You know how when you use your hot-glue gun you leave the stick inside as well as the melted glue and next time you turn it on it melts?
Same would happen if you would try to autoclave/soak in boiling water something glued with hot glue.
The best part is that it probably would not fall right off - the bond would get weaker and weaker until on third or fourth use ampules of blood start flying across the room.
1) No they didn't. Alien fighter was not operational until "last couple of days when all lights and gizmos have lit up". Also, "hacking" into an iPod does not mean that you can "hack into" OSX the same way. 2) Irrelevant. It wasn't AlienOS. He didn't even have an actual alien computer other than the one that ran the alien fighter. Which was built for only that single task. You know... like the way they DON'T actually put one PowerBook into an F22 and another one into M1 Abrams and just load up the proper software. 3) And yet they had the concept of shields, armor and various weapons. Even using telepathy as a weapon. Like... you know... using a living computer to attack and take control over another computer. But sure. Any form of security to prevent that never occurred to them. Oh, no.. wait.. I actually meant that it would. 4) Can you "hack into" your computer using a C64? How about a pocket calculator? How about one of them old room-sized computer that used vacuum tubes? And let us not even go into computers that use some completely different form of power and not electricity like every single one our civilization uses. Cause ID4 aliens didn't use electricity. Also, see 1. 5) No. You assume that. Nowhere is it mentioned that aliens had a PerfectOS 1111.111111 installed. It would however be eons beyond anything humanity has at the moment. They did travel here from across the galaxy and not vice versa. 6) Wait, what? See 1 again.
I tend to take any prediction anyone in the computer industry makes with a rather large grain of salt since then. Particularly the ones relating to "the end of the world as we know it" and similar predictions of global occurrences.
Seeing "END OF THE WORLD!!!11eleven!" not happen before your eyes does that to you.
The point was that Bajorans have made it to Cardassia long before either species had developed warp technology. Kinda like as if Ikaros would suddenly made it to Alpha Centauri in a matter of minutes. And found Na'vi there.
Whether Bajorans used chemical rockets, space elevators or giant catapults to get their solar-sail ships to space in the first place is rather irrelevant compared to that.
Do you really know the purpose of life? I don't (though I suspect there is no such thing as a purpose to life). But I do believe in acting morally, and if I thought that my sacrifice would prevent a war on an unimaginable scale, then yes, I would think that my self-sacrifice would be obligatory.
a - How can you act morally if you don't believe in the purpose of life? Even the most backward moral teaching rests on the rule that life is sacred. Well... human life in most of those. Ergo, it has inherent value and morally - purpose. You can't have morality without life. Rocks don't have their own school of morality.
b - It is nice to see that there are still candylanders like you around. I thought that the last of you was killed in a mugging back in the 80s. War on an unimaginable scale (and I can imagine quite a bit) might seem like the worst option to you - as you have never considered a possibility of genocide or extinction. Compared to those options war is not only favorable but obligatory. Just ask the Jews. I hear that they have some experience in both fields of research.
c - You keep using those words. Morals, ethic... You do realize that they are strictly human tribal values? Not even the entire humanity has the same moral and ethical believes. Why do you think that it will have ANY relation to the beliefs of a non-primate intelligence? And you don't have to go very far to experiment with that. Just look at the cats - they don't give a flying fuck about stealing, mooching and killing for sport. They would probably also lie to us if they could (you can't really say that they are lying when they purr our buttons - it is us humans that misinterpret that for affection or love). On the other side of the scale - we can just as well be savage sociopaths compared to say... dogs.
Now... try imagining (or just read up on your Orson Scott Card) the contact with a civilization/culture/entity that has nothing to do with our cave-dweller's tribal moral.
Or just go and kill yourself. You ARE advocating self-immolation after all.
I do think that it follows from my logic that if there is a comparable or greater power than us in the galaxy, the moral thing for us to do is to destroy ourselves before we can start colonizing interstellar space.
Right... My post makes "silly assumptions".
