According to the CIA World Fact Book (the only authority I could find which listed literacy rates for more than one country), the US has a literacy rate of 97%. This compares to 99% in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany (three Western Europe countries chosen at semi-random). So, Western Europe is 2% more literate than the US. However, the US has (according to the same source) a net migration of 3.52/1000, or about 50% more than the other three countries. I'm not sure, but doubt, this number includes the millions of undocumented aliens crossing our border with Mexico. Having that many immigrants, for whom English is a foreign language, each year is bound to play hell with our literacy rates.
True, but only if you can afford it. If you can't, you don't even get a tertiary education.
Here's a shocking thought for you: not everyone needs a college degree. That said, here in the US we have something called "student loans". This is where someone gives you money, and you promise to repay them in the future, so you can go to school now. This way, you're still paying for your own education, instead of relying on others to take care of you.
Funny...I've lived in numerous third world countries. I know what I'm comparing to.
I've been to over 40 nations, including some of the most disease invested shitholes on the planet. I've survived malaria and other nasty infections. If you honestly believe the worst of the US is anything like those other places, then you've got more problems than I can solve.
Now this tells me it's you who hasn't been to a third world country. Ever been to Brazil? The capital city is a gleaming collection of highrises, skyscrapers and riches.
Sounds like a nice place. Maybe I was wrong (despite my previously cited experience).
Too bad only the richest of the rich live there, and it's surrounded by shanty towns.
Oh, wait, maybe I wasn't. Sounds like the Brazilian capitol is surrounded by places where you're likely to walk through human feces. Last time I was in DC, I didn't notice anything quite like this in the suburbs.
it's all about priorities
You're right, it is all about priorities. And Americans consider defense to be a pretty important one. For the entire time of the Cold War, the US was pretty much required by various treaties to have a superpowerful military. Part of this was the requirement that Germany and Japan not have them, and someone had to be ready to stop the Soviets if it came to that. Now the Cold War is over, but, happily or not, the US has gotten used to being a global superpower. And whether you like or not (and that's a plural "you", and it includes me), we don't really have any choice but to stay the course we've found ourselves on. Yeah, it would be nice if we could cut our defense spending to a level like the rest of the world. But it just isn't going to be an option for a long, long time. There are too many bad guys out there, and only one sheriff to stand up to them.
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe this isn't worth it? I mean, a lot less people get killed WORLDWIDE due to terrorism per YEAR than get killed in a single WEEK due to traffic accidents in the US alone.
I've heard this argument before, and it makes no sense. You're saying people die in accidents, so we shouldn't worry about people being murdered. The only thing they have in common is that people are dying. Other than that, you're comparing apples to oranges.
(I'm taking your post out of order, forgive me.) And what about the spending!? More than half the US' budget goes to defence and related activities...and that with you nation in debt, a depressed economy, illitaracy rampant, science graduates [who stay in the US] down, in other words a third world country economy...don't you think the money should be spent somewhere else?
First, the economy isn't depressed. In fact, we never even entered a recession, since we never had two quarters of negative growth in a row (though it was a close run thing). We don't have "illitaracy" rampant, or even illiteracy for that matter. We've got the same levels of literacy as Western Europe. The only reason a large number of our science graduates leave the country is because they're all going home. Ya see, like it or not, the US has the best tertiary education system in the world. And to suggest the US economy is "third world" means you've either never been here, or never been to the third world. I didn't have to step over anybody starving in the street on my to work this morning, and didn't have to wipe shit off my shoes before coming in the building. You do have to do those things in many parts of the third world.
Are you still so adamantly giving up your bill of rights, allowing your president to get away with sealing protesters (guys/galss/grandma's with placcards) into 'free speech zones' so the camera's don't see 'em (look this one up...chilling stuff indeed when you can arrest a grandma with a sign saying something against the current administration for standing in a crowd) and much more?
Now this is a different issue entirely, which I read about just yesterday. Pretty scary, actually. I understand the Secret Service's point of view, that they're more concerned with protecting the President than anything else, but I fail to see how this accomplishes that. I'd rather see Bush use Reagan's tack: when protesters show up at your speech, use them in your speech.* But then, Bush doesn't have the communication powers that Reagan once enjoyed.
