Bleah, the second book was awful, but 3-6 were very good. The last couple are awesome. I really wish Herbert had lived long enough to write the next two because you just know that his son is going to ruin the cliffhanger from 6.
Re:SETI's a scam. Always was. So?
on
Cheating at Seti@home
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· Score: 4, Informative
Ok, I know this is a troll but:
Care to venture how many tax dollars go to seti right now? I'll venture an impressive number: 0. Seti is not currently publically funded. That's right, its all voluntary donations.
I don't think anyone speaking for SETI has really made a claim such as: If we do X we will find life. Many times certainly they have said we _might_ find life.
The drake equation and its variables are not 'made up'. They are estimated as accurately as possible from star surveys of the galaxy. Only the last couple of variables are really open to any sort of scientific question, the others are pretty well settled. The question that should be asked is whether or not there are enough hospitable star systems out there that it might be possible for intelligent life to exist outside our solar system, and the answer is clearly yes.
Seti also has a clearly falsifiable premise: Seti claims that there might be other intelligent life inside of our galaxy (I believe that seti is willing to settle for our galaxy, since talking to anyone in a different galaxy is currently really beyond the realm of possibility for our technology). This claim is trivially falsifiable. Send a small probe to every start system, and survey any planets found. If no life is found, I believe that most if not all seti scientists will be glad to consider the question answered. Now sure, falsifying this way is a bit too difficult for us right now, so we're trying some other methods, but certainly within another century or so we should be well prepared to consider attempting a direct refutation of the seti premise.
Or you can view this from the other direction. Seti is a project engaged with the attempted refutation of the scientific premise that there is no intelligent life in our galaxy outside our solar system. In this case we might say that they are simply using the best tools available to them right now, and we can expect that within the next 10,000 years or so that the question will be pretty well settled by advances in our technology, but it might be settled much sooner than that, and the potential value of settling the question early is tremendous.
To clear up a last point, there are 2 questions I think seti would like to answer:
1) Is there life outside our solar system, inside our galaxy.
2) Is any of (1) that we discover, also intelligent.
Weather.com has been pretty accurate (>90%) out to 4 days for my area for a while now. Areas with more random weather probably have more issues (duh) but for a lot of the country you can expect pretty decent accuracy out to at least 3 days.
But.... those are all problems with the unterraformed venus. A terraformed venus wouldn't have any of those issues, for some terraforming technology > x.
The person who put locks on 7-11 doors is implied to be stupid, he is criticized, he is hurt.
Where can I start with who gets hurt in baseball vs football:
Baseball's creators (implied stupid) John Madden (implied ugly or wimpy, clearly insulted) Football players (to be insulted by implied violent natures) Baseball players (to be insulted by implied timid natures)
Personally, I don't find that sketch that funny. The funniest part to me is the part about John Madden, but that's also the part most clearly making someone suffer.
" Then there are totally bogus arguments like fake pictures showing "a third astronaut in the reflection of one astronaut's helmet" and stuff like that, which are just picture manipulations. If you bother at all, you can find the original picture (which in many cases is quite common and well known) and see the same picture without the Photoshop edited 3rd astronaut. "
You misunderstand the problem. The true original photos had the 3rd astronaut. It's the phony updates the government is spreading around to solidify the moon landing claims that have the 3rd astronaut edited _out_.
It is theft when the music industry uses threat of physical harm to force signature to the contract. A lot of these artists sign on at a time when they wouldn't otherwise eat. That's theft.
But the IMDB is owned and controlled by a sub corporation of the MPAA, and they fake most if not all of the movie reviews on there, so how can you hope to get good information out of it?
I'm currently living in georgia while my wife attends graduate school at UGA. We know some people with rural houses with non flush toilets. They have TVs.
"It doesn't make sense. Either your government is that greatest in the world or they are sold-out money grabbing pigs. You can't have both."
Oh come now, a government of money grabbing pigs could easily be the best government. Just compare to all the dictatorships, regimes with terrible torture, etc.
Not that ours is the best, just that the two aren't incompatible.
I hope you're kidding about the bbc. Have you heard any of their coverage about events in the middle east? Could they be any more anti-US or anti-Semitic?
