So, what other resources? Coal? Should be a big help when our environment's going to shit. [...snip other tech...]
Sure, coal isn't ideal, but there are "clean coal" technologies on the horizon. How about Oil Shale? How about Thermal Depolymerization? All of the previous technologies just need an economic incentive to develop them -- like expensive oil.
Sounds great, but we needed to get a few hundred plants starting construction like 5 years ago.
If there was truly a crisis, we could build a slew of plants in a couple of years. But even if it was five, there will be no collapse of civilization. We'll have plenty to time to build nuke plants.
Even though it will take us 100 years to find the next new resource, as you said? That line's going to be your epitaph...
No, I meant that I doubted that we won't find new sources of oil, and oil will probably end up lasting another 100 years. I could be wrong, but it really doesn't matter that much. Like I said, oil is not a tank where the tank is empty, and that's it. It just gradually gets more and more expensive to extract it.
We are completely and utterly fucked - I think the next 50 years is going to see an economic collapse of epic proportions as more and more people fight over less and lass oil. The noble niceties of space travel will go by the boards as the ruling classes scramble to prevent food riots and revolutions.
Ummm... no. First of all, we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. EVER.
What will happen is that once we (finally) are unable to find new sources (I predict 100 years, but it doesn't matter to my point), the price of oil will start to increase. Once the price of oil sufficiently exceeds the price of other resources, we will gradually switch over to the other resources. There will be no huge "oil collapse". People seem to think that oil is the only source of energy. It's not. It's only the cheapest and easiest source of energy, primarily because it's a mature technology. Once we switch over to other sources, then those will become mature technologies over time.
Sure, things might get more expensive for awhile, but that will hardly lead to a breakdown of civilization.
Nice of you grouping every country in Europe into the same group with the same laws as one country.
I didn't do that, the original poster that I answered, did.
Big deal, you are not allowed to lie about a historical fact, and make up you own history.
Ah, but is a big deal. The biggest deal, in fact. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to hold low-probability beliefs. That you think putting someone in *jail* over thinking the wrong thoughts proves my point better than anything else could.
The thing about names is also not true. Well you make it sound like US and other countries don't do this aswell. You are not allowed to name you child anything which could be degrading og harmfull for the child/person. So if the name to choose is not on "the big list", someone will have a look and see if it should be added. Can't see the problem.
So, first you tell me it's not true, then you tell me it's true, but you can't see the problem with it anyway. And no, the U.S. does NOT do this. You can name your child anything you want, and it's none of the government's business.
Then there are the countries where it's illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia, and in France they tried to muscle Yahoo over it. In many countries it's illegal to form particular types of political parties (e.g., a Nazi party).
Then there are the laws in Germany (at least, there were about 13 years ago when I was there) where opening a type of business is not allowed if it creates too much competition for other businesses of the same type. These might be local laws, not sure.
Then there are the laws in a couple of contries (Denmark?) where the government regulates the names you can name your children, and has to "approve" the name.
I got you beat in the geezer department, and I think some of the mid 80s music was really good, ex: huey lewis, zztop, and etc. What was it, summer of 85 or so, EVERYTHING rocked.
Huey Lewis and the News began in 1979, ZZ-Top began in *1969*.:) Mostly my point was about bands that began in the early 80s, not older bands that continued to produce good stuff.
But really, even HL&N and ZZ-Top, while very rocking, still really don't measure up in terms of "legendary bands". If you apply the "who will still be listened to in 50-100 years from today" test, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, The Beach Boys, The Beatles (duh) will still be around as classic artists of the period -- The Beethovens, Mozarts, Chopins, etc of their day. Will Huey Lewis? I'd say very unlikely. ZZ-Top? Maybe a couple of songs, but it's entirely possible they'll be forgotten.
Now, who are the legends from the 80s, 90s or today that will still be listened to in 50-100 years? Where is the Eleanor Rigby? The Day in the Life? The Good Vibrations? The Hotel California? The songs that are so fundamentally different, so amazingly cool, so broad-base in their appeal that they're instant classics?
Man, I sound like a grouchy old man.:)
But still, even someone in their 40s or 50s back in the 1970s could hear Hotel California and think, "Wow, I don't anything about current music, but that's a cool song."