So... according to that logic every intelligent species will eventually fit your criteria for self-immolation. BRILLIANT! Not only did you solve the Fermi paradox, you have also cracked the purpose of life. Its purpose being to end.
That sounds like a great way to get "sterilized" yourself by:
a) your own probes turned against you by the civilizations that you intended to "sterilize" OR by a computer glitch, b) by a civilization or civilizations that you have not yet met but who have already heard about your reputation, c) by a civilization that is way more developed than yours - as nobody likes living next door to a psycho, d) getting your civilization torn from inside by your own people or their psychoses due to the fact that not everyone is a heartless bastard willing to condone to a xenocide or two or dozen.
100$ bills are waaaay easier to counterfeit. Why? Cause you can still print the same 100s from 20, 30, 50 years ago. Old 100s are still legal tender. All dollar bills are the same size, shape and color so you can bleach "smaller" bills and reprint them. And as you still need dollar currency to buy oil - they are much more common around the world than any other currency.
Euros on the other hand have a varying size, color palette, and until this 100$ bill came out - better anti-counterfeiting measures.
goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency.
Tried that loooong ago. It was so cumbersome that it was almost instantly dropped by nearly everyone as soon as currency was invented. It can be highly entertaining though. For example being paid for your services in chairs or balls of yarn.
The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.
Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty...
No... really. All we need for those to work as intended/described is a better class of humans.
Compare the angle and field of view of GTA shots (27 seconds into the video) and the angle and field of view they've used for the test.
Over half of the screen is missing and the driver is trying to navigate the car from a "frog's-eye view" as if sitting on a chair being dragged behind the car. Ergo - he can't see anything directly in front of him in the radius of about 50 meters.
What's next? "Proving" that you can't drive a tank through a wall by trying to do the same with a van?
That would be the edited Bible, right? The one that has only the "approved" pages in it? Or should I say retconned since we are talking about a work of fiction. You know... like Superman comics. Except those actually have an author, continuity is superior and the savior angle is done a lot better.
as there are people who believe in God from similar sources.
Seriously? There are several government and non-government monitoring bodies that gather and process data on gods, which issues annual and other reports on the state of their godliness? And people listen to those reports in order to know which god is on top at the moment and who to bow and pray to? Soo... all we need to do to bring back Huitzilopochtli is to somehow hack that report (with a little help from Zero Cool and Cereal Killer) and have everyone believe that it is the good old human sacrifice time. Then quickly sacrifice all the priests of that Roman god, burn the scriptures, tear down the buildings and statues and voila - prove that he does not exist. It works kinda like that, right? I mean... you could steal money from Bill Gates, why not steal divinity? After that we just delete Huitzilopochtli and install Chuck Norris as god, so no one in the Universe will mess with us.
God, as defined, does not need your acknowledgment to exist . This entity has rules that he expects you to follow
You do realize that these two statements are somewhat contradictory? Cause... if he does not need acknowledgment - why the rules in the first place? Why not make us with those rules pre-installed? You know... Like Asimov's robots. And why rules at all? Shouldn't omnipotence deal with all the situations where rules need to come into play? Is it some kind of omnipotence that only works on Tuesdays? Or doesn't work against anything that is yellow?
If there is an entity that can create the universe and the laws of that universe, that entity may well not be bound by those same rules.
Three 'maybes' and a 'no' do not make a 'yes'. "If there is Santa Clause, he may be able to pull a Easter Bunny out of a hat, so Santa may be able to do brain surgery using only his toes." - would be about as valid statement as the one above.
That means that the scientific method is pointless with that entity because not only can that entity violate those otherwise immutable laws at will, but that entity could, in theory, change any event at any time or place to completely alter history so that whatever they do not only happens, but appears to have been something that evolved naturally.
So basically he can make a rock so heavy that he himself can't lift it, thus proving he is not omnipotent, ergo - is not THE God but some smaller deity who is just pretending to be THE God. Basically... there is a pretty good chance that everyone out there is actually bowing down to supreme evil. I mean... since you can't prove anything.
