> Not to play devils' advocate here, but why is he throwing a hissyfit over Iran launching payload into space (if that's even true... the details are scarse, to say the least). Have they even broke a treaty here?
> Not to play devils' advocate here, but why is he throwing a hissyfit over Iran launching payload into space (if that's even true... the details are scarse, to say the least).
Because Certain People need an excuse to start another war.
> The difficulty is being able to support every distro of Linux. It's impossible. I say that one is picked, say Ubuntu and support that with proper drivers and support.
On their web site you can order Precision workstations w/ Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed.
> Any intelligence advanced enough to reach Earth from another star system (or dimension?) would easily be able to disguise their presence so we couldn't see them but they could still study us.
Yeah, I like the claim that the US government is giving the Aliens permission to abduct us for anal probings in exchange for military secrets. Like Aliens of the type imagined would need the government's permission.
> I can't accept the thinking that a sufficiently advanced race would feel it was neccessary to go out and conquer the galaxy, which pretty much blows this theory out of the water.
Also, it requires generation after generation of colonists to devote their lives to the furtherance of the Master Plan, rather than, say, trying to make their own lives more comfortable.
How long do idealistic agendas that require self-sacrifice last among our species? How long do colonies faithfully serve the motherland before deciding to revolt and set their own agenda?
> Fair enough. You can buy a Lexus that will steer itself while parallel parking, and the DARPA thing is getting pretty interesting.
And compare that to what Clarke & Kubrik thought we'd have by 2001.
Face it, all but a few kooks have given up on trying to create a machine that will pass the Turing test, and as a result the field of AI has spent the last several decades concentrating on tiny little problems such as how to find a route, or park your car when you get there... which are in fact impressive, but wouldn't in the wildest imagining add up to a HAL 9000 if we put all those solutions on a single spaceship's computer, however powerful it might be.
> Look at computing technology; things are moving so fast that my current metric for buying anything is 'do I really need it right now' because it will be bigger, faster and cheaper in 3 months, 6 months and so on.
OTOH, look at how much progress AI has made in the past 50 years.
Re: Why "Fortunately for the human race"?
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> I venture to disagree, strongly. So far the explorers have only been fortunate, on the whole, for white men of Indo-European origin.
And for the presumably black men who first stepped out of Africa...
> * Artificially intelligent computers will make the trip, bringing along only our DNA and sufficient robotics.
* When they get there, they will either terraform marginal planets, or genetically engineer the DNA they brought with them into suitable forms. Probably a combination of both.
* They'll use system local resources to build more of themselves and set out again.
More likely they'll use the DNA as fuel to keep the generators running while they set out to colonize the world for themselves.
>> Besides the fact that there is historical proof that a "man" named Jesus lived around the 30
> Now, I could be missing some data, and if so, by all means correct me, but my current understanding is that the first actual record that we have is from about 24 years after Jesus was to have died, in an AD 64 letter from Tacitus that mentions the Christian cult (his own words.)
And IIRC all he mentions is that there was a disturbance among the Jews of Rome arising from a dispute over whether a certain "Chrestos" was dead or alive.
> Ok, lets say the world is warming up. Is that bad? Seriously, is that really bad?
Consider the direct cost of moving all the world's coastal cities to higher ground.
Consider what's going to happen when the world's current breadbaskets turn to deserts, and some of the present day's have-not countries find themselves sitting on the new best farmland.
> Nature is just fine tuning for the 6.5 new critters crawling on it. It needs to warm up to have more vegetation to scrub out the CO2. Let nature do it's thing.
Yeah, nature doesn't care. But most of us kind of like our easy dinosaur-free lifestyle, and would like to pass it on to our children.
> Man contemplating whole scale planetary changes like this is similar to giving children an atomic bomb kit.
Yeah, probably so. But we're being forced into the terraforming business whether we like it or not.
Cutting emissions is surely the safest way to manage it. (And for those of you still denying that its anthropogenic, it hardly matters. We have the need and the power to do something about it, and it's past time we got started.)
> This the same Calder often quoted derogatorily on certain websites with anti environmentalist leanings? several quote an article "In the Grip of a New Ice Age?" in the National Wildlife Federation's journal, International Wildlife attributed to a "Nigel Calder" in 70's the line they like to quote is: "the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
Interestingly, Wikipedia shows him as indeed the former editor of New Scientist - from the early 1960s. Since then he's been an SF writer, with a respectable list of publications.
As for "new ice age", within the past few years there has been an article in Scientific American where the author claimed that we would be slipping into an ice age right now, if not for anthropogenic global warming. Unfortunately (according to the author), we're slightly overcompensating rather than keeping the temperature flat.
