to make them profitable. Google does so many things so well, and provides it all free to the world. It's not asking too much, I think, for them to ask companies to foot the bill for something like this if that's what it takes for them to continue to stay in business and keep doing all this neat wonderful free stuff.
I'm so sick of people giving me the bullshit argument that the first amendment was only intended to cover government censorship, and that corporate censorship was therefore somehow OK.
All have hi-tech scientific calculators that they use to tabulate your bill. And when they greet you, in stead of saying, "Hi, I'm __________, and I'll be your waitress," they say, "I'm the operator of my pocket calculator," and then they start beeping and stuff.
If you've got a perfectly good working PC, why you would go through the angst of replacing it?"
I dunno....
Maybe you're sick of rebooting frequently.
Maybe you're sick of the upgrade cycle.
Maybe you're sick of the EULA BS.
Maybe you're sick of paying for the privelege of not owning your software.
In short, maybe it's not, in fact, "pefectly good".
Yeah, it's a bit of a pain to switch over, and yeah, there's a bit of a learning curve. But my next PC will definitely be running a free/Free OS of some sort. To hell with MSFT (unless they suddenly decide to develop their own distro, but probably not even then).
But if (as I'm assuming) the elevator can only support a single 20 ton payload at a time, how can you send 1 payload per hour? You'd have to find a way to move 20 tons at a rate of 22,000 mph (or was that km/h?)
I'm pretty sure that the entire vehicle (payload + fuel) for the larger rockets weighed in at around 200 tons.
I might be confused, it's been a while since I read up on space travel. It's too bad the file in this case is 15MB.
But if I recall correctly, the largest of the Soviet Energia rockets was capable of lifting a 20 ton payload. By comparison, the US's largest heavy lift vehicle, the Saturn rockets, were capable of lifting 10 tons.
Now, if I am confused, then those numbers might be 20,000 lbs and 10,000 lbs instead of 20 tons and 10 tons, respectively. That's *still* a fairly good sized chunk of the 20 ton payload promised by this space elevator idea.
20 tons is about the limit for conventional heavy lift to orbit right now, but if that's all that can be taken up at one time by what can only be described as a MASSIVE engineering project, it's going to create a pretty significant bottleneck in the long run, even if it is a considerable improvement over what we can do right now.
But the weight to payload ratio sucks pretty hard. I imagine the up-front construction costs would be a lot higher than the cost of building rockets. So even if it's cheaper after, say, 10,000 uses, we might not see anyone wanting to build it.
In ancient times, banishment used to be a form of punishment. I'm glad that now that we have the capability of shooting "undeseriables" into space, we've elected not to do that. I can't tell you how safe I feel down here on Earth now.
And you're missing an even simpler point that "hasn't yet" can't be proven to mean "can never".
We already have proof that intelligent, autonomous things can exist. WE exist. There is nothing in principle which prevents us from building intelligent, autonomous things that aren't merely copies of ourselves.
The only reason it might not happen is if we go extinct before we're able to complete the work necessary to bring it about.
I don't think it'd need to be done in such a convoluted manner. Simply lay off humans as their functions are taken over by the machines. When the last human is gone, there ya go.
Yes, we still have horses, I know. But they've by and large been supplanted by motor vehicles.
This is the way it's been with everything. Some stuff you just can't get anymore. No one makes it. The skills are now a lost art. Why? There's better, faster, cheaper ways to do it now.
Why is it that people should be exempted from this cycle of obsolescence? It's coming, and it'll happen soon.
Before long, we'll see fully automated fast food restaurants where no employees work. You'll just go there, place an order through a computer, pay a computer, and a computer-controlled robot will prepare, package, and serve the food to you.
We'll see the same thing with gas stations, too. And once those cars that can drive themselves become a reality, we'll see fully automated cars driving themselves to fully automated gas stations, filling themselves up.
Who will own the car? Where will it drive? It'll be owned by a company. It'll deliver shipments to other companies that need the products that the first company produces, in order to produce what they produce, which will in turn be sold to other companies.
For a while it's been people and companies. Pretty soon, it'll be people and companies and robots. Then it'll be companies and robots. Then it'll probably just be companies. The robots will still be there, I suppose, but they'll all be owned by the companies, and will be thought of as "cells" to the company's "organism" and so making a distinction for them will be thought of as redundant.