But... wouldn't pointlessness of scientific method and the ability to not be ruled by his own laws of the universe imply that there actually is no free will? Since that prankster god of yours will go back in time and bury fossils in the ground just to fuck with our heads - isn't he actually denying us the choice NOT to believe in him. Cause free will and faith work both ways. You can chose not to believe despite evidence.
So, with no free will, everything being controlled by god - those acts of "violating those otherwise immutable laws at will" are actually NEEDED by god. He NEEDS things to run in a very specific way. That does not sound really omnipotent to me. More like trying to jury rig the universe. You might expect something like that from Dr. Who, but not from that guy that claims to go by "I am".
If any of it was actually "Word of God", wouldn't he just zap the fake ones out of existence? Or better yet! Have them start burning when put to the actual "sacred" texts, burning out completely without damaging the "true Word of God". You know... miracles and that shit.
It's not like Jesus's dad is the bad old god that kicks you out in the desert to wander around it until you finally understand what he is telling you. He should be a loving god. Not a mindfucking, constantly testing you, teasing god. For fucks sake - he gave his only son to save our asses. Why not make some paper burn? You know... if he actually existed instead of being an invention in order to make money and control the masses. Kinda like Mickey Mouse.
they are doing what businesses do and people are willing to pay or sacrifice freedom and/or privacy for what they offer.
There is something terribly wrong with the world where you must sacrifice anything other than money in order to buy products/services. What happened to "legal tender for all debts, public and private"?
That is exactly what I am saying! In fact, I have been informed by my opposite self from a parallel universe (the one where Spock wears a beard) that THAT is exactly what happened there!
Also, there is no Apple at all in that universe, Microsoft makes the best software and their OS is free and open source. And just for the hell of it - all PCs come with dual boot Linux distro of your choice. But nobody uses it as it is far inferior to what Microsoft has to offer. There are also permanent human colonies on Moon AND Mars. Strange world that.
They are not. Most sites actually made the transition earlier, while others are actually cases of those iPhone-specific versions. Both being completely unrelated to iPad. TED.com is a prime and loudly touted in TFA example of that.
And again, it is the case of Apple saying: "See? We actually planned to land on our face and not on our ass with that no-flash feature. Now you can easily and seamlessly, one might even say 'out of the box' use the very same sites you are used to using on your iPhone - right there on your iPad instead. See - here is the list of those sites that work just fine on it. Soon, you will find out that you actually don't need the rest of the internet at all.".
Advertising to THOSE people would be preaching to the choir for certain advertisers and meaningless to most others. So they are actually a waste of advertising money.
Sure, you will be able to sell them every single shiny thingamajig by Apple or a lot of Starbucks lattes - but also only about zero items that are not "hip".
It is yet again a marketing ploy by Apple to make it look like the iPad is much bigger "player" than it is, while presenting its weakness as a strength.
Websites on the list are not bending over backwards to appease the mighty iPad. They are either offering a "alternative solution" for portable devices that don't run Flash, while still keeping the Flash version running - OR simply trying to move away from Flash on their own.
It is not like they got together and said: "Hey, this new_thingyTM is coming out - we better change everything so that those couple of thousand users can use our site so that the new_thingyTM sells better and doesn't flop. Quick! To the HTML5-mobile!".
It is simply a list of "compatible sites" that will actually work with the new bigger iPod - unlike every other video site on the internets. You know... It is not a bug that it doesn't run Flash. It is a feature. See - here is the list of sites that work just fine on it.
Slashdot Mirror
You know how when you use your hot-glue gun you leave the stick inside as well as the melted glue and next time you turn it on it melts?
Same would happen if you would try to autoclave/soak in boiling water something glued with hot glue.
The best part is that it probably would not fall right off - the bond would get weaker and weaker until on third or fourth use ampules of blood start flying across the room.
Please. It is a fun movie but it IS flawed.
1) No they didn't. Alien fighter was not operational until "last couple of days when all lights and gizmos have lit up".
Also, "hacking" into an iPod does not mean that you can "hack into" OSX the same way.
