slow at all, at least too me. I then logged out and quit all my apps after running some non trivial tests.
I did notice my SWAP shrunk from 170 to 30MB when I logged out and shut everything out.
This is very good, I haven't tested whether or not the kernel will kill a process that takes all memory and is obnoxious about memory, without killing the machine. I would like this feature as normally Linux will just die.3) Startup time was faster by 5 seconds with no changes. I am not sure why, probably do to the memory management fixes.
My use of VMWARE suggests some rather dedicated speed improvments to the basic software.
If you have 2.4.8, you have little reason and everything to gain by upgrading to 2.4.10.
Speed, more effective VM, and graphics are improved noticably.
I highly recommend you upgrade.
-hack
Science is going to slow to a crawl in the 21st century in the US because of patents.
Look to China, Europe for new advances in scientific understanding in these areas.
Forget about the US, we are already WAY behind in cancer research, genetics research.
The primary cause is patents.
Meanwhile more and more people in this contry die of these diseases every day simply because the science can't move faster than what the lawyers say so.
-hack
Palenstinians never got any of my sympathy:
1) They teach thier children hatred from day ZERO in the name of thier bastard "religion" that brings destruction on 2000 years of civilisation and progress.
2) They shoot thier guns in the air and cry for more blood on TV.
3) They have wreacked havoc on countless nations with thier travesties hijacking planes, and bombing innocent people for decades now! I
Personally have had enough of this shit.
Enough is enough.
Time to start rounding them up and putting them someplace where they can't hurt people. Once we get rid of the governments, the countries and the organizations doing these sorts of terrorist activities, it should be a much quieter place.
The only people who will be left are those willing to settle thier differences at the table, peacefully, like civilised human beings.
Not too mention the fact that once those sorts of precedents are set, people, nations will THINK TWICE before invading, bombing or killing innocent people.
-hack
I don't think it is very clear to everyone just how LARGE the loss is.
Not yet anyway. Very very bad things are going to happen in the next 2 months.
-hackus
I have been in contact with some SETI people, but most of them are outside the scientific base, and when I pose these problems to them, or point out responses to these pieces of evidence, when taken apart don't seem like much.
I mean after all? Metal in stars? Solar Wind research, populations and distribution of stars by types, and whether thier position in the galactic disk can discount enourmous populations of stars for sentient life, and perhaps even life itself.
They say, you are wrong, there is just too many stars out there!!
It is almost as though sometimes research dollars are funding the "process" and not the "science". After all, lots of money has, and still continues to go into SETI programs.
I am also just an amatuer. I should put that in quotes because well, you should see what my setup looks like I am building.
(I promise to make it all GNU when I am done with it.)
:-)
-hack
>You conceited f*ck!
>May I suggest looking around this planet to see >if there is anything that may suggest a previous >sentient species *cough*Easter Island*cough*. Or >perhaps a current parallel sentient species >*cough*dolphins*cough*, or even the fact that if >I wasn't human, I would (just like any other wild >animal that has experienced humans before) avoid >humanity with all my ability.
Ouch.
I never said Humanity was better than dolphins. I never said dolphins were stupid.
But I do not see dolphins pondering thier own existence and mortality, writing poetry, sending thier kind to the planets. Even, perhaps trying to communnicate with other creatures in the sea which may very well exist beneath Europa's surface ice. Which according to the latest magnetometer readings may have a salty ocean beneath all that ice.
Easter Island is way outside the scope here.
:-)
-hack
> Sorry, it's just laughable to say that 80% of >the stars in our galaxy are too metal-poor to >harbor terrestrial planets. Same goes for the >implication that most locations in the Galactic >disk are too "dangerous" to support life. Most >stars in the Milky Way are shielded from the >Galaxy's core just as much as the Sun is.
You took this out of context. Which isn't fair.
Even if you are in the plane, and close to the core, you have a statistically higher chance of that system being sterilized by SuperNova events, and other nasty activity which comes from being closer to the core. Even if you are in the stellar plane, the local density of the solar neighborhood closer than say, 1/3rd of the way in will either fry your world solar system from super nova explosions, collide with another star system, or be susceptible to high energy core events, which even a gas cloud or coal sack in between will not protect you from these things.