You need 1000x and change for better graphics. Seriously, the industry wastes huge amounts of man hours forcing artists to keep their polygon count down. If those artists could be freed to other tasks, the quality and depth of games would skyrocket very quickly. Most games made today are not programmer bound at all in terms of depth and balance. When artists can stop worrying about polygon count, you'll see some amazing games.
As a rough estimate: 1 trillion (10^12) or less galaxies in the universe. 1 trillion (10^12) or less stars per galaxy.
10^24 stars total in the universe. Probably less.
That isn't quite room for an infinite number of technological civilizations, but it could hold quite a few.
Being generous, and dropping your first search term, if one in a million planetary systems (10^6) has a planet with life support, and one in a trillion (10^12) spawned life, and one in 10^12 had something we recognized as life, and one in 10^6 became intelligent and emitted radio signals (again, being generous and dropping your last term), then we're all alone most likely, because you've come up to one in 10^36, and that's dropping another 10^18th in your claim.
On the other hand, IMO, the odds are much better. I would just guess that most advanced races just get depressed about the whole long term entropy problem and commit suicide long before bothering to talk to us.
"This may be legal (but that isn't a given. Indeed, what he, Hollings, and others are doing may in fact be very illegal, if you accept the premise that it is unconstitutional. Conspiring to violate the highest law of the land is very arguably an illegal act), but it is most certainly not moral and it does constitute a very real attack on me, personally. "
Actually, it could even be described as treasonous, which carries the death penalty.
People who don't understand how to reach morality without codification by religion should be introduced to kohlberg's stages of moral development.
It is usually a good shock to the system for religious addicts to find themselves (most of them anyway) very logically ranked at 4 of 6 (or 5 of 7 depending on which reading you find) while athiests (again most, not all) are ranked one or two levels higher.
The sad thing is that without better education for the masses, religion has in fact gotten a lot of people to level 4 who otherwise might be stuck at an even lower level, and be a greater danger to the rest of us.
The best solution to our current problem with widespread religious mass murder (IMO) is education.
* People who believe that the creator of the universe chose _one_ single person in all of history to be his official representative, and that if you don't believe that, you're going to suffer for all eternity.
currency tracking hardly needs rfids
on
Greenbacks No More
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I used to work for the treasury department, and back about 10 years ago they were working extensively with the FBI to improve on the ability to track down money laundering and counterfeiting.
The biggest thing heading our way in that department is a nationally linked serial number scanning system. Basically, since virtually all stores have laser scanners already, and a strong desire to avoid getting fed counterfeits (since they lose the counterfeit money without reparation), stores will be offered the opportunity to scan the money you hand them, and have a unique serial number checked against a national database. Money being used at multiple locations at the same time can be flagged as counterfeit, and refused by the stores.
The big benefit to the FBI comes when they can then follow money virtually every time it is spent. It can even be correlated with time stamped receipts at the stores to see what was bought.
A portion of this system is already in place in a number of banks, which have better scanners that work with the existing money supply, but in the next generation of currency, there will be a small bar code on the upper right edge of the currency for this purpose.
Its a pretty cool system, and should really help to cut down on organized crime.
Generics are alive and well. You can get them at almost every supermarket chain. They just have nicer packaging now because the cost for fancy packaging went way down. They don't say generic anymore, they are designed to look as much like the national brand as possible (to the point where there are a lot of lawsuits going on about theft of trademark and copyright violation.)
I buy a fair amount of generics, as in many cases they cost 1/2 the national brand price for essentially identical product. Finding those cases where generics aren't equivalent kind of sucks, but otherwise they are usually a pretty good deal. I'm sure someone gets badly exploited in the process, but it isn't clear who.
Along with other posters criticizing this, I'd like to point out that bill gates stole most of that money by taking advantage of his monopoly situation. Some of that money he stole from me, and I haven't had the chance to recover it by lawsuit yet, so by giving it away to charities I don't believe in, he has deprived me of the opportunity to give it to something more important and deserving.
Slashdot Mirror
Bleah, the second book was awful, but 3-6 were very good. The last couple are awesome. I really wish Herbert had lived long enough to write the next two because you just know that his son is going to ruin the cliffhanger from 6.
Ok, I know this is a troll but:
Care to venture how many tax dollars go to seti right now? I'll venture an impressive number: 0. Seti is not currently publically funded. That's right, its all voluntary donations.