We're only in our mid-20s and we already "feel like old people" when it comes to music sometimes. But then, we realize something. Most of us who were teenagers in the mid-to-late 90s remember when rock and metal were more than emo and frat boy headbanging crap.
Um, hate to break it to you, but being 42 and seeing music come and go, music has sucked since the early 80s. The mid-to-late 90s is *exactly* the same as today. Grunge wasn't emo and frat boy headbanging crap? And this isn't one of those "my generation was better", I even recognize that my generation's early 80s music sucked. Where are the Led Zeppelins? Where are the Pink Floyds? Hell, where are the Beatles? I recently listened to most the Beatles discography, and it's still unbelievable how different they were from anything before and anything since.
Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Um, buy it from somewhere other than iTunes? I didn't see NBC announcing they won't be selling shows anymore.
I see this as a HUGE win. I DESPISE the Windows client for iTunes. It is utter crap on the order of the Quicktime client (not as bad as that, but then, nothing is as bad as that). Apple us totally and completely incompetent when it comes to Windows programming.
In truth, given the long dependency chains for any technology (what you are reading this on now is the product of hundreds of entities and thousands of people working together through procurement and resale chains), if anything, the relative capability of the individual is declining.
What? Are you kidding? Think how much computing power you're typing on compared to the past. No one is controlling that. Think about CNC mills. I can sit in my basement and manufacture just about anything -- by myself. I can buy a printing press and binder that will produce endless numbers of books. What would Thomas Paine had paid for that? And sure, the Internet has a lot of people in-between, but it's very difficult to control. An individual's publishing power is incredibly amplified compared to the past.
Now, what happens when we have the technology for CNC bio-mills?
In your specific example, technological innovation in creating killer diseases will result in more knowledge about how they operate and thus how to vaccinate and cure them.
That's just absurd. It's always easier to destroy than to repair. What your saying is tantamount to saying that because we can build nuclear wepaons, we also have equivalent technology to defend against them. And we don't.
Let's say I'm designing a doomsday germ. Tell me how you would defend against this: I create it so that it's extremely infectious, can survive outside or inside the body. Then I let it stay dormant for five years (or 10, or 20...) Nobody knows it even exists, until it triggers, killing people within hours. Maybe I design it that once it triggers death, then it self-destructs.
It probably wouldn't wipe out everyone, but it's perfectly possible it would wipe out 99.9% of the population before anyone even knew what was going on. And who's left to figure out what's going on?
This is not an answer to the paradox, because all it takes is *1* example of intelligent life that does NOT kill itself to spread throughout the galaxy (assuming that is possible).
I actually believe that intelligent life is very improbable and that we're alone in the galaxy, but the doomsday argument is an interesting idea -- that it's inevitable that the technology to wipe out the race outstrips the ability to control it.
If you were the serious nutty kind, go into hazardous disease research until you get your hands on a nasty strain of ebola, mix it up with some airborn virus (this is not extremely hard, and doesn't require artifical life it's more like a transplant), produce a decent quantity then show up early for your flight and sit at the int'l airport infecting everyone passing by for some hours.
You're still assuming current technology, where one has to "go into hazardous disease research". What if there were easily available machines with software that produces new life to order?
they don't act rationally and longterm make up plans, they're the kind that build up and snap. In short, those sane enough to be capable aren't insane enough to actually want to kill *everyone*.
Remember that Theodore Kaczynski was a genius with an IQ of 160 to 170. He made very long-term plans. With only a few minor tweaks in his beliefs, he easily could've been a doomsday-er.
One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. Normally, people think this means huge wars, but I actually have pondered a different theory. As technology advances, more and more power is put into the hands of relatively small groups, and then ultimately to individuals.
I've wondered if perhaps there was some sort of energy-conversion technology that we don't know about yet (such as an easy way to create antimatter), but once discovered, it puts too much power available too easily. Basically, a single nutcase then creates a doomsday bomb, and that's it. If that were possible, and assuming it was relatively undetectable, it would be inevitable that life would be destroyed. You simply can't stop determined crazy people.
On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.
I was just thinking about this the other day for some reason!
One memory I have from youth is taking my oh-so-new-and-cool digital watch and carefully synchronizing it exactly to the beep when I called time.:)
Of course, later I synced my watch one day to the atomic clock, and then for some reason decided to check it against 853-1212. Imagine my geek outrage when freakin' Time was FORTY SECONDS OFF. I felt like an idiot for carefully syncing my watch all that time.