* The incident I'm thinking of was when Reagan was giving a speech in Berlin. A crowd of protesters tried to shout him down, and he said something to effect of "If those people had their way, they wouldn't be able to be here protesting in the first place." The audience loved it.
Ever had a flight delayed because the mechanics thought something was wrong, then it turned out to be no big deal? Would you rather they just shrug their shoulders and have the plane take off, anyway?
You're right about that. But it will catch more than doing nothing will.
As for your second point, this is Slashdot, I'm free to pick and choose which points in your post I want to address.;) Though it would be interesting to know how many false positives are likely with this, or any other, fingerprint system. There was a Dateline/60 Minutes/24 Hours piece recently which called into question the accuracy of fingerprinting, and that it is more art than science. If it turns out that's really the case, then fingerprinting people at the border is pretty much less than worthless.
...when I was a kid my folks took me down to be fingerprinted.
That was probably part of the FBI's missing and exploited children protection. It's a way to help find kids after they've been kidnapped, or identify later once they've been found (hopefully alive). So far as I know, that database is kept seperate from the criminal database, or even the one used for background checks.
You're missing the point. All the terrorists have to do is get a forged passport from one of those countries and they'll slip through. A security net with tons of holes doesn't do any good.
OMG, you're right! Well, we might as well do nothing then, rather than take incremental steps to make things that much harder for people to slip through. After all, you wouldn't design a computer network with more than one level of security, why try to protect your borders that way?
Afterall, all the terrorists have to do is get a kayak made of radar absorbing material, paddle it across the Atlantic ocean, then scuba the last 100 miles under 10 fathoms of water, before swimming up the Chesapeake and exploding a nuclear suitcase bomb a few miles from the Capitol. So there's no sense wasting our time with security. Hell, let's just put box cutters in every airline meal and call it a day.
Okay, then, over Christmas, the Bush regime (Heil Dubya!) raised the terror alert etc... saying an attack was likely.
And no attack happened, though many flights were cancelled and some people were questioned (I'm not sure if anyone was formally arrested anywhere). Since there hasn't been a repeat of 9/11, it seems like the security precautions are working.
As for Americans being stripped of their rights, it's forners who are getting finger printed, not citizens. Besides, this is just an additional access control for people who already need a visa, anyway. And ya know what's usually required to get a visa? To be fingerprinted.
Nothing to see here, move along.
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D'oh! You're right, I wrote too quickly, it's a one in quintillion chance. I mispoke.
In any event, you haven't provided anything of substance to prove the Drake equation has any meaning whatsoever. Which was the point of this little discussion.
In my position the total cost of downtime is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of operation.
Exactly! You can't look at "how much does it cost to keep up", you have to look at "how much do I lose if it goes down." This ties into the latest industry buzzword, "business continuity." If people focus more on things like how long it takes to recover a down system, and how likely it is to go down in the first place, there's just no way Windows can compete with Linux.
Re:We know other life exists
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Again, you're willing to assume there's intelligent life with no evidence of it. Until we get more data, we can't make any kind of intelligent observation.
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My point is: we don't know
Gee, that looks awefully familiar. Oh, wait! That was my point!
Saying "we don't have all the facts, so we shouldn't make assumptions" is a nice way of saying "you can't prove me wrong, so I must be right." Once you get out of middle school, you'll find that type of reasoning doesn't play too well in the grown up world.
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N* is certainly knowable, since it's (relatively) easy to look up and count.
From your perspective, yes. However, it is not "knowable" to be only 1.
And your point would be what? We can look up and count the stars in the sky; ergo, we know the value of N*. I'm not sure where you get the figure "1" from, any idiot can look up and see that there are more than one stars in the sky.
They were very conservative with this estimate in it being 1 in a million have planets.
And you know this is a conservative estimate based on what information? How do you know it isn't one in a trillion stars have planets? We don't have enough information yet to make any kind of intelligent guess on this, so any number you posit is pure speculation.
That is why they divided the above estimate by 1 million. That is very conservative considering even our own solar system has proof of water & volcanic heat. Europa. We have life on our own planet in the same exact environment as this.