I don't think anyone speaking for SETI has really made a claim such as: If we do X we will find life. Many times certainly they have said we _might_ find life.
The drake equation and its variables are not 'made up'. They are estimated as accurately as possible from star surveys of the galaxy. Only the last couple of variables are really open to any sort of scientific question, the others are pretty well settled. The question that should be asked is whether or not there are enough hospitable star systems out there that it might be possible for intelligent life to exist outside our solar system, and the answer is clearly yes.
Seti also has a clearly falsifiable premise: Seti claims that there might be other intelligent life inside of our galaxy (I believe that seti is willing to settle for our galaxy, since talking to anyone in a different galaxy is currently really beyond the realm of possibility for our technology). This claim is trivially falsifiable. Send a small probe to every start system, and survey any planets found. If no life is found, I believe that most if not all seti scientists will be glad to consider the question answered. Now sure, falsifying this way is a bit too difficult for us right now, so we're trying some other methods, but certainly within another century or so we should be well prepared to consider attempting a direct refutation of the seti premise.
Or you can view this from the other direction. Seti is a project engaged with the attempted refutation of the scientific premise that there is no intelligent life in our galaxy outside our solar system. In this case we might say that they are simply using the best tools available to them right now, and we can expect that within the next 10,000 years or so that the question will be pretty well settled by advances in our technology, but it might be settled much sooner than that, and the potential value of settling the question early is tremendous.
To clear up a last point, there are 2 questions I think seti would like to answer:
1) Is there life outside our solar system, inside our galaxy.
2) Is any of (1) that we discover, also intelligent.
I think both are clear and falsifiable.
Weather.com has been pretty accurate (>90%) out to 4 days for my area for a while now. Areas with more random weather probably have more issues (duh) but for a lot of the country you can expect pretty decent accuracy out to at least 3 days.
But .... those are all problems with the unterraformed venus. A terraformed venus wouldn't have any of those issues, for some terraforming technology > x.
The person who put locks on 7-11 doors is implied to be stupid, he is criticized, he is hurt.
Where can I start with who gets hurt in baseball vs football:
Baseball's creators (implied stupid)
John Madden (implied ugly or wimpy, clearly insulted)
Football players (to be insulted by implied violent natures)
Baseball players (to be insulted by implied timid natures)
Personally, I don't find that sketch that funny. The funniest part to me is the part about John Madden, but that's also the part most clearly making someone suffer.
Are they poor at math, or did one of their members die or something?
Implied suffering counts. Making fun of someone causes that person or class to suffer (from prejudice).
Try to come up with a specific example, I'll be happy to point out who suffers.
A joke is funny when someone suffers.
I first heard that 10 years ago and have yet to hear a counter example. Note the slightly unusual case that when you hear a pun, YOU suffer.
"
Then there are totally bogus arguments like fake pictures showing "a third astronaut in the reflection of one astronaut's helmet" and stuff like that, which are just picture manipulations. If you bother at all, you can find the original picture (which in many cases is quite common and well known) and see the same picture without the Photoshop edited 3rd astronaut.
"
You misunderstand the problem. The true original photos had the 3rd astronaut. It's the phony updates the government is spreading around to solidify the moon landing claims that have the 3rd astronaut edited _out_.
It is theft when the music industry uses threat of physical harm to force signature to the contract. A lot of these artists sign on at a time when they wouldn't otherwise eat. That's theft.
But the IMDB is owned and controlled by a sub corporation of the MPAA, and they fake most if not all of the movie reviews on there, so how can you hope to get good information out of it?
I'm currently living in georgia while my wife attends graduate school at UGA. We know some people with rural houses with non flush toilets. They have TVs.
They can't really predict so far ahead, but the cycle has been so reliable that it is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.
"It doesn't make sense. Either your government is that greatest in the world or they are sold-out money grabbing pigs. You can't have both."
Oh come now, a government of money grabbing pigs could easily be the best government. Just compare to all the dictatorships, regimes with terrible torture, etc.
Not that ours is the best, just that the two aren't incompatible.
I hope you're kidding about the bbc. Have you heard any of their coverage about events in the middle east? Could they be any more anti-US or anti-Semitic?