*sigh* another naive belief of youth falls. ("I mean, it's the phone company, of course they'd carefully ensure that 853-1212 has the exact time to the millisecond!")
But I thought better of it and will just state a few points that you seem to have missed : [snip 1) he solved the problem, 2) the money he's paying isn't that bad, and 3) the cable company refused]
The point isn't that he was (finally) able to solve the problem. The point is that he's whining because he couldn't get broadband access the way he wanted it, hence the OP's point that it's his fault for not doing his research about where he bought his house, *especially* when his business depends on it!
In other words, democracy *may* (in some cases) foster stability within ones own borders, but it does nothing for foreign relations.
I think that's provably not true. For most Western democracies, war is *done*. For centuries, Britain and France had been at war, but that line of thinking is simply obsolete in the modern world. In fact, (almost!) no Western european country is going to war on another... WW/II established the borders, and that's that (there are exceptions, Northern Ireland for one).
I think what's changed more than anything is mass communication. People don't have the stomach for war when it's flashed across every screen. We'll go to war if it seems really necessary, but war for expansionism is just about dead in the Western world.
When the rest of the world catches up and borders are finally established once and for all, that will go a long way toward eliminating war once and for all. I predict we're about a century to a century and a half away.
Without getting into your specific cases, I've noticed that when you analyze these things in detail, the real story is that the choices that are faced at the time are "Evil #1" and "Evil #2", and Evil #2 is a lot worse that #1. So the government has to choose the lesser of the evils. Now, that allows people like Chomsky to come along after the fact and scream that "The U.S. chose eeeeeevil!! Look at the consequences of their actions!!" And it's true, in a sense -- the U.S. *did* choose the evil. But it makes more sense when you put it in the context of all the larger evils that could have happened -- but didn't through the actions of the U.S.
To use one example, the dropping of the atomic bombs. The Chomsky screaming version is, "The U.S. dropped the only two atomic bombs ever used in war!!! And they worry about the Soviets??????" (I don't know if Chomsky has actually taken this position, it's just his normal style.) The historical context is that the U.S. reluctantly dropped the two bombs to make sure a very, very long bloody war, finally, ended without an invasion of Japan.
The one thing that I think is normally true about the U.S. (not always, but normally) is that our leaders try and do the moral thing in the world.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
True, but trying to pretend that religion *isn't* a major cause of humankind's problems is just as absurd. People woudn't get along merrily if religion didn't exist, but a big source of large-scale organized violence would simply go away. There are a lot of people who hate other people solely for the reason of their religion.
To be fair, I'm not sure how to measure the good that comes from religion, and how many people need religion for stability in their lives. On balance, I believe religion is a net evil in the world, but I admit that's hard to prove.
But can you say that the US (or any other country for that matter) mass media does not wear the same blinders of a different sort? His view are no more or less distorted than that of the average popular opinion piece.
Everyone has their own blinders. But it's a question of degree. His views ARE far, far, FAR more distorted than the average opinion piece. Just because everyone has bias doesn't mean everyone's opinions are equivalently valid.
And secondly, he doesn't argue from honesty. I don't know if it's deliberate, but he's infamous for quoting out of context and oversimplifying to the point of absurdity. I tend to think that he's not dishonest, but he does have some psychological problems.
You ever read failed states or hegemony or survival by noam chomsky?
Not to get into a debate on Chomsky, but he suffers from two major logic flaws: Proof by selective evidence, and he presupposes his conclusions (e.g., Given problem A, the conclusion will be that the U.S. holds the vast majority of blame).
No doubt he's a bright guy, but he has some huge blinders when it comes to politics. Unfortunately, his anger overwhelms his rationality.
Don't bite the propaganda of AIPAC or Dick Cheney! Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East.
Huh? Aggressor? Last I checked, it wasn't Israel who was swearing to wipe out other countries, nor do they send suicide bombers to blow up buses of children. Israel is certainly not squeaky clean, but having enemies around you screaming for your destruction tends to make a country trigger happy. The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
Persian culture, by way of contrast, produced the world's first assertion and declaration of Human Rights, and is responsible for the foundation of modern mathematics.
Those civilizations are long dead -- unfortunately for the people of the middle east.