It is strange though. I never mentioned anything about Tax Payer money about SETI. I simply mentioned 1 Billion which is a figure I got from a goverment report on SETI at JPL's site. Everyone is all of a sudden really defense, and for all the wrong reasons in my view because what is thier to get defensive about when there isn't any results from the research to date.
:-)
It would seem tax payer money is making less and less of a contribution to SETI and it is relying on more and more private sector funding anyhow.
-hack
Gosh I did say the earth existed for half this time. (6 billion years) Sorry, I am not very good at typing fast, and I do have a job you know. I got mixed up in trying to point out the total time for formation and related processes, vs actual lifetime of Earth! :-)
I made a correction to that statement, and I hope everyone reads it. :-)
-gc
Our Sun is 4.5 Billion years of age, and it is estimated that the solar neightborhood or the gas cloud from which we get our solar system, took about 2 billion years to collapse.
Total time to create our solar system is about 6 billion years, half the 12-14 billion age of the known Universe.
Which means life finally arrived 6 billion years later after the formation of our Universe and then our solar system.
From what we are starting to know about stellar nurseries from Hubble it can take an aweful long time for a cloud of gas to collapse and form a system.
I am making the assumption it took 2 billion years for the original stellar gas cloud from which we formed got enough graviational muscle together to begin the final collapse of our solar system.
-hack
> 2. We don't know that sentient life is RARE. >It's very possible, but it's difficult to extract >our experience on one planet to the rest of the >Universe, don't you think? Even if sentient life >is RARE, why is that necessarily a BAD thing? If >we're the only ones, then that makes us pretty >important, in some sense.
So you are proposing that the physical laws that govern the path to life on our planet are somehow different elsewhere in the Universe and that Planet Earth really isn't a very good example?
You are not serious I hope.
I never said sentient life is a bad thing, you are right it makes us very very interesting. Besides, perhaps SOME sentient life MUST be first to arise in our galaxy, maybe we are it?
> 3. The Sun is a rather ordinary star. Yes, it is >more metal-rich than the average star in our >galaxy, but not by much. There are many millions >of stars in the Milky Way that are reasonably >similar to our beloved Sol.
The SUN isn't an ordinary STAR.
More and more research suggest most stars are binary, variable, or metal poor.
> 4. Low metal content does not make a star >"unstable" in any way. Heavy elements do not >significantly regulate fusion reactions. If >anything, they cause a lower burning efficiency, >which would make a star burn hotter, which would >make its lifetime shorter. There are no stars >with "No metals"; all stars have at least some >component of heavy elements. Finally, not to >nitpick, but stars form from interstellar >material, not intergalactic material.
I didn't explain this very well.
The idea is this. A star that has a very low mass like our sun (relatively speaking), with a relatively larger percentage of metal in the convecting portions of the star, provides a way that reduces instability over the lifetime of the star in as far as its local emissions in its solar neighborhood. It doesn't affect its burn rate. As we both know mass determines how long the star will ultimately live in each of its life cycles towards a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole. (Reduces the intensity of Solar Sun Spot activity and insures the magnetic field around the star stays a certain shape which makes it unlikely that a major solar weather event will expel material along the orbital plane the orbiting planets occupy). What the exact methods are for the transferal of energy and how more metal content, even at the fractions I am talking about which are very low, have on solar weather still needs research, I must admit.
But you can see how this can have all sorts of effects on worlds that do not have a star like ours, if this true outside our solar system. Consider what would happen to our atmosphere if a large unrestricted solar event about a star that had a weaker magnetic field that intercepts the orbital ecliptical plane of the this hypothetical solar system. Disasterous! Were that to happen directly in line with the earth, the earths atmosphere would be lost at the poles as high energy plasma heated it to escape velocity.
Even with a magnetic field, the Earth would not keep its atmosphere for very long when we are talking about Billions of years.
I read this in a recent paper, which I will have to find if you are interested.
