Don't forget the #2 distro, Fedora. They're giant supporters of GNOME, and not KDE. There's not many distros that feature KDE prominently, and the biggest one, SUSE, earned everyone's mistrust when they signed that deal with Microsoft.
You don't know that there isn't more that's possible which doesn't affect those. You don't know that it isn't possible to move into another dimension beyond the three we understand. You don't even know how gravity works. You also don't know how time works or why it's linear in one direction. In short, you really don't know much.
I'm not sure there's anything in science about FTL anything.
Actually, there is: they're called "tachyons". However they're just hypothetical particles at this point. But they were postulated by physicists, not sci-fi writers, so that seems to make them qualify as "anything in science".
Would it invalidate most of what we know about physics, or just add a whole new dimension to it? Quantum physics didn't invalidate relativity, or classic Newtonian physics. No one uses quantum physics for calculating, say, how far an artillery cannon will shoot a projectile; some simple Newtonian equations will work just fine for that.
The simple fact is, our understanding of physics is missing some very fundamental stuff, for instance how does gravity work? No one knows; it's a complete mystery. All we know is that it correlates to mass for some reason. Einstein thinks it's because mass warps the space-time continuum like a bowling ball on a stretched-out rubber sheet.
They're two different prizes with the same name and somewhat under the same group. The "real" Nobel prizes are in the sciences, and are actually awarded for real accomplishments. It's just the stupid Peace Prize that's been turned into a laughingstock. It's probably not the same people who decide to award those prizes. The ones who gave the PP to Obama should be outcast for their idiocy, and never allowed to decide any more prizes for anything again.
now, of course that kind of pisses on the cereals on many scifi scenarios if you can't do ftl communications. too bad.
That's why sci-fi is also sometimes called "speculative fiction". It's not meant to be a blueprint for the future or a reference manual about what's physically possible. FTL communications makes possible many stories which otherwise would be quite impossible. So if we never figure out how to achieve FTL communications, oh well. At least we made up some entertaining stories. But you never know; back in the 1600s, no one though (nearly) instantaneous communication across the Atlantic was possible either, and that all communications had to take weeks by boat. People have dreamed about crazy new inventions for ages, and without those dreams, we wouldn't be where we are now, we'd still be traveling by horse and buggy. Most of those dreams never amounted to anything of course (just check out some of the crazy ideas people had about the future back in the 50s), but some of them have come true.
Why do you need to believe in anything regarding FTL? A belief that FTL is impossible sounds just like a religious belief to me, because you have no evidence to support it. There's also no evidence to support the opposite, so a belief in either seems pretty pointless to me.
There are hypothetical particles called "tachyons" which always travel FTL. Furthermore, our understanding of physics is very poor; we don't even understand how gravity works. I think once we figure out how gravity works, then maybe we'll have a better idea of how possible FTL is.
To be fair, your link has nothing to do with mistakes by mathematicians at all. The Mars climate orbiter failure was caused by a mistake made by engineers. There's a pretty big difference.
Accountants use math in their jobs too, but that doesn't make them mathematicians. Retail cashiers also use math in their jobs, but they're certainly no mathematicians.
VIPR: "Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response".
Yep, you pretty much summed it up. Or maybe it's just a test to see just how far they can push Americans into a police state before they start pushing back.
My country's successes weren't accomplished by the naysayers; step aside, sir.
Your (and my) country has been taken over by the naysayers since those days. Today's Americans aren't at all like the Americans of the 60s and 70s and even 80s; they're just a bunch of whiners that complain their taxes are too high, they say that we need to spend insane amounts of borrowed money to pursue wars on the other side of the planet, they say that rich people are special and shouldn't pay taxes at all, they agree with the world's richest woman that people should be happy to work for $2 per day, and they believe all this stuff because this is what their preachers and Fox News tell them.
Or, would you rather we not put the time and resources into an idea this grand and incredible, and say to hell with all the amazing things we may discover along the way, regardless of its outcome?
Yes, that's exactly what most Americans think, that it's all a waste of time and money. Heck, even back during the Apollo days many Americans thought it was a waste, and that it was all filmed in the Nevada desert. I have extended family members that still believe this now (I don't ever visit them...). Americans want to give bailouts to wealthy CEOs who've mismanaged financial companies, they worship these people as "job creators".
To be fair, I'm pretty sure you're legally required to carry your driver's license any time you operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Of course, this doesn't mean they're supposed to stop everyone and inspect it. Also, the NC state police or local police doing this isn't as bad as the TSA, a federal agency, doing it. It's a lot easier for an angry citizen to make a change at the local or even state level than at the federal level.
