The phrase "Life as we know it" poses several difficulties when pondering contact with alien species. To this point in history, "Life" and "Life as we know it" have identical meaning. They mean anything organic. Few people will agree that computers are alive, and even less that clouds are alive.
Dictionary.com defines life as "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism." This definition loosely defines anything more complex than a thunderstorm as "alive".
Today's scientists have equal chances of correctly speculating the most common form of life in the universe as I do of beating Mr. woods at golf.
The difficulty microsoft will have is keeping their windows customers from dumping windows.
There are two reasons I use windows, Office and games.
There is one reason my employer uses windows, and it's not games.
Nothing more annoying than receiving a word document in pine.
Slashdot Mirror
The phrase "Life as we know it" poses several difficulties when pondering contact with alien species. To this point in history, "Life" and "Life as we know it" have identical meaning. They mean anything organic. Few people will agree that computers are alive, and even less that clouds are alive.
Dictionary.com defines life as "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism." This definition loosely defines anything more complex than a thunderstorm as "alive".
Today's scientists have equal chances of correctly speculating the most common form of life in the universe as I do of beating Mr. woods at golf.
The difficulty microsoft will have is keeping their windows customers from dumping windows.
There are two reasons I use windows, Office and games.
There is one reason my employer uses windows, and it's not games.
Nothing more annoying than receiving a word document in pine.