This is what I mean by an "unstable star", which is probably different than what you are thinking. (i.e. unstable as in affecting its burn rate rather than unstable as far as the local solar weather which I maintain stars with more metal content at relative masses of our star have a much more benign solar weather activity than stars with very little metal or non at all at the same mass level.)
>6. This bit of misinformation is why I just had >to reply. Ahem...
>SETI isn't using ANY taxpayer money. None. >Several years ago a republican congressman beat >his chest about the millions (NOT billions, as >you slander) of dollars we were pissing away on >little green men, so all federal funding of SETI >was ended. They continue operations today on >grants from private foundations (Notably, the >Packard foundation).
Who said I was talking about Tax payer money? List one sentence I said "Tax Payer Money was being wasted." SETI has during its lifetime got a lot of money from different sources.
And yes, since it was formed, SETI has gone through 1 BILLION dollars of funding, and you are right, some of it is tax payer money.
I didn't say BILLIONS either, I said BILLION as in singular.
> 7. The Sun is NOT in a special part of the >galaxy. Yes, it is shielded from the harmful >radiation at the galaxy center, but so is much of >the Milky Way disk, where over 90% of the Mily >Way's stars are. Stars do not get more massive as >you move toward the galactic center. I have no >idea where you get that from.
By Special I mean special for the sorts of things we are talking about, and that is to answer the question: Statistically speaking, what Star system has a better chance of creating a good home for life? At the core? Around the core? In the middle? 2/3rds out from the core? Or way and the heck on the tip of an arm? Outside the galactic plane? Inside the galactic plane?
This is what I mean by special location.
I disagree, with you about this. I firmly believe with what we know about mass distribution so far, that is, assuming our galaxy really is a typical spiral. (Recent evidence suggests we live in a barred spiral galaxy, not a true spiral or a drano galaxy as I like to call them.).
You don't want to be near the core, or in direct view of the core of a galaxy is you want to foster a long stable home for life. You don't want to be too far out either because it is shown that much of the mass on the edges of the arms of many other galaxies are metal poor. You want to be about 2/3rd's or so away from the core or in some location that has a relatively high metal count and loosely populated solar neighborhood. (i.e. over billions of years it would be a shame if another Star bumped into our sun, it would probably eject most of the inner planets into galactic space.)
I didn't say ET couldn't exist, remember? I said given the vast amount of time we are talking about ET might not exist in our time, or more than likely already came and went or WE are ET!!!
Rare SENTIENT life which is what I am talking about, not or is not the same as rare life. Like I said I think life isn't all that rare and I bet if we ever muster the vision to explore Jupitor's moons or put men on Mars, we will see fossilized life forms.
I have a running bet with my colleagues that the probe we send to Europa, if we can get below the ice sheets, will land, drill through the ice a couple of miles, pop out, and for the first 30 seconds we will explore around the ocean depths then, immediately be eaten by SOMETHING for a snack.
Houston. We have a problem, we lost our probe to a big 80 foot, watchamacallit.
Whatever it is, it will be worth it.
-Hack
Here are some things to think about.
:-) (Well that and the defense department....get to that later.)
1) The age of the Universe is estimated to be about 12-14 billion years old.
2) Earth has existed for about half that time and in all that time, through billions of years of Evolution, only ONE species has emerged sentient.
Half the lifetime of the known Universe, and on one planet, it took about half that time to make ONE species remotely sentient on earth, with BILLIONS of years to try, "eveolution" or whatever the process is you want to call it, got it right once and only once.
Sentient life, it would seem is pretty RARE. In fact, it would seem even in the most IDEAL conditions, such as Earth, it takes a HUGE amount of time to develop.
This is a very very BAD thing. Continue reading on to find out why.
3) We now know, that our Sun is NOT an ordinary star. How do we know that? Because we do spectroscopic studies and we can know the composition of nearby star systems, with no guess work.
These studies reveal that 80 percent of most stars, many of them are not candidates for worlds that would require life. They end up:
4) Having poor amounts of metal content. No metals means it is highly unlikely the star will be stable over its lifetime. Metals it would seem moderate the stars nuclear reactions, and keeps it radiating energy with very little variation of its lifespan.