Now, if they're demanding licenses from passengers in the vehicle too, that's another matter entirely.
Don't be stupid. They haven't traveled far because they have no engines, and are powered with crappy little RTGs. Nuclear engines would change things completely.
The fastest probe we've ever launched would take over 100,000 years to reach even the closest solar system (and that's a *MERE* 4.2 light years away).
Totally irrelevant. The fastest probe we've ever launched was slow as shit because it doesn't have any decent engines, and IIRC doesn't have any engines at all, it's just carried by momentum from its initial launch and from some hydrazine thrusters to make small course corrections and take advantage of gravitational slingshots around the planets.
If we build a starship, it'd have to have real engines, using nuclear power, something like NERVA or Project Orion. It'd still be slow, so it'd have to be a generation ship or use cryogenics or something to achieve suspended animation, but the idea that we're limited to the speed of some slow-ass probes made in the 70s and powered with RTGs is just ridiculous.
We're not allowed to teach that kind of thing to 12-year-olds in schools here in America. Some of them might not understand it, and then they'll feel bad, so we have to dumb down our curriculum to improve their self-esteem.
There's not much choice where I am; almost all the cinemas are either AMC or Harkins. The only exception I'm aware of is a small independent "dollar" theater where the tickets are $3 (cash only), and it has some other nice features like a bunch of life-size mannequins of various movie characters (Darth Vader, the Blues Brothers, etc.) and some classic arcade games. Since it's small, it doesn't seem to have many kids either. The main disadvantage is the selection: only second-run movies, and only certain ones, which is to be expected given the type of cinema it is. We also have a couple of "art cinemas", but they're also run by Harkins, the local mega-chain, so they're not too much different except that the types of movies they show there naturally bring in a different type of crowd.
Sorry, that's from a deleted scene. From memory-alpha.org:
"A deleted scene from the film establishes that the Narada was crippled after it was rammed by the Kelvin. A convoy of Klingon warbirds eventually arrived and captured the ship and its crew. Twenty five years later, Nero and his crew escaped from their imprisonment on Rura Penthe, reclaimed the Narada, used the ship to destroy 47 Klingon warbirds, and continued on their mission."
Maybe instead of being a condescending asshole, you could point people to some of these vaunted alternatives of yours.
Your "IDEAL" alternative isn't. It's just like the Swiss bank accounts. You expect Americans to fly to Netherlands and set up bank accounts just so they can accept payments from Dutch buyers? Are you fucking insane?
In my experience, there's plenty of business from Europeans who aren't so stupid that they refuse to use payment schemes that don't work outside their own tiny little country.
And border patrol agents are actually looking out for him? Not denying it, but it's pretty disturbing if they have apparatus in place to grab people like this at the border (i.e., non-fugitives) and then have lowly peons harass them just because some politicians don't like them.
Sorry, but those complaints were valid: Broderick's Godzilla movie was indeed lame. "Just a movie" isn't an excuse; there's been lots of excellent movies over the years with great characters that don't lack depth and didn't have to resort to obviously lame plot devices. "Aliens" (1986) was a great movie, at least as far as characters go. "The Abyss" (1989) was also an excellent movie with good characters. Neither of these pretended to be high art nor aimed for film festival awards, but they were still good movies, so it's not like you can't have a good movie that appeals to a mass audience. Even the earlier Star Trek movies were good, especially The Wrath of Khan.
Compared to other mass-audience sci-fi movies, and even compared to older Star Trek movies, 2009's Star Trek falls flat IMO.
It is knickle and diming me to death expect the dimes are 100 dollars and the knickles are 50 bucks. And it is not like these sellers try and make it easy, NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD HAS A CREDIT CARD YOU FUCKING AMERICAN CENTRIC ASSHOLE!
I have to take issue with this comment. How exactly do you expect Americans to accept your money then? There's only two main ways I know of: credit cards, and Paypal (which also processes credit cards if you don't have a PP account). There's also Google Payments, but that's almost exactly like PP.
Of course, there's another way: I could fly over to Switzerland and set up a swiss bank account so I can get direct transfers just like the Europeans do. But that seems a little extreme, don't you think?
A lot of Europeans don't seem to understand that American banks are not generally on the IBAN system; some are on the SWIFT system, but then they'll charge you hefty fees to accept money, so it's not worth using unless you're transferring thousands of dollars at once.
You might as well complain that someone in Zimbabwe or Indonesia isn't able to accept your European bank transfers.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't prove a negative.