I think you're going to find your experience in the minority. ATI's driver reputation is really, really bad compared to nvidia.
You need 1000x and change for better graphics. Seriously, the industry wastes huge amounts of man hours forcing artists to keep their polygon count down. If those artists could be freed to other tasks, the quality and depth of games would skyrocket very quickly. Most games made today are not programmer bound at all in terms of depth and balance. When artists can stop worrying about polygon count, you'll see some amazing games.
These numbers are maybe a little off.
As a rough estimate:
1 trillion (10^12) or less galaxies in the universe.
1 trillion (10^12) or less stars per galaxy.
10^24 stars total in the universe. Probably less.
That isn't quite room for an infinite number of technological civilizations, but it could hold quite a few.
Being generous, and dropping your first search term, if one in a million planetary systems (10^6) has a planet with life support, and one in a trillion (10^12) spawned life, and one in 10^12 had something we recognized as life, and one in 10^6 became intelligent and emitted radio signals (again, being generous and dropping your last term), then we're all alone most likely, because you've come up to one in 10^36, and that's dropping another 10^18th in your claim.
On the other hand, IMO, the odds are much better. I would just guess that most advanced races just get depressed about the whole long term entropy problem and commit suicide long before bothering to talk to us.
"Still, the point remains no one else has done it... like you, or me."
Well, I was going to do it last year, but I was born several million dollars too poor.
This is not a feat of great skill, but of adequate engineering, and good weather.
"This may be legal (but that isn't a given. Indeed, what he, Hollings, and others are doing may in fact be very illegal, if you accept the premise that it is unconstitutional. Conspiring to violate the highest law of the land is very arguably an illegal act), but it is most certainly not moral and it does constitute a very real attack on me, personally.
"
Actually, it could even be described as treasonous, which carries the death penalty.
http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/lists/moraldev.html
People who don't understand how to reach morality without codification by religion should be introduced to kohlberg's stages of moral development.
It is usually a good shock to the system for religious addicts to find themselves (most of them anyway) very logically ranked at 4 of 6 (or 5 of 7 depending on which reading you find) while athiests (again most, not all) are ranked one or two levels higher.
The sad thing is that without better education for the masses, religion has in fact gotten a lot of people to level 4 who otherwise might be stuck at an even lower level, and be a greater danger to the rest of us.
The best solution to our current problem with widespread religious mass murder (IMO) is education.
You forgot the classic:
* People who believe that the creator of the universe chose _one_ single person in all of history to be his official representative, and that if you don't believe that, you're going to suffer for all eternity.
I used to work for the treasury department, and back about 10 years ago they were working extensively with the FBI to improve on the ability to track down money laundering and counterfeiting.
The biggest thing heading our way in that department is a nationally linked serial number scanning system. Basically, since virtually all stores have laser scanners already, and a strong desire to avoid getting fed counterfeits (since they lose the counterfeit money without reparation), stores will be offered the opportunity to scan the money you hand them, and have a unique serial number checked against a national database. Money being used at multiple locations at the same time can be flagged as counterfeit, and refused by the stores.
The big benefit to the FBI comes when they can then follow money virtually every time it is spent. It can even be correlated with time stamped receipts at the stores to see what was bought.
A portion of this system is already in place in a number of banks, which have better scanners that work with the existing money supply, but in the next generation of currency, there will be a small bar code on the upper right edge of the currency for this purpose.
Its a pretty cool system, and should really help to cut down on organized crime.
Generics are alive and well. You can get them at almost every supermarket chain. They just have nicer packaging now because the cost for fancy packaging went way down. They don't say generic anymore, they are designed to look as much like the national brand as possible (to the point where there are a lot of lawsuits going on about theft of trademark and copyright violation.)
I buy a fair amount of generics, as in many cases they cost 1/2 the national brand price for essentially identical product. Finding those cases where generics aren't equivalent kind of sucks, but otherwise they are usually a pretty good deal. I'm sure someone gets badly exploited in the process, but it isn't clear who.
Along with other posters criticizing this, I'd like to point out that bill gates stole most of that money by taking advantage of his monopoly situation. Some of that money he stole from me, and I haven't had the chance to recover it by lawsuit yet, so by giving it away to charities I don't believe in, he has deprived me of the opportunity to give it to something more important and deserving.