2) Irrelevant. It wasn't AlienOS. He didn't even have an actual alien computer other than the one that ran the alien fighter. Which was built for only that single task.
You know... like the way they DON'T actually put one PowerBook into an F22 and another one into M1 Abrams and just load up the proper software.
3) And yet they had the concept of shields, armor and various weapons. Even using telepathy as a weapon. Like... you know... using a living computer to attack and take control over another computer.
But sure. Any form of security to prevent that never occurred to them. Oh, no.. wait.. I actually meant that it would.
4) Can you "hack into" your computer using a C64? How about a pocket calculator? How about one of them old room-sized computer that used vacuum tubes?
And let us not even go into computers that use some completely different form of power and not electricity like every single one our civilization uses. Cause ID4 aliens didn't use electricity.
Also, see 1.
5) No. You assume that. Nowhere is it mentioned that aliens had a PerfectOS 1111.111111 installed. It would however be eons beyond anything humanity has at the moment.
They did travel here from across the galaxy and not vice versa.
6) Wait, what? See 1 again.
And again. It is JUST A MOVIE!
Winning makes you VICTORIOUS!
...there is more than one way to play...
Winning in a Wii game does not necessarily mean exercising.
Well, when we were the only country on Earth with a binding written constitution
Let me guess - you are posting from a parallel universe, right?
...the Y2K bug.
I tend to take any prediction anyone in the computer industry makes with a rather large grain of salt since then.
Particularly the ones relating to "the end of the world as we know it" and similar predictions of global occurrences.
Seeing "END OF THE WORLD!!!11eleven!" not happen before your eyes does that to you.
The point was that Bajorans have made it to Cardassia long before either species had developed warp technology.
Kinda like as if Ikaros would suddenly made it to Alpha Centauri in a matter of minutes. And found Na'vi there.
Whether Bajorans used chemical rockets, space elevators or giant catapults to get their solar-sail ships to space in the first place is rather irrelevant compared to that.
Do you really know the purpose of life? I don't (though I suspect there is no such thing as a purpose to life). But I do believe in acting morally, and if I thought that my sacrifice would prevent a war on an unimaginable scale, then yes, I would think that my self-sacrifice would be obligatory.
a - How can you act morally if you don't believe in the purpose of life?
Even the most backward moral teaching rests on the rule that life is sacred. Well... human life in most of those.
Ergo, it has inherent value and morally - purpose. You can't have morality without life. Rocks don't have their own school of morality.
b - It is nice to see that there are still candylanders like you around. I thought that the last of you was killed in a mugging back in the 80s.
War on an unimaginable scale (and I can imagine quite a bit) might seem like the worst option to you - as you have never considered a possibility of genocide or extinction.
Compared to those options war is not only favorable but obligatory. Just ask the Jews. I hear that they have some experience in both fields of research.
c - You keep using those words. Morals, ethic... You do realize that they are strictly human tribal values?
Not even the entire humanity has the same moral and ethical believes. Why do you think that it will have ANY relation to the beliefs of a non-primate intelligence?
And you don't have to go very far to experiment with that. Just look at the cats - they don't give a flying fuck about stealing, mooching and killing for sport.
They would probably also lie to us if they could (you can't really say that they are lying when they purr our buttons - it is us humans that misinterpret that for affection or love).
On the other side of the scale - we can just as well be savage sociopaths compared to say... dogs.
Now... try imagining (or just read up on your Orson Scott Card) the contact with a civilization/culture/entity that has nothing to do with our cave-dweller's tribal moral.
Or just go and kill yourself. You ARE advocating self-immolation after all.
Just go way back and kill baby Cain. That should fix EVERYTHING!
I do think that it follows from my logic that if there is a comparable or greater power than us in the galaxy, the moral thing for us to do is to destroy ourselves before we can start colonizing interstellar space.
Right... My post makes "silly assumptions".
So... according to that logic every intelligent species will eventually fit your criteria for self-immolation. BRILLIANT!
