Re:Humans are also ill-suited for the ocean...
on
The Return of Apollo?
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· Score: 1
So, I guess there should be no humans in, say Hawaii, since it's impossible to swim that far
This makes no sense. For your analogy to work you have to show me where humans have prospered in the ocean, not above the ocean. Once again, you cannot compare the ocean to space. Scale matters. Sorry but your analogy fails on many levels.
With current technology (and taking into account that we don't know how to do cryogenics yet)
But then isn't it really unmanned travel? You would only be able to be thawed out/reforzen a few times at most, so you would basically miss most of the journey. The robots would be doing the flying and experiencing the heavens.
It would have to contain a complete ecosystem (maybe several?), plus be completely repairable by the inhabitants.
Yet no one has told me how to keep a closed ecosystem on a small scale maintainable for tens of thousands of years. Over time the plants and animals would evolve and no longer suit your purposes. It seems easier just to evolve humans to avoid the need for an organic ecosystem.
Given the typical appetite of humans for self-destruction, they'll probably have destroyed their own society several times by the time they get to their destination, and will no longer be capable of operating the machinery necessary to finish their flight.
Agreed. Without machine memory they would become invalids.
Sending carriers out for the Apollo missions was more about bravado and showing off then practicality. There would be no need whatsoever to even send a naval vessel - the work could even be contracted out I am sure to numerous capable marine firms.
Sending machines to explore seems so sterile. Not to take anything away from the work that needs to be put into doing that type of stuff, but when I think about it I get a mental image of a bunch of vikings sending out a raft attached with a rope to explore their western waters. Chances are they wouldn't have found America.
Scale matters. The Vikings could be expected to have decent chances of surviving the distance travelled. The distances we are talking about to even visit our nearest neighbor star are so wildly out of sync with human physiology (and mental adaptability) that I don't see any way we can expect current humans to make the journey. I think the insanity point is once again salient - even if you could keep your body alive that long (doubtful), you would have to keep from going insane.
Agreed, humans are ill-suited for space
on
The Return of Apollo?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
We always impose and anthropomorphic view on space. Our scifi depicts space travel as being safe for human physiology and amenable to our lifespans. Note that every futurist view of space travel seems to depend on some breakthrough that allows us to explore space in our expected lifespans.
Yet the reality is that all we know about space is that it is toxic to humans. And still we don't know of any way that we might travel anywhere meaningful in the two to three hundred years we might live as purely organic creatures under the best predictions of biotech (if we could even keep from going insane that long out there).
Face it, humans as they exist now are not getting off of this rock. It is likely we will have to merge with machinery to explore space..in essence, stop being purely organic. It is likely that meaningful space travel will require tens of thousands of years of time out there. This means unmanned is the best way to go, and a hybrid model is likely in the future once you get past all the crap scifi feeds us about present day humans surviving for long periods of time (physically and mentally) in space.
It worked. Also a space craft with wings seems to complicate most flight operations as opposed to simplifying them. Is it really more efficient to have the shuttle land than to just fish a capsule out of the water? It seems that numberous take-off and flight issues are created by the addition of wings simply so the craft can land like a plane.
Its nice to see the research but HP is now mostly a producer of commodity IT products. There is practically zero chance that they will be able to effectively market a new processor architecture. Perhaps they want to go the IBM route and license the tech, who knows.
Marketing and market share matters. An Intel chip with 20% improvement is likely to sell much better than an HP chip that doubles performance.
The purpose of the crew of ISS is to maintain ISS. The research initiatives that seemed interesting in the 80s are now simulated on the ground. Its a mutli-billion dollar hotel.
Not since Star Wars has one mlitary contractor siphoned os much taxpayer money and not return anything of relevance in return.
A Ph.d was never intended to enhance a career in programming. Hard lessons people trying this will learn:
1. Unless you are obsessively, genuinely interested in the topic, the four+ years of research will drive you insane. You can't just "not care" about the topic.
2. During those years you will be doing little programming, getting little practical experience, and making welfare wages. Meanwhile your undergrad friends are getting their 401ks pumped up while they learn something useful. If you actually do post-doc work you will find that your undergrad friends have homes and second cars while you will be looking forward to your first real paycheck. Regardless of wage you will likely never catch up to them.
3. Some firms do not like to hire Ph.ds. They are chronic mental masturbators. Sorry for the label but in general it fits. Most programming is not about big theory but little bugs.