This finding is relatively new, thanks to Linux Beowulf clusters.
5) Stars that lack Metal cannot have formed from clouds of intergalactic material that contain any amount of heavy metals by definition. Why is that significant? It is significant because without heavy metals, planets, specifically rocky planets won't form around these stars. What you get is heavy Gas giant's like Jupitor or Saturn.
6) Doesn't look good so far and it gets very much worse I am afraid. It turns out that a galaxy is a very very hostile place to live in.
So what you say? It can't be that dangerous we are here? Right?
Yes, but consider this. You have heard arguments that there are billions and billions of stars in our galaxy....yadda yadda yadda=life should be everywhere and lets give another billion to SETI to find it.
7) No, I am afraid not my friends. You see the Sun and WHERE it is located is also VERY important, in our galaxy. You see those big dust clounds obscuring the core of our galaxy on a clear night called the Milky way? Consider them a security shield. In addition we are 2/3rd or more on the way out towards the outer middle of what we presume to be one of our galaxies arms. Very very far from the galactic core.
I won't get into the complete details, but the galaxy is a very very VERY dangerous place to live anywhere near the core.
Why is this important? It is important because the closer you move towards the center of our galaxy, the less likely you will have Stars that are stable for long periods, that do not expose thier accompanied planets (if any) to the extreme pasturizing effects of the galactic core, and dense stellar neighborhood. By definition, these populations of stars as one moves towards the center of the galaxy CANNOT be habitable because they have more materials available to them and are very large, have short life spans, and violently blow themselves up, along with the planets they carry, if any remember!
Short lifetime stars we know, cannot provide enough time for life to evolve to sentient states if the earth is any example, it took HALF the lifetime of the KNOWN UNIVERSE to produce ONE species.
Location, Location, Location. There may be billions and billions of stars, but it really doesn't matter. Most of them are not suitable, and we can prove that. It would seem, that a narrow band exists that goes around our galaxy that provides a habital region for the development of life. Very similair to the habital region around our own star, where luckily, earth is currently located, and I exist to type this!
So, no, life just can't pop up ANYWHERE in our galaxy and more than likey it can ONLY pop up in a very narrow field or band around a galaxy.
Each galaxy, should have its own band or habital region of stability where sentient life could evolve.
8) Oh my, and then we have the observations of a naturalist I am a fan of, Mr. Stephen J Gould. A quote from Mr. Gould:
"Sentient life has occurred in only one species over billions of years of life on this planet. It is not at all clear if this is a survival trait, as so many have put forth. Dinosaurs and thier kind ruled this planet quite successfully for 100's of millions of years and they didn't need intelligence at all, and in fact did quite well without it. Far better than we have and we have only been around for about 100 thousand or so years. In fact, long term, one could argue that sentient intelligence is a negative survival trait and actually hurts a species long term survival."
I could not agree more. We have debates that long term, with Nuclear Bombs in suitcases available now for your local nut case, intelligence is probably not a good thing if you are a life form and want to be here, or your decendents, 100 million years from now.
9) It gets even worse with current research comming down the pipe my friends, and well, then we have SETI and thier Radio antenna.
Stupid.
Why?
This is my opinion of course, given our current observations and understanding of how life works and why another billion should not go to SETI in the future, they already spent a Billion, with ZERO results, and I think it speaks volumes about current research into life at the moment.
Any life that has survived as long as it has on Earth, and develops sentient life forms, you have to understand, will not use Radio waves for communication. The time spans we are talking about are so enourmous, that the civilization we are looking for either has either died a long time ago or is so advanced, our preconcieved notions about what sorts or kinds of travel with our pitiful little science books, is at a child like understanding at best. If they do have those solutions, they won't use radio waves to communicate, it would take too long to manage a galactic empire on that scale.
They won't, Oh God, another DUMB idea, use lasers either. Stupid, idiotic, and DUMB.
Which is why SETI after plowing through about a billion dollars now, hasn't found DINGY.
And they won't find what they are looking for.
10) Now, during this whole discussion I point out why SENTIENT life is probably not very wisespread . Certainly not enough widepread to devote anothe r billion dollars to SETI to look for it.
