The title of the parent post was supposed to be "Re:Observational Failings & Continuing Assumptions" (which hits the 50-character title limit), not "Re:Observational Failings & Continuing Assumpt". That's the way that it appeared when I clicked the "Preview" button. My guess is that it re-truncated the title to 50 characters when it changed "&" to "&". It should have done the same thing in the preview, though. Looks like a bug in the code.
If you failed to notice the upwards trend in participation in children-related discussions here on Slashdot, and thus continued to assume that the population here is pretty much all young, sexually frustrated and single, then *THAT* is your loss.
I was making a joke; I wasn't failing to notice or continuing to assume anything. (Thank you for using the word "If", though; it annoys the hell out of me when people appear to presume to know what I think or believe.)
For the record, I am 53 years old, and, although I know that most Slashdotters are younger than that, when I picture them (which isn't often), I picture them as being approximately my own age when reading/typing (even though I know that that's not true). I also picture them as single (since I am single), although I know that many of them are married, divorced, etc. I also picture them as heterosexual American males (or British, if I see spellings like "colour" or words like "lorry"), although I know that many are not heterosexual, American, or male. I also picture them as being similar to me in many other ways that many or most of them probably aren't, because that is just normal human behavior.
Now, if I see things like "7734" spelling (or whatever it is they use for "elite"), or people who use phrases like "for all intensive purposes", "you've got another thing coming", etc., or people who don't seem to know the difference between "their" and "they're", etc., then I picture them as being younger (as young as High School).
Also, under no circumstances (that I can recall) have I ever pictured a Slashdotter as living in his Mom's basement, but I may, at some point in the future, make some joke about that, as well. Just giving you advance warning, so that, when that time comes, you don't have to waste your time pointing out how that joke is getting old as well.
Or the one about Natalie Portman and hot grits.
And so forth.
You see, I, for one, do not welcome our new joke-criticizing overlords.
The shuttle would be a death trap if you did the re-entry just fine but ended up 100 miles away from the nearest airport with gargantuan runways. I'm not sure how well it would do ditching in an ocean or field.
Hillary Swank once landed one in a drainage ditch. (Granted, it was a very large drainage ditch.)
Yeah, but you won't also have someone to take care of you when you get old.
Even though I'm over half a century old, I don't feel old. My guess (my hope) is that by the time that I am 80 or so, robotics (and/or nanotechnology and/or AI) will have advanced to the point where I won't need humans to take care of me. And if I'm the only human on Mars, I would expect to have all of that space-age technology available to me. In addition, at 1/3rd of Earth's gravity, I will be less likely to injure myself if I fall, and the lower gravity will help in other ways, too.
Most people on Slashdot are about as likely to live in celibacy as anyone else of similar age. The joke stopped being funny aproximately 5 years ago
Well...
Some jokes never get old, and
I was speaking from personal experience.
that's your loss
That's your opinion. I lived by myself for over twenty years once (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me), and it was great (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me). During the last five years of that time, I was working out of my house, too, so there were time spans when I wouldn't leave the house or see or even talk to anyone for days at a time. I never got lonely, even though I was alone. (I had my computer upstairs and a well-equipped workshop in my basement.) I'm living with my parents now (because they're getting old and they need someone younger around to help out) and we get along great, but when the inevitable occurs, even though I'll miss them, I'll be fine living by myself again (until I get old myself, I guess).
a fair part of the population on Slashdot these days live in stable relationships and have kids. Me, i've got 3
Well, I've never had kids (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me, and those were actually her kids, not mine), but that just means that I am doing my part to keep the human population on this planet down, plus I'm not in a financial sinkhole like many people who have kids.
i>Then it would be a one-way trip for two (or more) wouldn't it?
No, not if technology is advances enough to have Niven-style autodocs. (I assume that you are typing about medicine; if you are typing about sex, have you not heard of celibacy? Most people on this forum are, uh, "intimately" familiar with that term.)
You should at least pretend to [be round-trip], that way you'll have more volunteers.
One-way trip or not, I'd go, provided I'd have everything I need to be totally self-sufficient*. Anything to get away from these morally bankrupt governments here on Earth.
* When I type "totally self-sufficient", I mean totally. That includes the capability to create all replacement parts, including electronics and so forth.
maybe there is a clever and cheap way to partially sort people that works better than the current approaches.
That's simple; have the chairs in the waiting area arranged like the seating on the plane, and have all the chairs numbered, with the higher numbered seats closer to the gate. If you are in seat 23B on the plane, you sit in chair 23B until boarding time. Of course, different planes have different configurations, so the arrangement of chairs in the waiting area will have to be somewhat generic. Still, if it corresponds even roughly to the seating on the plane, it should make boarding the plane proceed more quickly.
I would assume that the Constitution is part of the law that you are sworn to uphold. In fact, it trumps lower laws. So, if you believe that a law is unconstitutional, then you are doing your duty (and not breaking your word or your oath) by finding a person not guilty on that basis, IMO. Unfortunately, some judges and attorneys don't like people who think like that.
I was rejected for jury duty after I told that judge that I would use the Constitution of the United States as part of the process for determining whether or not the defendant was guilty. If that was the reason that I was rejected (they never told me why), then I think that this is wrong.
Is there any other industry where companies are allowed to sell services which they know they cannot provide?
Government, if you can call government an "industry". Look at all of the campaign promises being made by the people currently running for US President, and all of the lies being told by the current (and former) administration(s).
Parent was not off-topic relative to the GP. Is everyone here too young to remember Joni Mitchell?