That's like saying an RC car that goes 60 mph and cost $1000 to build has more yield per dollar than a McLaren F1, which costs 1000 times as much but only goes 3-1/2 times as fast. You can arbitrarily hand-pick criteria either way all day long, but the fact remains they're not directly comparable.
Wrong analogy. It's more like comparing some large trucks that cost enormous amounts of money to a garage operation that currently has a motorcycle in development, with parts for a Pinto on blocks, and the garage development is 1/10,000th the price of the trucks. No, they aren't comparable -- but you can see the development path is heading for the trucks, and you can see the development cost is not going scale up 4 or 5 orders of magnitude to be comparable.
His vehicles are not and will not be capable of orbit due to their high deadweight and low ISP engines.
Carmack's current modular vehicles are directly scalable to orbital vehicles.
ROTFLAMO. I love how you create 'facts' from thin air, and in utter ignorance of reality. When the insurance company funded the prize - SS1 was just a private paper study in Rutan's files, unfunded and unnanounced beyond some vague rumors.
Sheesh. So what? The point is that the insurance company funded the prize, because they had been advised that it wasn't possible for any reasonable amount of money, hence they reason they took the bet. That Rutan might've been working on something is irrelevent. The point is that the industry *believed* that it wasn't possible, until Rutan proved them wrong (and the insurance company lost the bet).
With the evidence publically available at the time - the insurance company made a good bet.
And why did they believe it was a good bet? Because Big Aerospace told them so.
Anyway, the proof will be in the space flights, so we'll see what happens. I have a feeling that even when Carmack reaches 100KM, you'll say that he sucks because he hasn't reached orbit, and when he reaches orbit, you'll say he sucks because he hasn't reached the moon, etc etc.
I'd be the first to admit that studies and analysis can be over done, but to sneer and reject them outright is a sign of ignorance.
You're setting up a straw man. No one has either sneered at, nor rejected analysis "outright". What I have sneered at and rejected is the concept of being so afraid of failure that millions (if not billions) of dollars and millions of pages of analysis are done so that an entirely perfect product can pop out the other end. And more often than not in recent history, NOTHING comes out the other end, because they never get that far. They run out of money.
Say what you want about Carmack, but he has a vehicle that flies, and (untested) hardware capable of reaching 100KM space, and he did it for a miniscule amount of money, even by X-Prize standards. You may not think much of his methods, but his methods have *worked*, at least so far. The fact that he has real, flying hardware puts him ahead of a lot of the others.
Speaking of that, you do know that Armadillo was awarded an Air Force SBIR contract, right? I quote that link:
Somewhat to our surprise, Armadillo was awarded an Air Force SBIR contract. We made a fairly general pitch about the virtues of a modular space launch system built in our current style, and apparently they liked what they saw. The fact that the two awards made for this round were to Armadillo and XCOR seems to make the point that they want to get something that actually flies. While phase I awards are really just for studies, we will be generating a lot of flight and operational data from the module work we were already doing. If they decide to go forward with a phase II contract, we will deliver some vehicles that they can actually USE.
So apparently not everyone considers them the "Keystone Kops" of the Aerospace industry.
On the other hand - would you care to stack NASA's accomplishments to date against that of the entire alt.space industry to date?
Sure. NASA spends enormous quantities of BILLIONS of dollars every year for relatively meager results on a per-dollar basis. Armadillo, since that's the subject at hand, has had phenominal results on a per-dollar basis.
Oh, that's not the measure of accomplishment you're looking for? Then maybe you need to clue in on what the alt.space industry is doing. The point is not to do missions that haven't ever been done before (at least in the short term), the point is to do it *cheaply* and *economically*.
NASA and the traditional aerospace companies are inarguably abject failures when it comes to doing space economically. They'll tell you that it "can't be done", but then, they said that SS1 couldn't be done, either. The latter is proven by the fact that the insurance company put up the money for the X-Prize on the advice of traditional aerospace consultants, who are the "experts", don't you know.
That's known as making lemonade. Armadillo has to learn by doing - because they have zero experience on which to base studies and analysis.
Well, that implies that Carmack would do something different if he had another choice. That's not my impression from reading his postings. He believes that rapid development through incremental testing is the best way to go. In fact, if you listen to him talk on the Space Access 2007 video on front page of the Armadillo web site, he says (quoting from memory), "Real experience isn't gained by performing paper studies, you get it by actually building and testing things."
