Re:Nice argument for going back to the Moon
on
Green Cheese? No.
·
· Score: 2
I wasn't aware that plant seeds and bacterial cultures were expensive equipment.
Well, obviously they're not. But look at how many farmers are asking for grants and stuff. It's not the grains that are expensive, it's the rest of the stuff you need for planting that is. From tractors to fertilizers to pesticides. The costs revolve around the infrastructure you need to get a decent plantation going, not the seeds themselves.
To do this you need enough people there to set up and run the gear to make glass, build structures and so forth. It's a task many times bigger than Apollo, agreed. But if they are going to be there for long, doing this preliminary work to make the area habitable would pay off in vastly reduced shipping costs down the line.
As I said before, in the long run it's better to grow your own food than to ship it from Earth. But it's all a matter of how much you're gonna produce, and how many people you're gonna feed. I read somewhere that you need a really huge piece of land in order to be self-sufficient, growing your own food and keeping your own livestock.
It's cheaper to grow food in the moon for a hundred people than to send it from Earth. It's cheaper to send food for a couple of guys in the moon than to grow it there.
I'm all in favor of having human colonies in the moon, and all, but that's still far down the road.
Damn. I don't want to defend my country from an attack by some troll, in another language, in a board which is even located in another country. I dont't want to. Don't wanna.
Obviously, I will.
Backgroudn info: the Zapatista movement was supposedly started by the way the Federal Government had turned a blind eye to the local comunities in the state of Chiapas. So a few insurgents put up a rag-tag army made up basically of local natives, and started attacking soldiers and policemen in several towns and cities in the state.
But since then, they've turned from a social movement into a mainly political one. They wont end their war (which they declared) with the Mexican Government until several points they're making are met. However, some of these points are incredibly unfair: they claim to be defending native's human rights, but they want the Constitution to preserver they're "usos y costumbres", their way of life, with which in several cases they're even worse off than a regular citizen. Oh, and they also want to receive federal grants and money to do so.
Extreme violence? Extreme prejudice? I'll grant you that there have been several cases where the police have crossed the line and beat up several people who were protesting peacefully. But to go from that to "extreme prejudice" seems completely far-fetched to me.
I dunno. Maybe i'm a bit fascist at heart, but I'd rather see the police and/or military charge into the National University than to see it left to the hands of so-called students on strike. Almost one full year lost, millions of dollars lost in wages and more importantly, in scientific research, and only because somewhere around 10% of the students wanted to gain political power inside the University.
So don't come here calling Mexico "an enemy of humanity". Mexico has been one of the few countries which has constantly declared Peace to be one of the basic rights of every citizen on Earth. We're one of the countries still dealing with Cuba on a friendly basis, and not due to a "die gringo yankee die" mentality which some other countries have.
Ok, It's late. I need to sleep. But my point is, we're not perfect. We're not one of the riches countries, or one of the more advanced ones. But I will not let anyone speak such lies about my country. Mod me down if you wish, but I just wont take htis kids of diffamation quietly.
Think delicious savory marinated Pork, charcoal roasted on a vertical spit in the manner of Gyros, with layers of pineapple and onion interleaved, served in a grilled corn tortilla with onion, cilantro , and salsa. ungodly good.
Guess what I had for dinner yesterday?:)
At last, someone who knows some real good mexican food, instead of just the crap that Taco Bell serves.
But here's a warning: in some parts of Mexico, the "Tacos al pastor" are also called "Tacos de trompo", a trompo being a small wooden toy with the same shape as the meat on the spit.
However, in some other parts, there are also "Tacos de trompa", which is tacos made out of pork lips and noses. I'm not kidding. And it's dangerously easy to confuse the pronuntiation of these.
In case you didn't notice, Mexico has a new "regime" now. Give them a chance. Warning: mexican political trivia follows...
There are 3 main political parties in Mexico right now. It used to be there was only one, the PRI. Now there's a president from the center-right party, the PAN, while Mexico City's Governor belongs to the leftist party, PRD.
Not that it has anything to do with the article, as far as I know, but still it's a nice bit of trivia to know.
Star Wars not being real was of course not really prior art and I can't think of any handhelp computers in it.(emphasis mine)
Hmmm. This contradiction here got me wondering. Why is it called prior art? Does it has to be artistic in any way, or at all? And does it has to be real to be successfully used against a proposed patent?
Now that I'm typing this, it sounds a bit funny, but I saw a post up there that said something about waterbeds not being patentable due to Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". So, if any scientist invents, let's say, a Warp Drive, will it not be patentable due to all the Star Trek series and movies?