4. Getting back to (2), getting a Ph.d really means putting your life on hold. Marriage, kids, buying a house, going on vacations...these are not in your immediate future if you go to grad school. Not just financially are they unattainable, but you will not have the time to focus.
5. Most importantly: The market is already saturated with doctorates.. They are everywhere. They are not rare.
Many Ph.ds end up being incredible mental-masturbators who have become comfortable with the notion of doing what they want when they want. Very often they are also terrible programmers, as programming is frankly not a valued skill for research (they can hire undergrads to do it).
I interview at a large internet company and I can tell you I steer away from people with doctorates. The ones we have hired have been useless, they would rather dither and think than work. Thinking is good but sometimes shit just needs to get done. The Ph.ds I know often fail to understand the need to get some rubber on the road.
Also yes the pay expectation are higher for the same work, which is strange in that their degree often has no application to the work.
Posters here need to realize that getting a Ph.d will take over four years. During that time you are losing wages and frankly making a welfare wage as a student (unless you are moonlighting). You will need to land a much higher wage just to keep up with those who were working during those four to six years, who could be a hundred grand in savings ahead at that point.
Even then it is not clear that you will automatically get a better job. I have seen many many Ph.d's just end up programming like most others. If your very specialized degree is not directly useful to your employer, what is their motivation to pay you more? A programmer is a programmer - you will be paid by your ability to produce.
Only get a Ph.d is you really want one and are obsessed with a very specialized subfield. Keep your expectations low for rewards - the market really is flooded with Ph.Ds in compsci and EE.
Why does Dean use spammers to get elected?
Why did Karl Marx work from London, the heart of the capitalism he despised?
Why does Noam Chomsky work out of MIT, the bastion of the establishment mentality he is trying to dismebowel?
You must sibvert the system from the inside, that is why.
No other institution created during the twentieth century has done more to dilute, distribute, weaken and generally debase money in our society like the Federal Reserve. I am absolutely amazed this has not been mentioned.
The Fed has the legal right to create money out of thin air. This is the magical force behind your stock market bubbles, precious metals market movements, and debt of all kinds.
So much of this stuff is in the perldocs. I applaud O'Reilly for supporting open source but outside of the Camel book and the Perl Cookbook, I think the rest of the books are mostly redundant.
At some point you have to put the books down and start programming if you truly want to master the language. After the Camel book is probably a good time to start, with references to the Cookbook when needed. For other info, the perldocs are recommended.
Not just piling on the MSFT bash fest, but Microsoft's research labs have failed to deliver what I see as even one interesting, unique academic, technical, cultural or product innovation. Compare this to Bell Labs, IBM, etc who have truly revolutionized their markets through bona fide research.
I'm not sure why Microsoft Research can't produce anything meaningful. Its clearly not starved for funding.
Sun officially on endangered species list
on
Solaris 9 For Dummies
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· Score: 1, Troll
Sun's latest revenues show a company cut off at the knees. The Sparc architecture is essentially dead in the eyes of the market. Solaris has little new adoption or new mindshare.
This company is in big trouble and trash-talking Scott McNealy's act is getting very old. Some advice:
1. Fire McNealy. Sun can never go forward while this dinosaur of the software wars is in the chair. Thanks for the memories Scott, but Sun lost the war.
2. Get out of the hardware business. Sun hardware is not coming back. Ever. Sell the maintainence business to IBM or HP.
3. Turn Sun into a software company focusing on Java. This means saying YES to Windows and Linux in a big way.
What could be worse than counting hanging chads for two weeks? Manual election systems prompted the Supreme Court to decide the last election. What could be worse?
Because that is the pay cut you will have to take to be competitive with India. That is not BS but the numbers from a company that outsources and the pay adjustment for India. And by the way they have no problem coming in to the office, so they also have a logistical advantage over you.
IBM has essentially been a failure in the desktop market for many years, with a number of failed initiatives to attack specific rivals (remember Aptiva?).
Really, where is the market for these boxes? Linux on non-x86 is a fringe market...and I mean a fringe of a fringe. There isn't enough interest there to market to.
I applaud them for trying to create competition but I think outside of very high end and vertical installations, the Power architecture is going to be limited to Apple boxes when it comes to desktop users.