Slashdot Mirror
So, what other resources? Coal? Should be a big help when our environment's going to shit. [...snip other tech...]
Sure, coal isn't ideal, but there are "clean coal" technologies on the horizon. How about Oil Shale? How about Thermal Depolymerization? All of the previous technologies just need an economic incentive to develop them -- like expensive oil.
Sounds great, but we needed to get a few hundred plants starting construction like 5 years ago.
If there was truly a crisis, we could build a slew of plants in a couple of years. But even if it was five, there will be no collapse of civilization. We'll have plenty to time to build nuke plants.
Even though it will take us 100 years to find the next new resource, as you said? That line's going to be your epitaph...
No, I meant that I doubted that we won't find new sources of oil, and oil will probably end up lasting another 100 years. I could be wrong, but it really doesn't matter that much. Like I said, oil is not a tank where the tank is empty, and that's it. It just gradually gets more and more expensive to extract it.
We are completely and utterly fucked - I think the next 50 years is going to see an economic collapse of epic proportions as more and more people fight over less and lass oil. The noble niceties of space travel will go by the boards as the ruling classes scramble to prevent food riots and revolutions.
Ummm... no. First of all, we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. EVER.
What will happen is that once we (finally) are unable to find new sources (I predict 100 years, but it doesn't matter to my point), the price of oil will start to increase. Once the price of oil sufficiently exceeds the price of other resources, we will gradually switch over to the other resources. There will be no huge "oil collapse". People seem to think that oil is the only source of energy. It's not. It's only the cheapest and easiest source of energy, primarily because it's a mature technology. Once we switch over to other sources, then those will become mature technologies over time.
Sure, things might get more expensive for awhile, but that will hardly lead to a breakdown of civilization.
Nice of you grouping every country in Europe into the same group with the same laws as one country.
I didn't do that, the original poster that I answered, did.
Big deal, you are not allowed to lie about a historical fact, and make up you own history.
Ah, but is a big deal. The biggest deal, in fact. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to hold low-probability beliefs. That you think putting someone in *jail* over thinking the wrong thoughts proves my point better than anything else could.
The thing about names is also not true. Well you make it sound like US and other countries don't do this aswell. You are not allowed to name you child anything which could be degrading og harmfull for the child/person. So if the name to choose is not on "the big list", someone will have a look and see if it should be added. Can't see the problem.
So, first you tell me it's not true, then you tell me it's true, but you can't see the problem with it anyway. And no, the U.S. does NOT do this. You can name your child anything you want, and it's none of the government's business.
Yes, but we live in Europe, the Continent of the Free...
LOL. The continent that puts people in jail for having the wrong thoughts.
Then there are the countries where it's illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia, and in France they tried to muscle Yahoo over it. In many countries it's illegal to form particular types of political parties (e.g., a Nazi party).
Then there are the laws in Germany (at least, there were about 13 years ago when I was there) where opening a type of business is not allowed if it creates too much competition for other businesses of the same type. These might be local laws, not sure.
Then there are the laws in a couple of contries (Denmark?) where the government regulates the names you can name your children, and has to "approve" the name.
Let's not even get into the ban on gun ownership.
I got you beat in the geezer department, and I think some of the mid 80s music was really good, ex: huey lewis, zztop, and etc. What was it, summer of 85 or so, EVERYTHING rocked.
Huey Lewis and the News began in 1979, ZZ-Top began in *1969*. :) Mostly my point was about bands that began in the early 80s, not older bands that continued to produce good stuff.
But really, even HL&N and ZZ-Top, while very rocking, still really don't measure up in terms of "legendary bands". If you apply the "who will still be listened to in 50-100 years from today" test, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, The Beach Boys, The Beatles (duh) will still be around as classic artists of the period -- The Beethovens, Mozarts, Chopins, etc of their day. Will Huey Lewis? I'd say very unlikely. ZZ-Top? Maybe a couple of songs, but it's entirely possible they'll be forgotten.
Now, who are the legends from the 80s, 90s or today that will still be listened to in 50-100 years? Where is the Eleanor Rigby? The Day in the Life? The Good Vibrations? The Hotel California? The songs that are so fundamentally different, so amazingly cool, so broad-base in their appeal that they're instant classics?
Man, I sound like a grouchy old man. :)
But still, even someone in their 40s or 50s back in the 1970s could hear Hotel California and think, "Wow, I don't anything about current music, but that's a cool song."