One of the requirements on those chips, according to the article, was:
- Operating temperature of -40 to +85 degrees C
Now, call me an ignorant, but I thought the temperatures in outer space were considerably lower than -40 C. Does this means that they'll need some kind of heat insulation, or what?
Or maybe they're gonna overclock their CPUs, i dunno...
Re:Nice argument for going back to the Moon
on
Green Cheese? No.
·
· Score: 1
What I want to know is if any carbon and nitrogen (from CO, CO2, NH3) got captured along with the water; that would give you most of the building blocks of food along with rocket fuel, and eliminate the need to import most things from Earth. Actually, if what you're thinking about is having some kind of closed ecological system (a la Biosphere 2), I suppose there would be lots more things to import than mere CO2.
Besides, you're thinking really long-range. On the short run, I'd bet it would be more expensive to bring to the moon all the equipment required to process those basic elements, than it would be to simply bring them along. Except for the ice, of course. As you said, all you need is sunlight.
In any case, simply returning there would be great!
Well, voice-operated computers sounds like a neat idea, until you stop to consider the consequences:
- I dont know about you, but I can usually type faster than I can talk.
- Imagine yourself speaking to your computer for 8 hours straight, 5 days a week. Heck, I doubt even professional speakers do that sort of thing.
- A room full of people typing and clicking away is slightly noisy. A room full of people talking to their computers would be quite stressing.
So, all in all, i'm ok with using keyboard and mouse to work on the computer. Now, what I'd really would like to see in reality would be a functioning Holodeck. Playing VR-Quake would be sooo cool!
How can they even say that? Think about all the amazing innovations computer scientists have come up with! One click shopping! Great Porn sites! PORN SEARCH ENGINES! COMPUTER PORN! PORN! Funny... I always thought Porn was invented by lawyers, since they seem so focused on screwing everybody else, and recording it for posterity.
But hey, at least the Internet was invented by a non-computer scientist, Al Gore!
You can only pump so much money into a loosing situation before people completely give up. Yeah, tell that to the people giving their time and/or money to Amway!
For a minute there, I read "Bossoms in the Workplace", and I thought it had something to do with Sexual Harrassment in the workplace. Or working at a topless bar.
All the big slimy-looking monsters can do is probably tear you apart, eat your entrails and use your body to hatch more monsters. That's bad.
But the strings of magnet-filled bacteria could wipe out your hard drive and tape backups, making you lose all 2.3 gigabytes of your pr0n collection. That's worse.
Back in the good ol' days of the Internet, before the advent of the WWW (1990, to be exact), I started using telnet BBSs from school. When the time came to create my very first account on the Mars BBS (Greetings to those who remember T'ruth, Xenia, Lynn and the rest), I was wondering what nickname to use.
Being a teenager, I tried a few names that came to mind. Let's see... "Maverick"! Taken. "TopGun", taken too. "Montana", ditto. (Don't ask me why I wanted to chose those names. Please don't).
So, without any other fresh ideas, I just glanced down and saw that I wearing a Vuarnet t-shirt. So, I tried "Vuarnet", no one had used it, and therefore started using it as a login name in several BBSs, DikuMUDs and IRC.
Most of my friends which I made during college, met me in the computer room. Online, most of the time. So there's still a few friends who cant remember my name, but they dont care since they always greet me by my nickname.
Hell, it could've been worse. I could've been "Fruit of the Loom" or something like that...
Sounds like fun, but I can't see it happening in the near future.
- Trick or treat! Trick or treat!
- Oh, George, look at these little monsters!
- Yes, dear.
- There's a mummy, oh, and a vampire too! And a... uh... well, what are we exactly, now? A young businessman?
- Nope! I'm Bill Gates!
- Oh... right. Well, here's some Linux CDs for you! Now run along! (Closes door)
- (Looking at his new Linux CD)... this is a joke, right?
Why stop there? Let's repeat the greatest accomplishment our race has ever done, and send up our own "B" Ark somewhere else, with all of the telephone sanitizers, marketroids and lawyers.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that people with dark skin (African americans, people of color, I dunno which is the latest american P.C. term) have better resistance to radiation and stuff like that, therefore making better astronauts.
Maybe I read that in some classic Golden-Age sci-fi story. Im not sure.
Re:Why hasn't Mir gone to the pr0n industry?
on
Mir Lives
·
· Score: 1
That reminds me of a flick I saw once, "Attack from the pussysuckers from Mars". Stupid movie. So-and-so scenes. Incredibly Ed Wood-esque sets, made out of christmas bulbs and an old washer.
Peppered with trully brilliant gems of wisdom such as, "there are still several light-years to go before we reach Earth (from Mars!). Let's have sex".