People aren't the only agents which can make purchases.
In a few years those refrigerators that connect to the internet will actually be in people's homes. They'll order replacement parts for themselves and place work orders for maintenance. Then at some point they'll get to the point where they automatically order more groceries when they detect you're running out of them.
How long will it be before the repairman who comes to service the refrigerator is actually a robot?
Once people have become obsolete, machines will buy things for themselves. On a larger scale, superorganisms such as corporate entities will undertake massive projects to further their own unforeseeable ends, consuming and producing massive quantities of stuff in the process, further stimulating the economy.
(In the future, completely automated corporations will exist, the people who used to work there replaced by AI, computers, general-purpose robots, and other more specialized machines. In fact, this is already happening, and has been happening for a long time, only people are still involved. But one day, perhaps as soon as within a century, they won't be. This is not science fiction, either; it's the extrapolation of a current trend.)
Machines would do all the work, and we'd lead pampered lives of luxury with a standard of living unimagined by previous generations.
Then, someone realized that if people aren't needed to do the work, rather than taking care of them and letting them live comfortable, fulfilling lives, we can just leave them out of the equation entirely. More profits to the few who are still needed to keep the machines running, and to those who actually own the machines.
The result? Mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass misery.
Human beings are becoming obsolete parts of that machine we call The Economy. Those who are still useful only serve to keep fueling the Economy to further render homo sapiens obsolete.
Once the obsolescence process is complete, there will be an extinction. But don't be too sad about it. The machines which will have replaced us will be a far superior race than we.
I hope they recognize the location of the server as the place of publication.... Locate your server in a public restroom where there's lots of graffiti. Then use a "community standards" argument to defend your content.
Slashdot Mirror
to make them profitable. Google does so many things so well, and provides it all free to the world. It's not asking too much, I think, for them to ask companies to foot the bill for something like this if that's what it takes for them to continue to stay in business and keep doing all this neat wonderful free stuff.
This gives me all the more reason to want to break their copy protection and rip my own permanent copy.
I'm so sick of people giving me the bullshit argument that the first amendment was only intended to cover government censorship, and that corporate censorship was therefore somehow OK.
All have hi-tech scientific calculators that they use to tabulate your bill. And when they greet you, in stead of saying, "Hi, I'm __________, and I'll be your waitress," they say, "I'm the operator of my pocket calculator," and then they start beeping and stuff.
- Maybe you're sick of rebooting frequently.
- Maybe you're sick of the upgrade cycle.
- Maybe you're sick of the EULA BS.
- Maybe you're sick of paying for the privelege of not owning your software.
- In short, maybe it's not, in fact, "pefectly good".
Yeah, it's a bit of a pain to switch over, and yeah, there's a bit of a learning curve. But my next PC will definitely be running a free/Free OS of some sort. To hell with MSFT (unless they suddenly decide to develop their own distro, but probably not even then).But for some reason, all of a sudden, after reading this article, I wanna go home and fire up my Atari 2600 emulator.
No further need for improvement. Top of the world, ma!
But if (as I'm assuming) the elevator can only support a single 20 ton payload at a time, how can you send 1 payload per hour? You'd have to find a way to move 20 tons at a rate of 22,000 mph (or was that km/h?)
Either way that's awful fast.
I'm pretty sure that the entire vehicle (payload + fuel) for the larger rockets weighed in at around 200 tons.
I might be confused, it's been a while since I read up on space travel. It's too bad the file in this case is 15MB.
But if I recall correctly, the largest of the Soviet Energia rockets was capable of lifting a 20 ton payload. By comparison, the US's largest heavy lift vehicle, the Saturn rockets, were capable of lifting 10 tons.
Now, if I am confused, then those numbers might be 20,000 lbs and 10,000 lbs instead of 20 tons and 10 tons, respectively. That's *still* a fairly good sized chunk of the 20 ton payload promised by this space elevator idea.
20 tons is about the limit for conventional heavy lift to orbit right now, but if that's all that can be taken up at one time by what can only be described as a MASSIVE engineering project, it's going to create a pretty significant bottleneck in the long run, even if it is a considerable improvement over what we can do right now.
But the weight to payload ratio sucks pretty hard. I imagine the up-front construction costs would be a lot higher than the cost of building rockets. So even if it's cheaper after, say, 10,000 uses, we might not see anyone wanting to build it.