We're only in our mid-20s and we already "feel like old people" when it comes to music sometimes. But then, we realize something. Most of us who were teenagers in the mid-to-late 90s remember when rock and metal were more than emo and frat boy headbanging crap.
Um, hate to break it to you, but being 42 and seeing music come and go, music has sucked since the early 80s. The mid-to-late 90s is *exactly* the same as today. Grunge wasn't emo and frat boy headbanging crap? And this isn't one of those "my generation was better", I even recognize that my generation's early 80s music sucked. Where are the Led Zeppelins? Where are the Pink Floyds? Hell, where are the Beatles? I recently listened to most the Beatles discography, and it's still unbelievable how different they were from anything before and anything since.
Where is the innovation?
Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Um, buy it from somewhere other than iTunes? I didn't see NBC announcing they won't be selling shows anymore.
I see this as a HUGE win. I DESPISE the Windows client for iTunes. It is utter crap on the order of the Quicktime client (not as bad as that, but then, nothing is as bad as that). Apple us totally and completely incompetent when it comes to Windows programming.
In truth, given the long dependency chains for any technology (what you are reading this on now is the product of hundreds of entities and thousands of people working together through procurement and resale chains), if anything, the relative capability of the individual is declining.
What? Are you kidding? Think how much computing power you're typing on compared to the past. No one is controlling that. Think about CNC mills. I can sit in my basement and manufacture just about anything -- by myself. I can buy a printing press and binder that will produce endless numbers of books. What would Thomas Paine had paid for that? And sure, the Internet has a lot of people in-between, but it's very difficult to control. An individual's publishing power is incredibly amplified compared to the past.
Now, what happens when we have the technology for CNC bio-mills?
In your specific example, technological innovation in creating killer diseases will result in more knowledge about how they operate and thus how to vaccinate and cure them.
That's just absurd. It's always easier to destroy than to repair. What your saying is tantamount to saying that because we can build nuclear wepaons, we also have equivalent technology to defend against them. And we don't.
Let's say I'm designing a doomsday germ. Tell me how you would defend against this: I create it so that it's extremely infectious, can survive outside or inside the body. Then I let it stay dormant for five years (or 10, or 20...) Nobody knows it even exists, until it triggers, killing people within hours. Maybe I design it that once it triggers death, then it self-destructs.
It probably wouldn't wipe out everyone, but it's perfectly possible it would wipe out 99.9% of the population before anyone even knew what was going on. And who's left to figure out what's going on?
This is not an answer to the paradox, because all it takes is *1* example of intelligent life that does NOT kill itself to spread throughout the galaxy (assuming that is possible).
I actually believe that intelligent life is very improbable and that we're alone in the galaxy, but the doomsday argument is an interesting idea -- that it's inevitable that the technology to wipe out the race outstrips the ability to control it.
If you were the serious nutty kind, go into hazardous disease research until you get your hands on a nasty strain of ebola, mix it up with some airborn virus (this is not extremely hard, and doesn't require artifical life it's more like a transplant), produce a decent quantity then show up early for your flight and sit at the int'l airport infecting everyone passing by for some hours.
You're still assuming current technology, where one has to "go into hazardous disease research". What if there were easily available machines with software that produces new life to order?
they don't act rationally and longterm make up plans, they're the kind that build up and snap. In short, those sane enough to be capable aren't insane enough to actually want to kill *everyone*.
Remember that Theodore Kaczynski was a genius with an IQ of 160 to 170. He made very long-term plans. With only a few minor tweaks in his beliefs, he easily could've been a doomsday-er.
One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. Normally, people think this means huge wars, but I actually have pondered a different theory. As technology advances, more and more power is put into the hands of relatively small groups, and then ultimately to individuals.
I've wondered if perhaps there was some sort of energy-conversion technology that we don't know about yet (such as an easy way to create antimatter), but once discovered, it puts too much power available too easily. Basically, a single nutcase then creates a doomsday bomb, and that's it. If that were possible, and assuming it was relatively undetectable, it would be inevitable that life would be destroyed. You simply can't stop determined crazy people.
On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.
I was just thinking about this the other day for some reason!