All I can say is that it's the funniest porno movie I've ever seen.
God knows I have enough chicks in my life, but I feel for the less fortunate geeks that are making do with Rosie their palm pilot.
Could be worse. They could be making out with Rosie their palm pilot.
I dunno. That means that Linux has to compete with several other OS's on different areas. So whenever someone's thinking about some new application in any area, they'll think "Hey, we could use so-and-so. Or we could use Linux". Is it really better to be second best in several areas than to be number one in a few areas?
There are worse things that staying at home and reading Slashdot instead of going out to a bar on a Friday night...
...such as going out to a bar with a laptop, in order to reload Slashdot every 15 minutes.
Maybe it's time we propose a new drinking game: the Slashdrink game.
- Everytime someone writes a "First Post!", drink once.
- Everytime Jon Kats predicts the end of western civilization due to some new techno-gizmo that's come out to the market, drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions Natalie Portman, drink once.
- Everytime someone suggests a Beowulf cluster of anything, drink a Beowulf cluster of shots.
- Everytime a Slashdot editor repeats a story, drink twice (obviously).
- Everytime someone claims a patent on something, drink once.
- Everytime someone makes a vague reference to a science fiction book or TV show, just to show off his or her cultural knowledge, do a Vulcan salute and drink 42 times.
- Everytime someone acts as if "USA" is interchangeable with "Everyone on this planet", drink once.
- Everytime someone posts an article proclaiming the evils of the DMCA, RIAA, Microsoft, CIA, MCI or YMCA, flip a middle finger and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions Linux as being the be-all, end-all of western civilization, stand up, salute and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions hot grits, snort and drink once.
- Everytime you vote on a Slashdot Poll (We know you vote more than once! Admit it!), stand up, say "All hail Cowboy Neal!" and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions BattleBots, Anime shows or fluffy pink slippers, drink once. Uh, better skip the part about the slippers.
- Everytime someone mentions the NSA or Proyect Echelon, wave at the camera and drink once.
- Everytime someone posts something filled with links, merely to score Karma points, drink once.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't aware that plant seeds and bacterial cultures were expensive equipment.
Well, obviously they're not. But look at how many farmers are asking for grants and stuff. It's not the grains that are expensive, it's the rest of the stuff you need for planting that is. From tractors to fertilizers to pesticides. The costs revolve around the infrastructure you need to get a decent plantation going, not the seeds themselves.
To do this you need enough people there to set up and run the gear to make glass, build structures and so forth. It's a task many times bigger than Apollo, agreed. But if they are going to be there for long, doing this preliminary work to make the area habitable would pay off in vastly reduced shipping costs down the line.
As I said before, in the long run it's better to grow your own food than to ship it from Earth. But it's all a matter of how much you're gonna produce, and how many people you're gonna feed. I read somewhere that you need a really huge piece of land in order to be self-sufficient, growing your own food and keeping your own livestock.
It's cheaper to grow food in the moon for a hundred people than to send it from Earth. It's cheaper to send food for a couple of guys in the moon than to grow it there.
I'm all in favor of having human colonies in the moon, and all, but that's still far down the road.
Damn. I don't want to defend my country from an attack by some troll, in another language, in a board which is even located in another country. I dont't want to. Don't wanna.
Obviously, I will.
Backgroudn info: the Zapatista movement was supposedly started by the way the Federal Government had turned a blind eye to the local comunities in the state of Chiapas. So a few insurgents put up a rag-tag army made up basically of local natives, and started attacking soldiers and policemen in several towns and cities in the state.
But since then, they've turned from a social movement into a mainly political one. They wont end their war (which they declared) with the Mexican Government until several points they're making are met. However, some of these points are incredibly unfair: they claim to be defending native's human rights, but they want the Constitution to preserver they're "usos y costumbres", their way of life, with which in several cases they're even worse off than a regular citizen. Oh, and they also want to receive federal grants and money to do so.
Extreme violence? Extreme prejudice? I'll grant you that there have been several cases where the police have crossed the line and beat up several people who were protesting peacefully. But to go from that to "extreme prejudice" seems completely far-fetched to me.
I dunno. Maybe i'm a bit fascist at heart, but I'd rather see the police and/or military charge into the National University than to see it left to the hands of so-called students on strike. Almost one full year lost, millions of dollars lost in wages and more importantly, in scientific research, and only because somewhere around 10% of the students wanted to gain political power inside the University.