OK, so now you end up with odds of 1 in a trillion have having planets which can support life orbiting a given star. Given that there are something around 200 billion stars in our galaxy, that means having just the Earth with life is already beating the odds. This is using your numbers, not mine, so not get all huffy when you realize you can put any numbers you want into the equation to come up with any answer you want.
This is the fundamental problem with the Drake equation: few, if any, of the variables can be assigned values based on concrete information. All you're doing is throwing big numbers around to try to prove mathematically that we're not alone. Which can't be done until we have a sample size greater than one, at which point the equation becomes moot. By the time we've explored enough of the galaxy to have enough information to fill in the blanks, those blanks will have been filled in already.
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2) We know we know more about the universe now than at any time in recorded history; it remains to be seen how much more there is to know, but since we don't know how much we don't know, we can't really weigh that intelligently.
Exactly. This is what makes your position so ludicrous.
I don't think it's ludicrous to only look at the facts in evidence. Like I said, since we don't know what we don't know, we can't use that as a basis for intelligent discourse.
If you want to believe in little green men, there's nothing stopping you. Personally, I'm waiting for them to show up and start taking American jobs before I'm gonna give them too much thought.
It is one thing to just not know, another to stand firmly on a flawed premise. Are you with the CCC?
My point we is that we just don't know, yours seems to be we don't know but should assume. Who's standing on a flawed premise, again? (And what the hell is the "CCC"?)
Just out of curiousity, are you an atheist? Because your belief in aliens seems even stronger than my believe in Christ, and your belief is certainly based on flimsier evidence.
So far, no ships. Not even transmissions. No alien cities.
Oh, yeah, smart guy? Then explain Atlantis!
(Actually, I agree with you, I just couldn't help myself.)
Re:We know other life exists
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Consider the size of the universe. Then consider all of your knowledge of the universe. Now consider how likely intelligent life exists.
Let's take this step by step: 1) We know the universe is big. 2) We know we know more about the universe now than at any time in recorded history; it remains to be seen how much more there is to know, but since we don't know how much we don't know, we can't really weigh that intelligently. 3) We know that of all the planets we've studied to date, ours is the only one with life, and we are the only intelligent life on that planet.
Given what we definitely know, and not just wild assed conjecture pulled out of your professor's butt, I'd say humans are the most important creatures on the most important planet in the universe. Once we have definite proof that life exists elsewhere and that some of it is intelligent, I'll change my view, but not before.
Re:We know other life exists
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Just because Drake listed all(?) of the variables needed to determine the existance of intelligent life, doesn't mean anyone has the first clue what the values of those variables should be.
N* is certainly knowable, since it's (relatively) easy to look up and count. fp is completely unknowable, until we get better at mapping out star systems with planets, and without. So far, we've found some large planets around other stars. We don't know how many stars exist with no planets, though. ne is completely meaningless, because we have no idea how many planets in a given system might have the right variables to produce life. Our system is pretty ideal as far as creating life is concerned, yet we only have one planet with life (that we know of). fl is again meaningless. If we don't know how many planets have the capability of supporting life, how can we know how many have done so? fi is, you guessed it, meaningless. I'm not sure about fc, what definition of "communicate" is being used? Pretty much by definition, all intelligent life communicates. Whether they do so in a way in which we can understand them is another matter, and is unknowable. We can't even communicate with dolphins, what makes you think doing so with ETs will be any easier? And to get things back on track, fL is meaningless. We've only just begun using radio, and have not yet started using it with powerful enough instruments that another civilization is likely to pick up those signals. How can we be sure we won't switch to something else long before our chatter gets strong enough to drown out the radio waves emitted by the Sun?
The Drake equation is the ultimate example of nonsense science. Crichton was right, this kind of mushy-headed thinking is dangerous.
I don't think my im use has been detrimental to my communication at work, yet--except for that time I blurted out to the senior applications manager "and you'll get mad props from the help desk for finally getting rid of the last printer on IPX."