I by no means, claim there is not life out there. I bet we find life in our general vacinity in our part of the galactic neighborhood because it would seem we are in a fine part of town, the Earth and the Sun. We probably will find life, or possibly hints that it at one time existed outside Earth.
I believe life is very resiliant and if given the right conditions, will spring up.
I don't claim to know why, but if it happened here, it can happen again someplace else nearby. Life has survived some enourmous catastrophes on this planet we call earth in the past, so it must be rather resilient and not easy to snuff out.
But given this series of arguments, I believe life is not as wide spread as we believe. What IS neat about this new evidence is it allows us to focus more of our searches, instead of what SETI is doing just pointing an antenna up in the air and waiting for a signal in any direction.
These are things SETI doesn't want you to know, and given what we know already, I would LOVE to see that money put to taming space for economic and peaceful uses.
We may disagree about SETI, but I bet we dont' disagree that having all of our eggs in one basket with nuts running around today and people killing each other, we should probably put a human outpost OFF OF THE PLANET. Just so we don't become a layer in the fossil record just like the dinosaurs.
Because that is something we CAN prevent and is a very very REAL danger every day.
Certainly a better investment than another billion for great screen savers, which is about what SETI is, in my opnion.
-hack
OpenGL is simply faaaabulous and quite obviously offers the environment only you could dream about on a 21inch monitor, and the latest NVidia card playing the all time, positively best 3D game ever concieved.
Which of course everyone on this board knows, is...
Homeworld!
:-)
You ARE the mothership when you have a 64MB Video card and a 21 inch Sony G500 monitor out there in "The Wastelands" in 4 player internet gaming mode on Won.
The tactical, combat and collaboration OpenGL gives to the game is spectacular.
Nothing is more breathtaking than to radio for Help! to your teammate while your outgunned and outnumbered as the two bastards decide to double team ya. On no! 5 Destroyers and 2 Heavy Cruisers?!! Heeeeeeeellllllllllpppp!!!
^%#@^&%#&
As your Mothership burns and the sniveling little idiots radio in, "Yeah, this guy sucks...."
Only to see them run like scared chickens duley beheaded when that moment comes....
Hyperspace Signature Detected.
No, it isn't just a frigate...
Sweet Mother of Pearl its the entire fleet!
Sweet Jesus! 3 Heavy Cruisers and 8 Destroyers comming out of Hyperspace like the calvery at 1600x1200 in 32bit Open GL mode!!!!
2 Minutes later the two assholes fleets are burning at high res and in 32bit color!
My god its its beautiful.
-hack
I never bought a Loki game.
Why?
They didn't port anything I liked, and it would seem to me, the ports they did do, where not mainstream. (Selling many millions of copies.).
They should have immediately concentrated thier capital in cooperating with Blizzard.
Ports of Diablo II, Warcraft III, StarCraft I&II.
Oh, did I say Starcraft II? Sorry for the slip.
:-)
But seriously. Heavy Gear II was a step in the right direction in my opinion, but I would have liked to have seen Mech Warrior 4 and Mech Commander II ported more than Heavy Gear 2.
Most if not all the games they ported do not interest me in the slightest.
One can arue whether or not Microsoft would have cooperated with Loki, but I think they would have given the number of lawsuits to come, and the ones they are going to have to deal with currently, DOJ.
If I was going to do ports, for Linux, the company I would have concentrated on from the start, if they would listen, would be Blizzard.
-Hack
Oh baby baby BABY!!!
Who's you super computer, who's your super computer...baby!!!
Can't wait for these to hit the market and build a network of 3.0 spec motherboards!
-hack
PS: Gonna have to sit down now....I feel dizzy.
It is a waste of time. I am very surprised that precious resources in such a leading Open Source camp has been diverted into the game Microsoft wants to play. We don't need .Net or the surprises Microsoft has in store for those suckers who get on the bandwagon for .Net.
We have Java, and it runs on any platform, and it works quite well as of 1.3, (Very very fast.)
This is just a made up product to keep people from writing Java apps. I repeat, there is not ONE single piece of technology adavantage you could get from writing a .Net business solution, except restricting yourself to running on a Microsoft platform.