So don't come here calling Mexico "an enemy of humanity". Mexico has been one of the few countries which has constantly declared Peace to be one of the basic rights of every citizen on Earth. We're one of the countries still dealing with Cuba on a friendly basis, and not due to a "die gringo yankee die" mentality which some other countries have.
Ok, It's late. I need to sleep. But my point is, we're not perfect. We're not one of the riches countries, or one of the more advanced ones. But I will not let anyone speak such lies about my country. Mod me down if you wish, but I just wont take htis kids of diffamation quietly.
Licenses? We don't need no steenkin' licenses!
Think delicious savory marinated Pork, charcoal roasted on a vertical spit in the manner of Gyros, with layers of pineapple and onion interleaved, served in a grilled corn tortilla with onion, cilantro , and salsa. ungodly good. :)
Guess what I had for dinner yesterday?
At last, someone who knows some real good mexican food, instead of just the crap that Taco Bell serves.
But here's a warning: in some parts of Mexico, the "Tacos al pastor" are also called "Tacos de trompo", a trompo being a small wooden toy with the same shape as the meat on the spit.
However, in some other parts, there are also "Tacos de trompa", which is tacos made out of pork lips and noses. I'm not kidding. And it's dangerously easy to confuse the pronuntiation of these.
Oh, the humanity...
In case you didn't notice, Mexico has a new "regime" now. Give them a chance.
Warning: mexican political trivia follows...
There are 3 main political parties in Mexico right now. It used to be there was only one, the PRI. Now there's a president from the center-right party, the PAN, while Mexico City's Governor belongs to the leftist party, PRD.
Not that it has anything to do with the article, as far as I know, but still it's a nice bit of trivia to know.
If you're into cold matter stuff and near-to-zero tempratures, chech this link to see some nifty research done in Boulder, Colorado.
Pretty interesting, even if a bit more theoretical and less practical than the article we're discussing here.
Star Wars not being real was of course not really prior art and I can't think of any handhelp computers in it.(emphasis mine)
Hmmm. This contradiction here got me wondering. Why is it called prior art? Does it has to be artistic in any way, or at all? And does it has to be real to be successfully used against a proposed patent?
Now that I'm typing this, it sounds a bit funny, but I saw a post up there that said something about waterbeds not being patentable due to Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". So, if any scientist invents, let's say, a Warp Drive, will it not be patentable due to all the Star Trek series and movies?
One of the requirements on those chips, according to the article, was:
- Operating temperature of -40 to +85 degrees C
Now, call me an ignorant, but I thought the temperatures in outer space were considerably lower than -40 C. Does this means that they'll need some kind of heat insulation, or what?
Or maybe they're gonna overclock their CPUs, i dunno...
What I want to know is if any carbon and nitrogen (from CO, CO2, NH3) got captured along with the water; that would give you most of the building blocks of food along with rocket fuel, and eliminate the need to import most things from Earth.
Actually, if what you're thinking about is having some kind of closed ecological system (a la Biosphere 2), I suppose there would be lots more things to import than mere CO2.
Besides, you're thinking really long-range. On the short run, I'd bet it would be more expensive to bring to the moon all the equipment required to process those basic elements, than it would be to simply bring them along. Except for the ice, of course. As you said, all you need is sunlight.
In any case, simply returning there would be great!
Well, voice-operated computers sounds like a neat idea, until you stop to consider the consequences:
- I dont know about you, but I can usually type faster than I can talk.
- Imagine yourself speaking to your computer for 8 hours straight, 5 days a week. Heck, I doubt even professional speakers do that sort of thing.
- A room full of people typing and clicking away is slightly noisy. A room full of people talking to their computers would be quite stressing.
So, all in all, i'm ok with using keyboard and mouse to work on the computer. Now, what I'd really would like to see in reality would be a functioning Holodeck. Playing VR-Quake would be sooo cool!
How can they even say that? Think about all the amazing innovations computer scientists have come up with! One click shopping! Great Porn sites! PORN SEARCH ENGINES! COMPUTER PORN! PORN!
Funny... I always thought Porn was invented by lawyers, since they seem so focused on screwing everybody else, and recording it for posterity.
But hey, at least the Internet was invented by a non-computer scientist, Al Gore!
You can only pump so much money into a loosing situation before people completely give up.
Yeah, tell that to the people giving their time and/or money to Amway!
For a minute there, I read "Bossoms in the Workplace", and I thought it had something to do with Sexual Harrassment in the workplace. Or working at a topless bar.
So, what's your site?
www.necrophilia.org?
Scientist: Today, I'm gonna penetrate you and try to find out the origins of life itself!
Frigid Lake: Not tonight, dear, I have a headache...