Don't forget the #2 distro, Fedora. They're giant supporters of GNOME, and not KDE. There's not many distros that feature KDE prominently, and the biggest one, SUSE, earned everyone's mistrust when they signed that deal with Microsoft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
You don't know that there isn't more that's possible which doesn't affect those. You don't know that it isn't possible to move into another dimension beyond the three we understand. You don't even know how gravity works. You also don't know how time works or why it's linear in one direction. In short, you really don't know much.
Oh please. Reddit lets you edit your posts, and it works just fine over there. It's a stupid restriction.
I'm pretty sure the Alcubierre Drive does not violate causality or presume time travel.
I'm not sure there's anything in science about FTL anything.
Actually, there is: they're called "tachyons". However they're just hypothetical particles at this point. But they were postulated by physicists, not sci-fi writers, so that seems to make them qualify as "anything in science".
Would it invalidate most of what we know about physics, or just add a whole new dimension to it? Quantum physics didn't invalidate relativity, or classic Newtonian physics. No one uses quantum physics for calculating, say, how far an artillery cannon will shoot a projectile; some simple Newtonian equations will work just fine for that.
The simple fact is, our understanding of physics is missing some very fundamental stuff, for instance how does gravity work? No one knows; it's a complete mystery. All we know is that it correlates to mass for some reason. Einstein thinks it's because mass warps the space-time continuum like a bowling ball on a stretched-out rubber sheet.
They're two different prizes with the same name and somewhat under the same group. The "real" Nobel prizes are in the sciences, and are actually awarded for real accomplishments. It's just the stupid Peace Prize that's been turned into a laughingstock. It's probably not the same people who decide to award those prizes. The ones who gave the PP to Obama should be outcast for their idiocy, and never allowed to decide any more prizes for anything again.
now, of course that kind of pisses on the cereals on many scifi scenarios if you can't do ftl communications. too bad.
That's why sci-fi is also sometimes called "speculative fiction". It's not meant to be a blueprint for the future or a reference manual about what's physically possible. FTL communications makes possible many stories which otherwise would be quite impossible. So if we never figure out how to achieve FTL communications, oh well. At least we made up some entertaining stories. But you never know; back in the 1600s, no one though (nearly) instantaneous communication across the Atlantic was possible either, and that all communications had to take weeks by boat. People have dreamed about crazy new inventions for ages, and without those dreams, we wouldn't be where we are now, we'd still be traveling by horse and buggy. Most of those dreams never amounted to anything of course (just check out some of the crazy ideas people had about the future back in the 50s), but some of them have come true.
Why do you need to believe in anything regarding FTL? A belief that FTL is impossible sounds just like a religious belief to me, because you have no evidence to support it. There's also no evidence to support the opposite, so a belief in either seems pretty pointless to me.
There are hypothetical particles called "tachyons" which always travel FTL. Furthermore, our understanding of physics is very poor; we don't even understand how gravity works. I think once we figure out how gravity works, then maybe we'll have a better idea of how possible FTL is.
To be fair, your link has nothing to do with mistakes by mathematicians at all. The Mars climate orbiter failure was caused by a mistake made by engineers. There's a pretty big difference.
Accountants use math in their jobs too, but that doesn't make them mathematicians. Retail cashiers also use math in their jobs, but they're certainly no mathematicians.
VIPR: "Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response".
Yep, you pretty much summed it up. Or maybe it's just a test to see just how far they can push Americans into a police state before they start pushing back.
My country's successes weren't accomplished by the naysayers; step aside, sir.
Your (and my) country has been taken over by the naysayers since those days. Today's Americans aren't at all like the Americans of the 60s and 70s and even 80s; they're just a bunch of whiners that complain their taxes are too high, they say that we need to spend insane amounts of borrowed money to pursue wars on the other side of the planet, they say that rich people are special and shouldn't pay taxes at all, they agree with the world's richest woman that people should be happy to work for $2 per day, and they believe all this stuff because this is what their preachers and Fox News tell them.
Or, would you rather we not put the time and resources into an idea this grand and incredible, and say to hell with all the amazing things we may discover along the way, regardless of its outcome?
Yes, that's exactly what most Americans think, that it's all a waste of time and money. Heck, even back during the Apollo days many Americans thought it was a waste, and that it was all filmed in the Nevada desert. I have extended family members that still believe this now (I don't ever visit them...). Americans want to give bailouts to wealthy CEOs who've mismanaged financial companies, they worship these people as "job creators".
To be fair, I'm pretty sure you're legally required to carry your driver's license any time you operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Of course, this doesn't mean they're supposed to stop everyone and inspect it. Also, the NC state police or local police doing this isn't as bad as the TSA, a federal agency, doing it. It's a lot easier for an angry citizen to make a change at the local or even state level than at the federal level.