Microsoft knows that any platform independant technology must be stopped and destroyed at all costs or the desktop they own will become irrelevant. By getting the Open Source communnity to divert resources to .Net slows down Linux's progress from the server room onto the Desktop.
It looks as they they have partially succeeded.
Our last best hope then lies with what KDE guys can come up with to get us the rest of the way.
While we leave the suckers at GNOME to wallow in thier grave errors.
Hack
Absolutely preposterous.
Using Lasers to send messages. How dorky.
Let me get this straight, a billion dollars later, a couple decades worth of enourmous computing power, and ZIPPO, no radio signals.
Now we are doing lasers?
Mmmm....lets see our planet is 5 billion plus years old, millions of species have evolved, only one arose out of all that time to become sentient enough to be curious about the universe to engage in technology endeavors.
5 Billion years? Millions of species? Obviously this intelligence thing is a complete FLUKE, a one in a 5 billion years stab in the dark.
Doesn't anyone find that odd?
In any case, most scientists believe there has to be many intelligent beings out there, yet they completely ignore the fact that we are IT on our own world and it NEVER happened previously!!
The one and only Darwinian trait, intelligence/technology arose in one and only one species in 5 BILLION years time, half the age of the know Universe!
There have been millions of species before us, that lived a lot longer and from all accounts of the fossil record and were a LOT more successful than homo sapiens. They didn't need intelligence either!
I think intelligence is so rare, that I am inclined to believe some of these spacemen stories that say we were visited and were modified in some way from domestic species. That seems much more likely given the fossil record.
The chances of intelligence happening on another planet seems extremely remote too me given this evidence (or lack there of aka SETI.).
Even if I do buy into the fact there is some intelligent civilization out there, they will have an understanding of physics, space and time that we as labratory rats can't possibly comprehend.
They most certainly won't be using Lasers or electromagnetic energy to communicate.
What is so dorky about the logic in this is that SETI admits that traveling to distant stars even at the speed of light would be impractical.
So what do they base there search on? The very impracticality of what they say can't be done!
Electromagnetic Radiation.
How STUPID.
hack
I think from the start GNU Cash is a broken design. The last point I checked there was Perl, C, Python, and all kinds of strange combinations for the application.
Very few apps on Linux have such weird requirements. What GNU Cash needs is a total rewrite in Java, and make it a servlet design so it can be web based, far more portable and built with a object design that eliminates a lot of really bad code that is in there.
What I don't get is why people insist on using Administration or poorly built scripting languages to build applications for Linux.
As I see it, if you want to build a app now days, for the web, its server side java and XML.
If you want to build a game or Office Suite I would stick with c++. (i.e. Desktop Apps).
I wouldn't build it like Gnu Cash with umpteen different programming languages, many of them never designed to do what they are doing in GNUCash.
I mean, GOD, how can you track the bugs in something like this?! You would need 5 different debuggers running at the same time!
-hack
Mozilla is not just a browser. (I don't mean at the app level, such as the mail client, etc.)
.NET just around the corner.
.NExT 4 years for all of us should they succeed.
.NET philosophy my friends.
It is much more than that. What is interesting I find about the process of Mozilla in and of itself is the fact that considering what had to be done 3 years ago, and looking at the quality of the code in the Tinderbox Seamonkey CVS tree, I am impressed with the design quality of the code compared to commercial efforts in this area.
(A rewrite wouldn't have been required if commercial efforts didn't produce such a poorly designed product.)
Obviously, a lot more thought went into the engineering and design of the browser first, before development began. I suspect, like a Tsunami that travels thousands of miles as a 1 inch high wave, hardly noticeable, Mozilla will really start to tower over other browsers in the next 6-9 months as it approaches shores of a 1.0 release. I am not talking about feature sets either.
The largest impact Mozilla could have in the areas of browsers could very well be cell/Yopi like devices that require easy to build sharp looking interfaces for embedded systems like PDA's with wireless internet access.