All the big slimy-looking monsters can do is probably tear you apart, eat your entrails and use your body to hatch more monsters. That's bad.
But the strings of magnet-filled bacteria could wipe out your hard drive and tape backups, making you lose all 2.3 gigabytes of your pr0n collection. That's worse.
Back in the good ol' days of the Internet, before the advent of the WWW (1990, to be exact), I started using telnet BBSs from school. When the time came to create my very first account on the Mars BBS (Greetings to those who remember T'ruth, Xenia, Lynn and the rest), I was wondering what nickname to use.
Being a teenager, I tried a few names that came to mind. Let's see... "Maverick"! Taken. "TopGun", taken too. "Montana", ditto. (Don't ask me why I wanted to chose those names. Please don't).
So, without any other fresh ideas, I just glanced down and saw that I wearing a Vuarnet t-shirt. So, I tried "Vuarnet", no one had used it, and therefore started using it as a login name in several BBSs, DikuMUDs and IRC.
Most of my friends which I made during college, met me in the computer room. Online, most of the time. So there's still a few friends who cant remember my name, but they dont care since they always greet me by my nickname.
Hell, it could've been worse. I could've been "Fruit of the Loom" or something like that...
Sounds like fun, but I can't see it happening in the near future.
... this is a joke, right?
- Trick or treat! Trick or treat!
- Oh, George, look at these little monsters!
- Yes, dear.
- There's a mummy, oh, and a vampire too! And a... uh... well, what are we exactly, now? A young businessman?
- Nope! I'm Bill Gates!
- Oh... right. Well, here's some Linux CDs for you! Now run along! (Closes door)
- (Looking at his new Linux CD)
Why stop there? Let's repeat the greatest accomplishment our race has ever done, and send up our own "B" Ark somewhere else, with all of the telephone sanitizers, marketroids and lawyers.
I heard Cygnus B is an interesting spot...
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that people with dark skin (African americans, people of color, I dunno which is the latest american P.C. term) have better resistance to radiation and stuff like that, therefore making better astronauts.
Maybe I read that in some classic Golden-Age sci-fi story. Im not sure.
That reminds me of a flick I saw once, "Attack from the pussysuckers from Mars". Stupid movie. So-and-so scenes. Incredibly Ed Wood-esque sets, made out of christmas bulbs and an old washer.
Peppered with trully brilliant gems of wisdom such as, "there are still several light-years to go before we reach Earth (from Mars!). Let's have sex".
All I can say is that it's the funniest porno movie I've ever seen.
God knows I have enough chicks in my life, but I feel for the less fortunate geeks that are making do with Rosie their palm pilot.
Could be worse. They could be making out with Rosie their palm pilot.
SO, is that the planet from which all the pesky Cling-ons come from?
mutation beats specialization?
I dunno. That means that Linux has to compete with several other OS's on different areas. So whenever someone's thinking about some new application in any area, they'll think "Hey, we could use so-and-so. Or we could use Linux". Is it really better to be second best in several areas than to be number one in a few areas?
There are worse things that staying at home and reading Slashdot instead of going out to a bar on a Friday night...
...such as going out to a bar with a laptop, in order to reload Slashdot every 15 minutes.
Maybe it's time we propose a new drinking game: the Slashdrink game.
- Everytime someone writes a "First Post!", drink once.
- Everytime Jon Kats predicts the end of western civilization due to some new techno-gizmo that's come out to the market, drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions Natalie Portman, drink once.
- Everytime someone suggests a Beowulf cluster of anything, drink a Beowulf cluster of shots.
- Everytime a Slashdot editor repeats a story, drink twice (obviously).
- Everytime someone claims a patent on something, drink once.
- Everytime someone makes a vague reference to a science fiction book or TV show, just to show off his or her cultural knowledge, do a Vulcan salute and drink 42 times.
- Everytime someone acts as if "USA" is interchangeable with "Everyone on this planet", drink once.
- Everytime someone posts an article proclaiming the evils of the DMCA, RIAA, Microsoft, CIA, MCI or YMCA, flip a middle finger and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions Linux as being the be-all, end-all of western civilization, stand up, salute and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions hot grits, snort and drink once.
- Everytime you vote on a Slashdot Poll (We know you vote more than once! Admit it!), stand up, say "All hail Cowboy Neal!" and drink once.
- Everytime someone mentions BattleBots, Anime shows or fluffy pink slippers, drink once. Uh, better skip the part about the slippers.
- Everytime someone mentions the NSA or Proyect Echelon, wave at the camera and drink once.
- Everytime someone posts something filled with links, merely to score Karma points, drink once.
And so it begins...