Piffle, that's nothing. The military has started using chat software to communicate in real time over secure networks, and you'd be surprised at the amount of netspeak that gets used in them. During the war, I was in a chatroom with about twenty other people scattered from England through Saudi Arabia (I was in Turkey, in the Nortern Command Center, at the time). When Shock and Awe was just about to start, one of the guys in Saudi said something about "mad Tomahawk skillz"; reports like "4th ID 0wnz the RG" (Fourth Infantry Division...Republican Guard) in quick after-action summaries were common. These weren't in the official reports, mind you, just in the chatrooms.
Just because it started on the net, doesn't make it unprofessional. Or maybe it's, just because the military does it, doesn't make it professional? 'Course, the Navy and Marines use Counter-Strike to teach small unit tactics, so maybe it is the latter.
Ahh, but your comment was that *only* capitalist running dogs considered the USSR to be socialist. I was just rebutting that the Soviets themselves thought of themselves that way. You are, of course, free to disagree with whether the USSR was ever a Socialist state, but that's beside this particular point.
I think he confused "latter" and "former", since he also said something about "the American people don't care if their ketchup is made by Union members or not", implying it couldn't have been market pressure, but pressure from Unions.
Grandparent:Did a voice in the marketplace even make the slightest difference to getting companies to implement these policies? Or, was it in fact mob rule (Unions) that did it?
Parent:Obviously you don't know history. It was worker movements that were responsible for the benefits that western societies accrued.
Hmm. The first poster makes the statement that unions helped workers get their benefits, not the marketplace. Then the responder points out the original is an ignorant slut, that it was, in fact, the unions who got the workers their benefits, not the marketplace.
And people ask me, "Why do you waste so much time on Slashdot? What's so entertaining about it?"
Take chopsticks, for example; who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports!
Chopsticks have been found in the tombs of Chinese emperors who ruled thousands of years ago. How exactly do you explain that, if they weren't even invented until 200 years ago?
Slashdot Mirror
Come to think of it, "Darl" does look like a Martian name.
Nope, just a good, honest, Utah Mormon name. Check out this page for more.
My personal favorite? The people who named their darling daughter Vulva Mae.
Absolute and utter bollocks. Do your research.
OK, how's this for research:
According to the CIA World Fact Book (the only authority I could find which listed literacy rates for more than one country), the US has a literacy rate of 97%. This compares to 99% in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany (three Western Europe countries chosen at semi-random). So, Western Europe is 2% more literate than the US. However, the US has (according to the same source) a net migration of 3.52/1000, or about 50% more than the other three countries. I'm not sure, but doubt, this number includes the millions of undocumented aliens crossing our border with Mexico. Having that many immigrants, for whom English is a foreign language, each year is bound to play hell with our literacy rates.
True, but only if you can afford it. If you can't, you don't even get a tertiary education.
Here's a shocking thought for you: not everyone needs a college degree. That said, here in the US we have something called "student loans". This is where someone gives you money, and you promise to repay them in the future, so you can go to school now. This way, you're still paying for your own education, instead of relying on others to take care of you.
Funny...I've lived in numerous third world countries. I know what I'm comparing to.
I've been to over 40 nations, including some of the most disease invested shitholes on the planet. I've survived malaria and other nasty infections. If you honestly believe the worst of the US is anything like those other places, then you've got more problems than I can solve.
Now this tells me it's you who hasn't been to a third world country. Ever been to Brazil? The capital city is a gleaming collection of highrises, skyscrapers and riches.
Sounds like a nice place. Maybe I was wrong (despite my previously cited experience).
Too bad only the richest of the rich live there, and it's surrounded by shanty towns.
Oh, wait, maybe I wasn't. Sounds like the Brazilian capitol is surrounded by places where you're likely to walk through human feces. Last time I was in DC, I didn't notice anything quite like this in the suburbs.
it's all about priorities
You're right, it is all about priorities. And Americans consider defense to be a pretty important one. For the entire time of the Cold War, the US was pretty much required by various treaties to have a superpowerful military. Part of this was the requirement that Germany and Japan not have them, and someone had to be ready to stop the Soviets if it came to that. Now the Cold War is over, but, happily or not, the US has gotten used to being a global superpower. And whether you like or not (and that's a plural "you", and it includes me), we don't really have any choice but to stay the course we've found ourselves on. Yeah, it would be nice if we could cut our defense spending to a level like the rest of the world. But it just isn't going to be an option for a long, long time. There are too many bad guys out there, and only one sheriff to stand up to them.