That is perhaps just one area, but with these thoughts in mind, a browser of this capability, available on all platforms, could very well break Linux and other operating systems onto the desktop in the next 3-4 years, making native apps a non requirement for doing business on the desktop.
For example, Linux is more than a match with Kernel 2.4.x for poor Microsoft 2000, in the server room. Not yet on the desktop though, but only because of the apps situation.
But in any case, if the mozilla team decided to stay focused on the 3 things below:
1) Speed.
2) Bugs.
3) Feature Set Freeze for the API/Browser apps.
If these things can be done over a 6-9 month period of time, I am sure the release 1.0 will be a very shiny product.
AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE TO RUN EVERYWHERE.
(BeOS, Linux, Windows, Sun, PDA's, Cell Phones, etc.)
More than a match for poor little IE.
That is the first thing that needs to be done to get rid of IE's growing influence, which if left unchecked, could make every dialup/cable session a very painful experience for one's checkbook with
Microsoft has some very very nasty things planned during the
I really would hate to see a "Microsoft Internet" and a everyone else internet.
(The subtle currents part running through this drama...could be a rant, or the truth. You decide.)
We already are starting to see this sort of philosophy with patents. Scientific research is slowing to a crawl in BIOTECH, because information cannot be used, or obtained, while millions around the world are delayed the cures they need for diseases and die as a result. Pay as you go absurd patents don't do science any good, unless you want to take another THOUSAND YEARS to develop a cure for the common cold!
Obviously, a single organization with perhaps a few thousand employees is not going to do the research faster for ANYTHING vs. the millions of people world wide in BioTECH could do if and only if, they cold get access to the information they need to do research.
Sound familair? Welcome to
Now, instead of taking a few hundred years to make advances in science, we can take a few THOUSAND years to do the same thing because 10 times the amount of people and infrastructure can't look at information unless they pay as they go!
We don't need one company controlling the entire internet with a default install out of the box that asks you to pay everytime you click on the mouse!
Philosophically, a lot hinges on Open Source development and the nets future to establish precedence that sharing information is far more economically attractive. Hopefully, will in the end, not only win out, but demonstrate that these sorts of philosophies (.NET, absurd biotech patents, etc.) lead to a great deal of misery for those that lack power and wealth in the world.
-hack
It is proposed in some of the more daring research pieces out there that time really, doesn't exist at all. In fact, it would be nice to just get rid of the whole concept of time.
In case you are wondering, the whole idea about string Theory is that we have no way to link observational results of experiments that deal with the very small and the very large.
Here is an example:
A solar system, or a future solar system starts to form out of a gas cloud. Billions of miles across, it steadily collapses, planets start to form, and finally at its center gravity induces Nuclear Fusion.
The problem is that we have equations that can describe N body problems...(Although we cannot solve them.) By body I mean, planets, stars moons, in orbit about themselves and the newly formed star.
The problem is these physical observations start to break down when we want to explain the fusion, subatomic and even quantum mechanical aspects of the very small and what part it played during the collapse of the dust cloud.
So, we have to use a different sort of mathematics and set of equations to describe the orbits of the planets, then another completely different set of mathematics assumptions to explain how fusion works.
What String Theory promises, is to combine these two worlds into one set of compact equation/equations that you can derive or describe the orbit and interaction of the dust clounds characteristics from the formation of the planets, to the ignition of the star at its center, to its death as a strange object as a white dwarf, neutron star, or even a black hole in a Super Nova explosion.
String Theory promises this but it is not clear it can deliver yet. With new computing technology in the next 100-300 years, many of the kinds of mathematical computations required to solve some of the equation sets to eliminate certain dead ends in the paths of String Theory will emerge.
In reality, computing power limits what we can do now at the moment, with this sort of question.
I spend nights looking at the twisted code of my own organizations enourmous effort to track neio's Near Earth Impact Objects (NEIO.ORG) and it would be beautiful to posess a mathematics that is more elegant than Newtons theory, or even Einstein's.
One Equation or set of Equations that describe Gravity, Time, Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and basic behaviour of particle matter would be the supreme achievement of our species.
If we can prove, we have the intelligence to posess the keys to the Universe, no lock will be out of our reach.