Not only did you solve the Fermi paradox, you have also cracked the purpose of life. Its purpose being to end.
Who's your logic mentor? Agent Smith?
That sounds like a great way to get "sterilized" yourself by:
a) your own probes turned against you by the civilizations that you intended to "sterilize" OR by a computer glitch,
b) by a civilization or civilizations that you have not yet met but who have already heard about your reputation,
c) by a civilization that is way more developed than yours - as nobody likes living next door to a psycho,
d) getting your civilization torn from inside by your own people or their psychoses due to the fact that not everyone is a heartless bastard willing to condone to a xenocide or two or dozen.
There is no knee-jerk but knee-jerk and jerks are its prophets.
100$ bills are waaaay easier to counterfeit. Why?
Cause you can still print the same 100s from 20, 30, 50 years ago. Old 100s are still legal tender.
All dollar bills are the same size, shape and color so you can bleach "smaller" bills and reprint them.
And as you still need dollar currency to buy oil - they are much more common around the world than any other currency.
Euros on the other hand have a varying size, color palette, and until this 100$ bill came out - better anti-counterfeiting measures.
Everyone neighborhood or town run their own bank.
Tried that. Didn't work. Great for frauds though.
goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency.
Tried that loooong ago. It was so cumbersome that it was almost instantly dropped by nearly everyone as soon as currency was invented.
It can be highly entertaining though. For example being paid for your services in chairs or balls of yarn.
There is evidence that Japanese have been into "tentacle porn" at least since 17th century. It was around probably even earlier than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman's_Wife
The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.
Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.
Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty...
No... really. All we need for those to work as intended/described is a better class of humans.
Compare the angle and field of view of GTA shots (27 seconds into the video) and the angle and field of view they've used for the test.
Over half of the screen is missing and the driver is trying to navigate the car from a "frog's-eye view" as if sitting on a chair being dragged behind the car.
Ergo - he can't see anything directly in front of him in the radius of about 50 meters.
What's next?
"Proving" that you can't drive a tank through a wall by trying to do the same with a van?
It was already explained in the Bible
That would be the edited Bible, right? The one that has only the "approved" pages in it?
Or should I say retconned since we are talking about a work of fiction. You know... like Superman comics.
Except those actually have an author, continuity is superior and the savior angle is done a lot better.
as there are people who believe in God from similar sources.
Seriously?
There are several government and non-government monitoring bodies that gather and process data on gods, which issues annual and other reports on the state of their godliness?
And people listen to those reports in order to know which god is on top at the moment and who to bow and pray to?
Soo... all we need to do to bring back Huitzilopochtli is to somehow hack that report (with a little help from Zero Cool and Cereal Killer) and have everyone believe that it is the good old human sacrifice time.
Then quickly sacrifice all the priests of that Roman god, burn the scriptures, tear down the buildings and statues and voila - prove that he does not exist.
It works kinda like that, right? I mean... you could steal money from Bill Gates, why not steal divinity?
After that we just delete Huitzilopochtli and install Chuck Norris as god, so no one in the Universe will mess with us.
God, as defined, does not need your acknowledgment to exist
.
This entity has rules that he expects you to follow
You do realize that these two statements are somewhat contradictory?
Cause... if he does not need acknowledgment - why the rules in the first place? Why not make us with those rules pre-installed?
You know... Like Asimov's robots.
And why rules at all? Shouldn't omnipotence deal with all the situations where rules need to come into play?
Is it some kind of omnipotence that only works on Tuesdays? Or doesn't work against anything that is yellow?
If there is an entity that can create the universe and the laws of that universe, that entity may well not be bound by those same rules.
Three 'maybes' and a 'no' do not make a 'yes'.
"If there is Santa Clause, he may be able to pull a Easter Bunny out of a hat, so Santa may be able to do brain surgery using only his toes." - would be about as valid statement as the one above.
That means that the scientific method is pointless with that entity because not only can that entity violate those otherwise immutable laws at will, but that entity could, in theory, change any event at any time or place to completely alter history so that whatever they do not only happens, but appears to have been something that evolved naturally.