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe this isn't worth it? I mean, a lot less people get killed WORLDWIDE due to terrorism per YEAR than get killed in a single WEEK due to traffic accidents in the US alone.
I've heard this argument before, and it makes no sense. You're saying people die in accidents, so we shouldn't worry about people being murdered. The only thing they have in common is that people are dying. Other than that, you're comparing apples to oranges.
(I'm taking your post out of order, forgive me.)
And what about the spending!? More than half the US' budget goes to defence and related activities...and that with you nation in debt, a depressed economy, illitaracy rampant, science graduates [who stay in the US] down, in other words a third world country economy...don't you think the money should be spent somewhere else?
First, the economy isn't depressed. In fact, we never even entered a recession, since we never had two quarters of negative growth in a row (though it was a close run thing). We don't have "illitaracy" rampant, or even illiteracy for that matter. We've got the same levels of literacy as Western Europe. The only reason a large number of our science graduates leave the country is because they're all going home. Ya see, like it or not, the US has the best tertiary education system in the world. And to suggest the US economy is "third world" means you've either never been here, or never been to the third world. I didn't have to step over anybody starving in the street on my to work this morning, and didn't have to wipe shit off my shoes before coming in the building. You do have to do those things in many parts of the third world.
Are you still so adamantly giving up your bill of rights, allowing your president to get away with sealing protesters (guys/galss/grandma's with placcards) into 'free speech zones' so the camera's don't see 'em (look this one up...chilling stuff indeed when you can arrest a grandma with a sign saying something against the current administration for standing in a crowd) and much more?
Now this is a different issue entirely, which I read about just yesterday. Pretty scary, actually. I understand the Secret Service's point of view, that they're more concerned with protecting the President than anything else, but I fail to see how this accomplishes that. I'd rather see Bush use Reagan's tack: when protesters show up at your speech, use them in your speech.* But then, Bush doesn't have the communication powers that Reagan once enjoyed.
* The incident I'm thinking of was when Reagan was giving a speech in Berlin. A crowd of protesters tried to shout him down, and he said something to effect of "If those people had their way, they wouldn't be able to be here protesting in the first place." The audience loved it.
Ever had a flight delayed because the mechanics thought something was wrong, then it turned out to be no big deal? Would you rather they just shrug their shoulders and have the plane take off, anyway?
...the system will not catch 100% of terrorists.
;) Though it would be interesting to know how many false positives are likely with this, or any other, fingerprint system. There was a Dateline/60 Minutes/24 Hours piece recently which called into question the accuracy of fingerprinting, and that it is more art than science. If it turns out that's really the case, then fingerprinting people at the border is pretty much less than worthless.
You're right about that. But it will catch more than doing nothing will.
As for your second point, this is Slashdot, I'm free to pick and choose which points in your post I want to address.
C'mon, this is the same as calling Brazilians terrorists.
;)
I don't know, man, given how much spam originates from your country, I don't think it's much of a stretch...
...when I was a kid my folks took me down to be fingerprinted.
That was probably part of the FBI's missing and exploited children protection. It's a way to help find kids after they've been kidnapped, or identify later once they've been found (hopefully alive). So far as I know, that database is kept seperate from the criminal database, or even the one used for background checks.
You're missing the point. All the terrorists have to do is get a forged passport from one of those countries and they'll slip through. A security net with tons of holes doesn't do any good.
OMG, you're right! Well, we might as well do nothing then, rather than take incremental steps to make things that much harder for people to slip through. After all, you wouldn't design a computer network with more than one level of security, why try to protect your borders that way?
Afterall, all the terrorists have to do is get a kayak made of radar absorbing material, paddle it across the Atlantic ocean, then scuba the last 100 miles under 10 fathoms of water, before swimming up the Chesapeake and exploding a nuclear suitcase bomb a few miles from the Capitol. So there's no sense wasting our time with security. Hell, let's just put box cutters in every airline meal and call it a day.