This is getting absurd. Anything that challenges Google is now immoral? Look, the US has a patent system. OVerture did not create it. They are just using it. If they didn't you can be sure someone else would have. The bottom line is that they submitted the patent and it was approved. Write the US patent office if you have issue with it.
You are missing the point there, they are not willing to work for very low wages anymore than you are. Its just that cost of living is way cheaper there, that with a fraction of your salary they can live better than you.
Hence they are willing to work for less than I am.
The Asian nations of India and China are not just deflating tech salaries. To limit the view to this is myopic. Both nations have a high number of workers who are well trained and willing to work for very low wages.
Add to this the low barriers to commerce as a result of WTO membership and extensive fiber networks and the result is that we are about to enter a period of hypercompetition that will result in massive profit deflations for many American firms. Consider that the big three automakers are now demanding that their suppliers match the price for potential parts that could be produced at Chinese wages. They are essentially telling suppliers in advance to beat the potential Chinese price or the Chinese price will become a reality.
The end result of this will be the continued growth of Asian economies as China will most likely continue to surpass the US for foreign investment as it did for the first time in 2002.
Maybe in biotech and entertainment the US will keep a lead, but everything else is up for grabs and the lowest price will win.
There are so many guns pointed at Amazon.com right now, I would say that the future of the firm is threatened. The loss of AOL is a minor issue. Amazon more directly faces undercutting from capable shipping merchants all over the web. Walmart beats Amazon on price nearly 100% of the time now. Overstock.com is also beating Amazon on items in stock. Amazon is also a massive debtor in markets with razor thin margins and massive competition. The massively overinflated AMZN stock is now subject to huge shorting positions, making it even harder to compensate employees in the future (almost anyone joining now will have underwater stock in two years).
It will be interesting to see if they are around in five years.
Slashdot Mirror
This makes no sense. For your analogy to work you have to show me where humans have prospered in the ocean, not above the ocean. Once again, you cannot compare the ocean to space. Scale matters. Sorry but your analogy fails on many levels.
But then isn't it really unmanned travel? You would only be able to be thawed out/reforzen a few times at most, so you would basically miss most of the journey. The robots would be doing the flying and experiencing the heavens.
It would have to contain a complete ecosystem (maybe several?), plus be completely repairable by the inhabitants.
Yet no one has told me how to keep a closed ecosystem on a small scale maintainable for tens of thousands of years. Over time the plants and animals would evolve and no longer suit your purposes. It seems easier just to evolve humans to avoid the need for an organic ecosystem.
Given the typical appetite of humans for self-destruction, they'll probably have destroyed their own society several times by the time they get to their destination, and will no longer be capable of operating the machinery necessary to finish their flight.
Agreed. Without machine memory they would become invalids.
Sending carriers out for the Apollo missions was more about bravado and showing off then practicality. There would be no need whatsoever to even send a naval vessel - the work could even be contracted out I am sure to numerous capable marine firms.
Scale matters. The Vikings could be expected to have decent chances of surviving the distance travelled. The distances we are talking about to even visit our nearest neighbor star are so wildly out of sync with human physiology (and mental adaptability) that I don't see any way we can expect current humans to make the journey. I think the insanity point is once again salient - even if you could keep your body alive that long (doubtful), you would have to keep from going insane.
Yet the reality is that all we know about space is that it is toxic to humans. And still we don't know of any way that we might travel anywhere meaningful in the two to three hundred years we might live as purely organic creatures under the best predictions of biotech (if we could even keep from going insane that long out there).
Face it, humans as they exist now are not getting off of this rock. It is likely we will have to merge with machinery to explore space..in essence, stop being purely organic. It is likely that meaningful space travel will require tens of thousands of years of time out there. This means unmanned is the best way to go, and a hybrid model is likely in the future once you get past all the crap scifi feeds us about present day humans surviving for long periods of time (physically and mentally) in space.
It worked. Also a space craft with wings seems to complicate most flight operations as opposed to simplifying them. Is it really more efficient to have the shuttle land than to just fish a capsule out of the water? It seems that numberous take-off and flight issues are created by the addition of wings simply so the craft can land like a plane.
Marketing and market share matters. An Intel chip with 20% improvement is likely to sell much better than an HP chip that doubles performance.
Unfortunately your post does sum up the extent of activity on the ISS.
Not since Star Wars has one mlitary contractor siphoned os much taxpayer money and not return anything of relevance in return.