One memory I have from youth is taking my oh-so-new-and-cool digital watch and carefully synchronizing it exactly to the beep when I called time. :)
Of course, later I synced my watch one day to the atomic clock, and then for some reason decided to check it against 853-1212. Imagine my geek outrage when freakin' Time was FORTY SECONDS OFF. I felt like an idiot for carefully syncing my watch all that time.
*sigh* another naive belief of youth falls. ("I mean, it's the phone company, of course they'd carefully ensure that 853-1212 has the exact time to the millisecond!")
I have moderation points at the moment and thought of rating you as a troll.
Err, you don't know what a troll is. Hint: it doesn't mean "someone who disagrees with me". It doesn't even mean, "someone with a point that is wrong." It doesn't *even* mean "someone with a point that is totally illogical."
Be that as it may...
But I thought better of it and will just state a few points that you seem to have missed : [snip 1) he solved the problem, 2) the money he's paying isn't that bad, and 3) the cable company refused]
The point isn't that he was (finally) able to solve the problem. The point is that he's whining because he couldn't get broadband access the way he wanted it, hence the OP's point that it's his fault for not doing his research about where he bought his house, *especially* when his business depends on it!
In other words, democracy *may* (in some cases) foster stability within ones own borders, but it does nothing for foreign relations.
I think that's provably not true. For most Western democracies, war is *done*. For centuries, Britain and France had been at war, but that line of thinking is simply obsolete in the modern world. In fact, (almost!) no Western european country is going to war on another... WW/II established the borders, and that's that (there are exceptions, Northern Ireland for one).
I think what's changed more than anything is mass communication. People don't have the stomach for war when it's flashed across every screen. We'll go to war if it seems really necessary, but war for expansionism is just about dead in the Western world.
When the rest of the world catches up and borders are finally established once and for all, that will go a long way toward eliminating war once and for all. I predict we're about a century to a century and a half away.
Without getting into your specific cases, I've noticed that when you analyze these things in detail, the real story is that the choices that are faced at the time are "Evil #1" and "Evil #2", and Evil #2 is a lot worse that #1. So the government has to choose the lesser of the evils. Now, that allows people like Chomsky to come along after the fact and scream that "The U.S. chose eeeeeevil!! Look at the consequences of their actions!!" And it's true, in a sense -- the U.S. *did* choose the evil. But it makes more sense when you put it in the context of all the larger evils that could have happened -- but didn't through the actions of the U.S.
To use one example, the dropping of the atomic bombs. The Chomsky screaming version is, "The U.S. dropped the only two atomic bombs ever used in war!!! And they worry about the Soviets??????" (I don't know if Chomsky has actually taken this position, it's just his normal style.) The historical context is that the U.S. reluctantly dropped the two bombs to make sure a very, very long bloody war, finally, ended without an invasion of Japan.
The one thing that I think is normally true about the U.S. (not always, but normally) is that our leaders try and do the moral thing in the world.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
True, but trying to pretend that religion *isn't* a major cause of humankind's problems is just as absurd. People woudn't get along merrily if religion didn't exist, but a big source of large-scale organized violence would simply go away. There are a lot of people who hate other people solely for the reason of their religion.
To be fair, I'm not sure how to measure the good that comes from religion, and how many people need religion for stability in their lives. On balance, I believe religion is a net evil in the world, but I admit that's hard to prove.
But can you say that the US (or any other country for that matter) mass media does not wear the same blinders of a different sort? His view are no more or less distorted than that of the average popular opinion piece.
Everyone has their own blinders. But it's a question of degree. His views ARE far, far, FAR more distorted than the average opinion piece. Just because everyone has bias doesn't mean everyone's opinions are equivalently valid.
And secondly, he doesn't argue from honesty. I don't know if it's deliberate, but he's infamous for quoting out of context and oversimplifying to the point of absurdity. I tend to think that he's not dishonest, but he does have some psychological problems.
You ever read failed states or hegemony or survival by noam chomsky?
Not to get into a debate on Chomsky, but he suffers from two major logic flaws: Proof by selective evidence, and he presupposes his conclusions (e.g., Given problem A, the conclusion will be that the U.S. holds the vast majority of blame).
No doubt he's a bright guy, but he has some huge blinders when it comes to politics. Unfortunately, his anger overwhelms his rationality.
Don't bite the propaganda of AIPAC or Dick Cheney! Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East.