Okay, then, over Christmas, the Bush regime (Heil Dubya!) raised the terror alert etc... saying an attack was likely.
And no attack happened, though many flights were cancelled and some people were questioned (I'm not sure if anyone was formally arrested anywhere). Since there hasn't been a repeat of 9/11, it seems like the security precautions are working.
As for Americans being stripped of their rights, it's forners who are getting finger printed, not citizens. Besides, this is just an additional access control for people who already need a visa, anyway. And ya know what's usually required to get a visa? To be fingerprinted.
Nothing to see here, move along.
D'oh! You're right, I wrote too quickly, it's a one in quintillion chance. I mispoke.
In any event, you haven't provided anything of substance to prove the Drake equation has any meaning whatsoever. Which was the point of this little discussion.
In my position the total cost of downtime is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of operation.
Exactly! You can't look at "how much does it cost to keep up", you have to look at "how much do I lose if it goes down." This ties into the latest industry buzzword, "business continuity." If people focus more on things like how long it takes to recover a down system, and how likely it is to go down in the first place, there's just no way Windows can compete with Linux.
Again, you're willing to assume there's intelligent life with no evidence of it. Until we get more data, we can't make any kind of intelligent observation.
My point is: we don't know
Gee, that looks awefully familiar. Oh, wait! That was my point!
Saying "we don't have all the facts, so we shouldn't make assumptions" is a nice way of saying "you can't prove me wrong, so I must be right." Once you get out of middle school, you'll find that type of reasoning doesn't play too well in the grown up world.
N* is certainly knowable, since it's (relatively) easy to look up and count.
From your perspective, yes. However, it is not "knowable" to be only 1.
And your point would be what? We can look up and count the stars in the sky; ergo, we know the value of N*. I'm not sure where you get the figure "1" from, any idiot can look up and see that there are more than one stars in the sky.
They were very conservative with this estimate in it being 1 in a million have planets.
And you know this is a conservative estimate based on what information? How do you know it isn't one in a trillion stars have planets? We don't have enough information yet to make any kind of intelligent guess on this, so any number you posit is pure speculation.
That is why they divided the above estimate by 1 million. That is very conservative considering even our own solar system has proof of water & volcanic heat. Europa. We have life on our own planet in the same exact environment as this.
OK, so now you end up with odds of 1 in a trillion have having planets which can support life orbiting a given star. Given that there are something around 200 billion stars in our galaxy, that means having just the Earth with life is already beating the odds. This is using your numbers, not mine, so not get all huffy when you realize you can put any numbers you want into the equation to come up with any answer you want.
This is the fundamental problem with the Drake equation: few, if any, of the variables can be assigned values based on concrete information. All you're doing is throwing big numbers around to try to prove mathematically that we're not alone. Which can't be done until we have a sample size greater than one, at which point the equation becomes moot. By the time we've explored enough of the galaxy to have enough information to fill in the blanks, those blanks will have been filled in already.
2) We know we know more about the universe now than at any time in recorded history; it remains to be seen how much more there is to know, but since we don't know how much we don't know, we can't really weigh that intelligently.
Exactly. This is what makes your position so ludicrous.
I don't think it's ludicrous to only look at the facts in evidence. Like I said, since we don't know what we don't know, we can't use that as a basis for intelligent discourse.
If you want to believe in little green men, there's nothing stopping you. Personally, I'm waiting for them to show up and start taking American jobs before I'm gonna give them too much thought.
It is one thing to just not know, another to stand firmly on a flawed premise. Are you with the CCC?
My point we is that we just don't know, yours seems to be we don't know but should assume. Who's standing on a flawed premise, again? (And what the hell is the "CCC"?)
Just out of curiousity, are you an atheist? Because your belief in aliens seems even stronger than my believe in Christ, and your belief is certainly based on flimsier evidence.
So far, no ships. Not even transmissions. No alien cities.
Oh, yeah, smart guy? Then explain Atlantis!
(Actually, I agree with you, I just couldn't help myself.)
Consider the size of the universe. Then consider all of your knowledge of the universe. Now consider how likely intelligent life exists.
Let's take this step by step:
1) We know the universe is big.