As for nukes, as I understand it it was Sagan et al.'s analysis of how a nuclear war could lead to a nuclear winter that got people thinking about the effects of all the stuff we've been putting in the air.
> I can't wait for Bush and his Pentagon to protect us from cyberwar. After all, the Bush doctrine of using one attack on us to justify attacking someone who hadn't attacked us, distracting us from the original attacker, is really paying off.
Hey, current thought among the Bush administration and the neocon "thinkers" that got us in to all this, is that if you blow one war you should start another one so you can try again.
> In the US we even have a north south division that is a hold over from the civil war.
Actually, it's a hold-over from the original settlement pattern: royal colonies in the south, privatish colonies in the north.
That "culture war" was part of the cause of our Civil War, not a result of it. Arguably it was a delayed colonial re-fight of the homeland's Civil War (roundheads vs. cavaliers) of a couple of centuries earlier.
> It is your choice to make. Like I said, the analogy isn't perfect. But you do introduce the concept of Pascal's Wager. That is, weighing the possible benefits and consequences of a belief in God. In Pascal's eyes, the benefit of belief outweighs the investment needed to believe.
Of course, Pascal's Wager requires buying into certain tacit assumptions that load the bet.
Suppose a God exists, but doesn't want to be believed in?
Suppose a different God exists, and will punish you for believing in Pascal's?
The wager is merely a bit of foolish self-rationalization.
Slashdot Mirror
> Not to play devils' advocate here, but why is he throwing a hissyfit over Iran launching payload into space (if that's even true... the details are scarse, to say the least). Have they even broke a treaty here?
Not unless Wikipedia's summary of the treaty's articles is missing something big.
Just more warmongering. Though I'm surprised the UK is still playing that game.
> > Sir Richard Dalton, told the BBC that, if confirmed, such a move could destabilise the Middle East
> Because the Middle East is so stable right now.
And because a long history of western interventions has done so much to help.
> Not to play devils' advocate here, but why is he throwing a hissyfit over Iran launching payload into space (if that's even true... the details are scarse, to say the least).
Because Certain People need an excuse to start another war.
> The difficulty is being able to support every distro of Linux. It's impossible. I say that one is picked, say Ubuntu and support that with proper drivers and support.
On their web site you can order Precision workstations w/ Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed.
> Any intelligence advanced enough to reach Earth from another star system (or dimension?) would easily be able to disguise their presence so we couldn't see them but they could still study us.
Yeah, I like the claim that the US government is giving the Aliens permission to abduct us for anal probings in exchange for military secrets. Like Aliens of the type imagined would need the government's permission.
> I can't accept the thinking that a sufficiently advanced race would feel it was neccessary to go out and conquer the galaxy, which pretty much blows this theory out of the water.
Also, it requires generation after generation of colonists to devote their lives to the furtherance of the Master Plan, rather than, say, trying to make their own lives more comfortable.
How long do idealistic agendas that require self-sacrifice last among our species? How long do colonies faithfully serve the motherland before deciding to revolt and set their own agenda?
> Fair enough. You can buy a Lexus that will steer itself while parallel parking, and the DARPA thing is getting pretty interesting.
And compare that to what Clarke & Kubrik thought we'd have by 2001.
Face it, all but a few kooks have given up on trying to create a machine that will pass the Turing test, and as a result the field of AI has spent the last several decades concentrating on tiny little problems such as how to find a route, or park your car when you get there... which are in fact impressive, but wouldn't in the wildest imagining add up to a HAL 9000 if we put all those solutions on a single spaceship's computer, however powerful it might be.
> Wow. That's _several_ sci-fi movies/books/video games waiting to be made.
Errr, make that "already made".
> > To boldly go where no man has gone before" is a POWERFUL
split infinitive.
> Look at computing technology; things are moving so fast that my current metric for buying anything is 'do I really need it right now' because it will be bigger, faster and cheaper in 3 months, 6 months and so on.
OTOH, look at how much progress AI has made in the past 50 years.
> I venture to disagree, strongly. So far the explorers have only been fortunate, on the whole, for white men of Indo-European origin.
And for the presumably black men who first stepped out of Africa...
> * Artificially intelligent computers will make the trip, bringing along only our DNA and sufficient robotics.
* When they get there, they will either terraform marginal planets, or genetically engineer the DNA they brought with them into suitable forms. Probably a combination of both.
* They'll use system local resources to build more of themselves and set out again.