Those who own the automation will prosper.
1. Unless you are obsessively, genuinely interested in the topic, the four+ years of research will drive you insane. You can't just "not care" about the topic.
2. During those years you will be doing little programming, getting little practical experience, and making welfare wages. Meanwhile your undergrad friends are getting their 401ks pumped up while they learn something useful. If you actually do post-doc work you will find that your undergrad friends have homes and second cars while you will be looking forward to your first real paycheck. Regardless of wage you will likely never catch up to them.
3. Some firms do not like to hire Ph.ds. They are chronic mental masturbators. Sorry for the label but in general it fits. Most programming is not about big theory but little bugs.
4. Getting back to (2), getting a Ph.d really means putting your life on hold. Marriage, kids, buying a house, going on vacations...these are not in your immediate future if you go to grad school. Not just financially are they unattainable, but you will not have the time to focus.
5. Most importantly: The market is already saturated with doctorates.. They are everywhere. They are not rare.
.
I interview at a large internet company and I can tell you I steer away from people with doctorates. The ones we have hired have been useless, they would rather dither and think than work. Thinking is good but sometimes shit just needs to get done. The Ph.ds I know often fail to understand the need to get some rubber on the road.
Also yes the pay expectation are higher for the same work, which is strange in that their degree often has no application to the work.
Even then it is not clear that you will automatically get a better job. I have seen many many Ph.d's just end up programming like most others. If your very specialized degree is not directly useful to your employer, what is their motivation to pay you more? A programmer is a programmer - you will be paid by your ability to produce.
Only get a Ph.d is you really want one and are obsessed with a very specialized subfield. Keep your expectations low for rewards - the market really is flooded with Ph.Ds in compsci and EE.
Why does Dean use spammers to get elected? Why did Karl Marx work from London, the heart of the capitalism he despised? Why does Noam Chomsky work out of MIT, the bastion of the establishment mentality he is trying to dismebowel? You must sibvert the system from the inside, that is why.
The Fed has the legal right to create money out of thin air. This is the magical force behind your stock market bubbles, precious metals market movements, and debt of all kinds.
At some point you have to put the books down and start programming if you truly want to master the language. After the Camel book is probably a good time to start, with references to the Cookbook when needed. For other info, the perldocs are recommended.
I'm not sure why Microsoft Research can't produce anything meaningful. Its clearly not starved for funding.
This company is in big trouble and trash-talking Scott McNealy's act is getting very old. Some advice:
1. Fire McNealy. Sun can never go forward while this dinosaur of the software wars is in the chair. Thanks for the memories Scott, but Sun lost the war.
2. Get out of the hardware business. Sun hardware is not coming back. Ever. Sell the maintainence business to IBM or HP.
3. Turn Sun into a software company focusing on Java. This means saying YES to Windows and Linux in a big way.
What could be worse than counting hanging chads for two weeks? Manual election systems prompted the Supreme Court to decide the last election. What could be worse?
Because that is the pay cut you will have to take to be competitive with India. That is not BS but the numbers from a company that outsources and the pay adjustment for India. And by the way they have no problem coming in to the office, so they also have a logistical advantage over you.
Really, where is the market for these boxes? Linux on non-x86 is a fringe market...and I mean a fringe of a fringe. There isn't enough interest there to market to.
I applaud them for trying to create competition but I think outside of very high end and vertical installations, the Power architecture is going to be limited to Apple boxes when it comes to desktop users.
This is getting absurd. Anything that challenges Google is now immoral? Look, the US has a patent system. OVerture did not create it. They are just using it. If they didn't you can be sure someone else would have. The bottom line is that they submitted the patent and it was approved. Write the US patent office if you have issue with it.
Hence they are willing to work for less than I am.
Add to this the low barriers to commerce as a result of WTO membership and extensive fiber networks and the result is that we are about to enter a period of hypercompetition that will result in massive profit deflations for many American firms. Consider that the big three automakers are now demanding that their suppliers match the price for potential parts that could be produced at Chinese wages. They are essentially telling suppliers in advance to beat the potential Chinese price or the Chinese price will become a reality.
The end result of this will be the continued growth of Asian economies as China will most likely continue to surpass the US for foreign investment as it did for the first time in 2002.
Maybe in biotech and entertainment the US will keep a lead, but everything else is up for grabs and the lowest price will win.
It will be interesting to see if they are around in five years.