2) We know we know more about the universe now than at any time in recorded history; it remains to be seen how much more there is to know, but since we don't know how much we don't know, we can't really weigh that intelligently.
3) We know that of all the planets we've studied to date, ours is the only one with life, and we are the only intelligent life on that planet.
Given what we definitely know, and not just wild assed conjecture pulled out of your professor's butt, I'd say humans are the most important creatures on the most important planet in the universe. Once we have definite proof that life exists elsewhere and that some of it is intelligent, I'll change my view, but not before.
Just because Drake listed all(?) of the variables needed to determine the existance of intelligent life, doesn't mean anyone has the first clue what the values of those variables should be.
N* is certainly knowable, since it's (relatively) easy to look up and count.
fp is completely unknowable, until we get better at mapping out star systems with planets, and without. So far, we've found some large planets around other stars. We don't know how many stars exist with no planets, though.
ne is completely meaningless, because we have no idea how many planets in a given system might have the right variables to produce life. Our system is pretty ideal as far as creating life is concerned, yet we only have one planet with life (that we know of).
fl is again meaningless. If we don't know how many planets have the capability of supporting life, how can we know how many have done so?
fi is, you guessed it, meaningless.
I'm not sure about fc, what definition of "communicate" is being used? Pretty much by definition, all intelligent life communicates. Whether they do so in a way in which we can understand them is another matter, and is unknowable. We can't even communicate with dolphins, what makes you think doing so with ETs will be any easier?
And to get things back on track, fL is meaningless. We've only just begun using radio, and have not yet started using it with powerful enough instruments that another civilization is likely to pick up those signals. How can we be sure we won't switch to something else long before our chatter gets strong enough to drown out the radio waves emitted by the Sun?
The Drake equation is the ultimate example of nonsense science. Crichton was right, this kind of mushy-headed thinking is dangerous.
I don't think my im use has been detrimental to my communication at work, yet--except for that time I blurted out to the senior applications manager "and you'll get mad props from the help desk for finally getting rid of the last printer on IPX."
Piffle, that's nothing. The military has started using chat software to communicate in real time over secure networks, and you'd be surprised at the amount of netspeak that gets used in them. During the war, I was in a chatroom with about twenty other people scattered from England through Saudi Arabia (I was in Turkey, in the Nortern Command Center, at the time). When Shock and Awe was just about to start, one of the guys in Saudi said something about "mad Tomahawk skillz"; reports like "4th ID 0wnz the RG" (Fourth Infantry Division...Republican Guard) in quick after-action summaries were common. These weren't in the official reports, mind you, just in the chatrooms.
Just because it started on the net, doesn't make it unprofessional. Or maybe it's, just because the military does it, doesn't make it professional? 'Course, the Navy and Marines use Counter-Strike to teach small unit tactics, so maybe it is the latter.
Ahh, but your comment was that *only* capitalist running dogs considered the USSR to be socialist. I was just rebutting that the Soviets themselves thought of themselves that way. You are, of course, free to disagree with whether the USSR was ever a Socialist state, but that's beside this particular point.
I think he confused "latter" and "former", since he also said something about "the American people don't care if their ketchup is made by Union members or not", implying it couldn't have been market pressure, but pressure from Unions.
Marine report
State Dept report
CIA Report
The only people who claim that China or even USSR are socialist are the capitalists.
I think the founders of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics thought of themselves as Socialist. But I could be wrong.
Grandparent:Did a voice in the marketplace even make the slightest difference to getting companies to implement these policies? Or, was it in fact mob rule (Unions) that did it?
Parent:Obviously you don't know history. It was worker movements that were responsible for the benefits that western societies accrued.
Hmm. The first poster makes the statement that unions helped workers get their benefits, not the marketplace. Then the responder points out the original is an ignorant slut, that it was, in fact, the unions who got the workers their benefits, not the marketplace.
And people ask me, "Why do you waste so much time on Slashdot? What's so entertaining about it?"
Take chopsticks, for example; who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports!
Chopsticks have been found in the tombs of Chinese emperors who ruled thousands of years ago. How exactly do you explain that, if they weren't even invented until 200 years ago?