More likely they'll use the DNA as fuel to keep the generators running while they set out to colonize the world for themselves.
>> Besides the fact that there is historical proof that a "man" named Jesus lived around the 30
> Now, I could be missing some data, and if so, by all means correct me, but my current understanding is that the first actual record that we have is from about 24 years after Jesus was to have died, in an AD 64 letter from Tacitus that mentions the Christian cult (his own words.)
And IIRC all he mentions is that there was a disturbance among the Jews of Rome arising from a dispute over whether a certain "Chrestos" was dead or alive.
> ...to precisely counteract the contribution due to global warming?
[Dr. Strangelove, looking at thermometer on the wall]: "Ok, one more ought to do it."
> Ok, lets say the world is warming up. Is that bad? Seriously, is that really bad?
Consider the direct cost of moving all the world's coastal cities to higher ground.
Consider what's going to happen when the world's current breadbaskets turn to deserts, and some of the present day's have-not countries find themselves sitting on the new best farmland.
> Nature is just fine tuning for the 6.5 new critters crawling on it. It needs to warm up to have more vegetation to scrub out the CO2. Let nature do it's thing.
Yeah, nature doesn't care. But most of us kind of like our easy dinosaur-free lifestyle, and would like to pass it on to our children.
> Man contemplating whole scale planetary changes like this is similar to giving children an atomic bomb kit.
Yeah, probably so. But we're being forced into the terraforming business whether we like it or not.
Cutting emissions is surely the safest way to manage it. (And for those of you still denying that its anthropogenic, it hardly matters. We have the need and the power to do something about it, and it's past time we got started.)
> If global warming did not exist, leftists would have to invent it.
No, leftists would have invented global cooling. Warming will turn more states red, but cooling would turn the blue.
> This the same Calder often quoted derogatorily on certain websites with anti environmentalist leanings? several quote an article "In the Grip of a New Ice Age?" in the National Wildlife Federation's journal, International Wildlife attributed to a "Nigel Calder" in 70's the line they like to quote is: "the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
Interestingly, Wikipedia shows him as indeed the former editor of New Scientist - from the early 1960s. Since then he's been an SF writer, with a respectable list of publications.
As for "new ice age", within the past few years there has been an article in Scientific American where the author claimed that we would be slipping into an ice age right now, if not for anthropogenic global warming. Unfortunately (according to the author), we're slightly overcompensating rather than keeping the temperature flat.
As for nukes, as I understand it it was Sagan et al.'s analysis of how a nuclear war could lead to a nuclear winter that got people thinking about the effects of all the stuff we've been putting in the air.
> oh noes he discredited the cult of global warming! he MUST be in the pocket of big business.
I'm just glad to hear that all those $10K awards didn't go to waste.
> I can't wait for Bush and his Pentagon to protect us from cyberwar. After all, the Bush doctrine of using one attack on us to justify attacking someone who hadn't attacked us, distracting us from the original attacker, is really paying off.
Hey, current thought among the Bush administration and the neocon "thinkers" that got us in to all this, is that if you blow one war you should start another one so you can try again.
> I wonder what their response would be to the attack of a botnet.
Good thing the story isn't on a DoD site, or Slashdot might get some retaliatory cruise missiles.
I didn't want those zombied servers anyway.
> In the US we even have a north south division that is a hold over from the civil war.
Actually, it's a hold-over from the original settlement pattern: royal colonies in the south, privatish colonies in the north.
That "culture war" was part of the cause of our Civil War, not a result of it. Arguably it was a delayed colonial re-fight of the homeland's Civil War (roundheads vs. cavaliers) of a couple of centuries earlier.
> It is your choice to make. Like I said, the analogy isn't perfect. But you do introduce the concept of Pascal's Wager. That is, weighing the possible benefits and consequences of a belief in God. In Pascal's eyes, the benefit of belief outweighs the investment needed to believe.
Of course, Pascal's Wager requires buying into certain tacit assumptions that load the bet.
Suppose a God exists, but doesn't want to be believed in?
Suppose a different God exists, and will punish you for believing in Pascal's?
The wager is merely a bit of foolish self-rationalization.
> I really get tired of these quantum leap suppositions from scientists who can't predict the weather this week much less over the next millennium.
I get really amazed to see Slashdotters with 4-digit IDs who can't reason out the fallacy of that silly argument.
> This is what we get from turning science into a liberal arts track.
You said it, not me.
> 1) Environmental organizations are the 'new' home of the ex-Communists. Green on the outside, Red through and through. These are our enemies.
Happy to hear of your continued health, Senator McCarthy.