So basically he can make a rock so heavy that he himself can't lift it, thus proving he is not omnipotent, ergo - is not THE God but some smaller deity who is just pretending to be THE God.
Basically... there is a pretty good chance that everyone out there is actually bowing down to supreme evil.
I mean... since you can't prove anything.
But... wouldn't pointlessness of scientific method and the ability to not be ruled by his own laws of the universe imply that there actually is no free will?
Since that prankster god of yours will go back in time and bury fossils in the ground just to fuck with our heads - isn't he actually denying us the choice NOT to believe in him.
Cause free will and faith work both ways. You can chose not to believe despite evidence.
So, with no free will, everything being controlled by god - those acts of "violating those otherwise immutable laws at will" are actually NEEDED by god.
He NEEDS things to run in a very specific way.
That does not sound really omnipotent to me. More like trying to jury rig the universe.
You might expect something like that from Dr. Who, but not from that guy that claims to go by "I am".
In other words, scie
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc.
But first, I will need a gun and several volunteers.
Step right up folks, don't be shy, this won't hurt a bit and you may get to see god in person.
If any of it was actually "Word of God", wouldn't he just zap the fake ones out of existence? Or better yet!
Have them start burning when put to the actual "sacred" texts, burning out completely without damaging the "true Word of God".
You know... miracles and that shit.
It's not like Jesus's dad is the bad old god that kicks you out in the desert to wander around it until you finally understand what he is telling you.
He should be a loving god. Not a mindfucking, constantly testing you, teasing god.
For fucks sake - he gave his only son to save our asses. Why not make some paper burn?
You know... if he actually existed instead of being an invention in order to make money and control the masses.
Kinda like Mickey Mouse.
they are doing what businesses do and people are willing to pay or sacrifice freedom and/or privacy for what they offer.
There is something terribly wrong with the world where you must sacrifice anything other than money in order to buy products/services.
What happened to "legal tender for all debts, public and private"?
That is exactly what I am saying!
In fact, I have been informed by my opposite self from a parallel universe (the one where Spock wears a beard) that THAT is exactly what happened there!
Also, there is no Apple at all in that universe, Microsoft makes the best software and their OS is free and open source.
And just for the hell of it - all PCs come with dual boot Linux distro of your choice.
But nobody uses it as it is far inferior to what Microsoft has to offer.
There are also permanent human colonies on Moon AND Mars.
Strange world that.
They are not.
Most sites actually made the transition earlier, while others are actually cases of those iPhone-specific versions. Both being completely unrelated to iPad.
TED.com is a prime and loudly touted in TFA example of that.
And again, it is the case of Apple saying:
"See? We actually planned to land on our face and not on our ass with that no-flash feature.
Now you can easily and seamlessly, one might even say 'out of the box' use the very same sites you are used to using on your iPhone - right there on your iPad instead.
See - here is the list of those sites that work just fine on it. Soon, you will find out that you actually don't need the rest of the internet at all.".
Advertising to THOSE people would be preaching to the choir for certain advertisers and meaningless to most others.
So they are actually a waste of advertising money.
Sure, you will be able to sell them every single shiny thingamajig by Apple or a lot of Starbucks lattes - but also only about zero items that are not "hip".
It is yet again a marketing ploy by Apple to make it look like the iPad is much bigger "player" than it is, while presenting its weakness as a strength.
Websites on the list are not bending over backwards to appease the mighty iPad.
They are either offering a "alternative solution" for portable devices that don't run Flash, while still keeping the Flash version running - OR simply trying to move away from Flash on their own.
It is not like they got together and said: "Hey, this new_thingyTM is coming out - we better change everything so that those couple of thousand users can use our site so that the new_thingyTM sells better and doesn't flop. Quick! To the HTML5-mobile!".
It is simply a list of "compatible sites" that will actually work with the new bigger iPod - unlike every other video site on the internets.
You know... It is not a bug that it doesn't run Flash. It is a feature. See - here is the list of sites that work just fine on it.