In ancient times, banishment used to be a form of punishment. I'm glad that now that we have the capability of shooting "undeseriables" into space, we've elected not to do that. I can't tell you how safe I feel down here on Earth now.
Er, I otto nae break them, anyway.
Blink in the commercials one frame at a time throughout the course of the show, so I don't actually have to watch them or anything.
Just make sure you test this real good so that my head doesn't explode like in Max Headroom
While the pics at the article site look nice, I'm sure that the clearest ever pictures taken of the Horsehead Nebula are not 72 dpi.
Anyone got a link to a higher quality version?
It's been officially denied.
Obviously this is going to happen for sure now.
And you're missing an even simpler point that "hasn't yet" can't be proven to mean "can never".
We already have proof that intelligent, autonomous things can exist. WE exist. There is nothing in principle which prevents us from building intelligent, autonomous things that aren't merely copies of ourselves.
The only reason it might not happen is if we go extinct before we're able to complete the work necessary to bring it about.
I don't think it'd need to be done in such a convoluted manner. Simply lay off humans as their functions are taken over by the machines. When the last human is gone, there ya go.
Check the supply of buggy whips.
Yes, we still have horses, I know. But they've by and large been supplanted by motor vehicles.
This is the way it's been with everything. Some stuff you just can't get anymore. No one makes it. The skills are now a lost art. Why? There's better, faster, cheaper ways to do it now.
Why is it that people should be exempted from this cycle of obsolescence? It's coming, and it'll happen soon.
Before long, we'll see fully automated fast food restaurants where no employees work. You'll just go there, place an order through a computer, pay a computer, and a computer-controlled robot will prepare, package, and serve the food to you.
We'll see the same thing with gas stations, too. And once those cars that can drive themselves become a reality, we'll see fully automated cars driving themselves to fully automated gas stations, filling themselves up.
Who will own the car? Where will it drive? It'll be owned by a company. It'll deliver shipments to other companies that need the products that the first company produces, in order to produce what they produce, which will in turn be sold to other companies.
For a while it's been people and companies. Pretty soon, it'll be people and companies and robots. Then it'll be companies and robots. Then it'll probably just be companies. The robots will still be there, I suppose, but they'll all be owned by the companies, and will be thought of as "cells" to the company's "organism" and so making a distinction for them will be thought of as redundant.
Riiiiiiiight.
People aren't the only agents which can make purchases.
In a few years those refrigerators that connect to the internet will actually be in people's homes. They'll order replacement parts for themselves and place work orders for maintenance. Then at some point they'll get to the point where they automatically order more groceries when they detect you're running out of them.
How long will it be before the repairman who comes to service the refrigerator is actually a robot?
Once people have become obsolete, machines will buy things for themselves. On a larger scale, superorganisms such as corporate entities will undertake massive projects to further their own unforeseeable ends, consuming and producing massive quantities of stuff in the process, further stimulating the economy.
(In the future, completely automated corporations will exist, the people who used to work there replaced by AI, computers, general-purpose robots, and other more specialized machines. In fact, this is already happening, and has been happening for a long time, only people are still involved. But one day, perhaps as soon as within a century, they won't be. This is not science fiction, either; it's the extrapolation of a current trend.)
In the short term consumers are necessary, but even consumerism can be automated. And what's more, it will be far more efficient once it is.
Machines would do all the work, and we'd lead pampered lives of luxury with a standard of living unimagined by previous generations.
Then, someone realized that if people aren't needed to do the work, rather than taking care of them and letting them live comfortable, fulfilling lives, we can just leave them out of the equation entirely. More profits to the few who are still needed to keep the machines running, and to those who actually own the machines.
The result? Mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass misery.
Human beings are becoming obsolete parts of that machine we call The Economy. Those who are still useful only serve to keep fueling the Economy to further render homo sapiens obsolete.
Once the obsolescence process is complete, there will be an extinction. But don't be too sad about it. The machines which will have replaced us will be a far superior race than we.
So in other words, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. How much time did they waste proving that?
I hope they recognize the location of the server as the place of publication.... Locate your server in a public restroom where there's lots of graffiti. Then use a "community standards" argument to defend your content.
So, like, when the aliens decode the message, does that mean their first visitors to our planet will be arrested for violating the DMCA?