Now, if they're demanding licenses from passengers in the vehicle too, that's another matter entirely.
Wrong. The TSA now has "VIPR" checkpoints on the highways.
Don't be stupid. They haven't traveled far because they have no engines, and are powered with crappy little RTGs. Nuclear engines would change things completely.
The fastest probe we've ever launched would take over 100,000 years to reach even the closest solar system (and that's a *MERE* 4.2 light years away).
Totally irrelevant. The fastest probe we've ever launched was slow as shit because it doesn't have any decent engines, and IIRC doesn't have any engines at all, it's just carried by momentum from its initial launch and from some hydrazine thrusters to make small course corrections and take advantage of gravitational slingshots around the planets.
If we build a starship, it'd have to have real engines, using nuclear power, something like NERVA or Project Orion. It'd still be slow, so it'd have to be a generation ship or use cryogenics or something to achieve suspended animation, but the idea that we're limited to the speed of some slow-ass probes made in the 70s and powered with RTGs is just ridiculous.
We're not allowed to teach that kind of thing to 12-year-olds in schools here in America. Some of them might not understand it, and then they'll feel bad, so we have to dumb down our curriculum to improve their self-esteem.
There's not much choice where I am; almost all the cinemas are either AMC or Harkins. The only exception I'm aware of is a small independent "dollar" theater where the tickets are $3 (cash only), and it has some other nice features like a bunch of life-size mannequins of various movie characters (Darth Vader, the Blues Brothers, etc.) and some classic arcade games. Since it's small, it doesn't seem to have many kids either. The main disadvantage is the selection: only second-run movies, and only certain ones, which is to be expected given the type of cinema it is. We also have a couple of "art cinemas", but they're also run by Harkins, the local mega-chain, so they're not too much different except that the types of movies they show there naturally bring in a different type of crowd.
Sorry, that's from a deleted scene. From memory-alpha.org:
"A deleted scene from the film establishes that the Narada was crippled after it was rammed by the Kelvin. A convoy of Klingon warbirds eventually arrived and captured the ship and its crew. Twenty five years later, Nero and his crew escaped from their imprisonment on Rura Penthe, reclaimed the Narada, used the ship to destroy 47 Klingon warbirds, and continued on their mission."
Maybe instead of being a condescending asshole, you could point people to some of these vaunted alternatives of yours.
Your "IDEAL" alternative isn't. It's just like the Swiss bank accounts. You expect Americans to fly to Netherlands and set up bank accounts just so they can accept payments from Dutch buyers? Are you fucking insane?
In my experience, there's plenty of business from Europeans who aren't so stupid that they refuse to use payment schemes that don't work outside their own tiny little country.
And border patrol agents are actually looking out for him? Not denying it, but it's pretty disturbing if they have apparatus in place to grab people like this at the border (i.e., non-fugitives) and then have lowly peons harass them just because some politicians don't like them.
Sorry, but those complaints were valid: Broderick's Godzilla movie was indeed lame. "Just a movie" isn't an excuse; there's been lots of excellent movies over the years with great characters that don't lack depth and didn't have to resort to obviously lame plot devices. "Aliens" (1986) was a great movie, at least as far as characters go. "The Abyss" (1989) was also an excellent movie with good characters. Neither of these pretended to be high art nor aimed for film festival awards, but they were still good movies, so it's not like you can't have a good movie that appeals to a mass audience. Even the earlier Star Trek movies were good, especially The Wrath of Khan.
Compared to other mass-audience sci-fi movies, and even compared to older Star Trek movies, 2009's Star Trek falls flat IMO.
It is knickle and diming me to death expect the dimes are 100 dollars and the knickles are 50 bucks. And it is not like these sellers try and make it easy, NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD HAS A CREDIT CARD YOU FUCKING AMERICAN CENTRIC ASSHOLE!
I have to take issue with this comment. How exactly do you expect Americans to accept your money then? There's only two main ways I know of: credit cards, and Paypal (which also processes credit cards if you don't have a PP account). There's also Google Payments, but that's almost exactly like PP.
Of course, there's another way: I could fly over to Switzerland and set up a swiss bank account so I can get direct transfers just like the Europeans do. But that seems a little extreme, don't you think?
A lot of Europeans don't seem to understand that American banks are not generally on the IBAN system; some are on the SWIFT system, but then they'll charge you hefty fees to accept money, so it's not worth using unless you're transferring thousands of dollars at once.
You might as well complain that someone in Zimbabwe or Indonesia isn't able to accept your European bank transfers.