Huh? Aggressor? Last I checked, it wasn't Israel who was swearing to wipe out other countries, nor do they send suicide bombers to blow up buses of children. Israel is certainly not squeaky clean, but having enemies around you screaming for your destruction tends to make a country trigger happy. The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
Persian culture, by way of contrast, produced the world's first assertion and declaration of Human Rights, and is responsible for the foundation of modern mathematics.
Those civilizations are long dead -- unfortunately for the people of the middle east.
That's like saying an RC car that goes 60 mph and cost $1000 to build has more yield per dollar than a McLaren F1, which costs 1000 times as much but only goes 3-1/2 times as fast. You can arbitrarily hand-pick criteria either way all day long, but the fact remains they're not directly comparable.
Wrong analogy. It's more like comparing some large trucks that cost enormous amounts of money to a garage operation that currently has a motorcycle in development, with parts for a Pinto on blocks, and the garage development is 1/10,000th the price of the trucks. No, they aren't comparable -- but you can see the development path is heading for the trucks, and you can see the development cost is not going scale up 4 or 5 orders of magnitude to be comparable.
His vehicles are not and will not be capable of orbit due to their high deadweight and low ISP engines.
Carmack's current modular vehicles are directly scalable to orbital vehicles.
ROTFLAMO. I love how you create 'facts' from thin air, and in utter ignorance of reality. When the insurance company funded the prize - SS1 was just a private paper study in Rutan's files, unfunded and unnanounced beyond some vague rumors.
Sheesh. So what? The point is that the insurance company funded the prize, because they had been advised that it wasn't possible for any reasonable amount of money, hence they reason they took the bet. That Rutan might've been working on something is irrelevent. The point is that the industry *believed* that it wasn't possible, until Rutan proved them wrong (and the insurance company lost the bet).
With the evidence publically available at the time - the insurance company made a good bet.
And why did they believe it was a good bet? Because Big Aerospace told them so.
Anyway, the proof will be in the space flights, so we'll see what happens. I have a feeling that even when Carmack reaches 100KM, you'll say that he sucks because he hasn't reached orbit, and when he reaches orbit, you'll say he sucks because he hasn't reached the moon, etc etc.
I'd be the first to admit that studies and analysis can be over done, but to sneer and reject them outright is a sign of ignorance.
You're setting up a straw man. No one has either sneered at, nor rejected analysis "outright". What I have sneered at and rejected is the concept of being so afraid of failure that millions (if not billions) of dollars and millions of pages of analysis are done so that an entirely perfect product can pop out the other end. And more often than not in recent history, NOTHING comes out the other end, because they never get that far. They run out of money.
Say what you want about Carmack, but he has a vehicle that flies, and (untested) hardware capable of reaching 100KM space, and he did it for a miniscule amount of money, even by X-Prize standards. You may not think much of his methods, but his methods have *worked*, at least so far. The fact that he has real, flying hardware puts him ahead of a lot of the others.
Speaking of that, you do know that Armadillo was awarded an Air Force SBIR contract, right? I quote that link:
So apparently not everyone considers them the "Keystone Kops" of the Aerospace industry.
On the other hand - would you care to stack NASA's accomplishments to date against that of the entire alt.space industry to date?
Sure. NASA spends enormous quantities of BILLIONS of dollars every year for relatively meager results on a per-dollar basis. Armadillo, since that's the subject at hand, has had phenominal results on a per-dollar basis.
Oh, that's not the measure of accomplishment you're looking for? Then maybe you need to clue in on what the alt.space industry is doing. The point is not to do missions that haven't ever been done before (at least in the short term), the point is to do it *cheaply* and *economically*.
NASA and the traditional aerospace companies are inarguably abject failures when it comes to doing space economically. They'll tell you that it "can't be done", but then, they said that SS1 couldn't be done, either. The latter is proven by the fact that the insurance company put up the money for the X-Prize on the advice of traditional aerospace consultants, who are the "experts", don't you know.
That's known as making lemonade. Armadillo has to learn by doing - because they have zero experience on which to base studies and analysis.
Well, that implies that Carmack would do something different if he had another choice. That's not my impression from reading his postings. He believes that rapid development through incremental testing is the best way to go. In fact, if you listen to him talk on the Space Access 2007 video on front page of the Armadillo web site, he says (quoting from memory), "Real experience isn't gained by performing paper studies, you get it by actually building and testing things."
aRocket.