I might have some of the words wrong but:
They took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum And charged everybody a dollar and a half just to see 'em. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
I think there was a recent survey/study that showed Nobel Prize winners have a slightly longer life expectancy.
Although, because it's just a correlation, we don't know if it's because winning the Nobel prize makes you live longer or because people that tend to live longer win the Nobel prize. Note that both are feasible explanations.
It's because Nobel Prizes aren't awarded posthumously. To illustrate, suppose that two people of the same age are on the short list to win one of the prizes. Since the committee can't make up its mind, it is about to decide to split the award between the two of them. But then, one of them dies just before that decision is made. The living one will get the prize, and the dead one won't.
Just rolling out another space program will do nothing to help education and science unless it is accompanied by the passion. What are the defining obsessions of today?
I've got it! Send that shaved-headed chick and her husband, FedEx, into space. After all, they're halfway there already.
At some point in the next few million years, we need to get ourselves a backup planet
It doesn't have to be a planet. (For more, please read this post and its responses, a bit further down, for why an asteroid may be a better place than Luna or Mars to build an off-Earth habitat.)
any significant human base off-planet needs three things - enough physics to get it built, an ecosystem that can run indefinitely without refills from Earth so we can live there, and some useful job to do once we've built it.
The physics are already there (for an asteroidal or other micro-gravity human habitat), and the technology is there, or nearly so. Probably more research needs to be done on systems to prevent a spinning habitat from wobbling, but my guess is that a sufficiently smart system can avoid wobbling by shifting water around to compensate for the movements of humans and other masses. Also, (I have not seen this mentioned elsewhere, but I doubt that I am the first person to have thought of it), by using counter-rotating masses with co-incident centers of gravity and equal angular momentum, one can avoid using rocket fuel to spin up the habitat in the first place (or to spin it down, in case of emergencies or need for repairs that can't be done at 1G). Essentially, the habitat acts like one big electric solar-powered motor, with half of the habitat acting as the stator, and the other half acting as the rotor. (One example would be a rotating central wheel flanked by two smaller counter-rotating wheels (possibly with a non-rotating central axis for micro-gravity science/industry and to make spacecraft docking less hazardous), but other configurations are possible.) In addition, the magnetic fields produced by such a large motor may help to shield the habitat from some kinds of radiation.
The ecosystem thing is still problematic, but it's getting there as well. (IIRC, Biosphere2, while a bit of a publicity stunt, might have succeeded (scientifically) had the chemical properties of the concrete been taken into account.) It seems to me that a space-based environment, where sunlight is (almost) always available (except when transiting behind planetary bodies, but such occurrences can be reduced or possibly eliminated by choosing an appropriate orbit), would be more conducive to growing things than an environment that's dark for two weeks every month. (Yes, one can grow things using artificial lighting (many "recreational plant" growers can attest to that), but then there's all of the problems with energy storage and so forth that one doesn't have in space, where sunlight is almost always available.)
As far as useful jobs go, I would think that there are more useful (can't-be-done-on-Earth) jobs in a micro-gravity environment, like in the hub of a space habitat, than in a merely low-gravity environment such as one would find on the Moon. In a spinning habitat, one can experiment with/utilize many different levels of gravity, from nearly zero (at the hub) to greater than 1G (by dropping a cable from the rim). In addition, the vacuum near a space habitat is harder than the vacuum on the Moon (which has an (admittedly very very tenuous) atmosphere). This may be more useful for certain experiments/industries.
Even a broken watch gives the right time twice a day.
That may have been true 30 to 40 years prior to the time in which I type these words, but it is definitely false for most watches made at this point in the long and mostly boring history of mankind. Most watches made during these troubled times utilize LCDs, which, when broken, give no time at all.
The fact that you don't have to close the text-editing window to compile is what I liked. Vim, unfortunately, can't do that
On most UNIX-type systems (e.g., Linux and BSD), you can type ^Z (or <CTRL>+Z, if you prefer that nomenclature) to temporarily suspend vi (but don't forget:w<RET> first to save your changes), do your make or whatever, then type %<RET> to resume your vi session. This works from xterm as well as from a VT. If you're using (g)vim, you can have a macro set up that will save, compile, and insert error messages in the file you're working on, so you can jump right to the lines in error. (I'd post it here, but I've long since lost it (since I now use another method).)
Slashdot Mirror
The title of the parent post was supposed to be "Re:Observational Failings & Continuing Assumptions" (which hits the 50-character title limit), not "Re:Observational Failings & Continuing Assumpt".
That's the way that it appeared when I clicked the "Preview" button.
My guess is that it re-truncated the title to 50 characters when it changed "&" to "&".
It should have done the same thing in the preview, though.
Looks like a bug in the code.
(Thank you for using the word "If", though; it annoys the hell out of me when people appear to presume to know what I think or believe.)
For the record, I am 53 years old, and, although I know that most Slashdotters are younger than that, when I picture them (which isn't often), I picture them as being approximately my own age when reading/typing (even though I know that that's not true).
I also picture them as single (since I am single), although I know that many of them are married, divorced, etc.
I also picture them as heterosexual American males (or British, if I see spellings like "colour" or words like "lorry"), although I know that many are not heterosexual, American, or male.
I also picture them as being similar to me in many other ways that many or most of them probably aren't, because that is just normal human behavior.
Now, if I see things like "7734" spelling (or whatever it is they use for "elite"), or people who use phrases like "for all intensive purposes", "you've got another thing coming", etc., or people who don't seem to know the difference between "their" and "they're", etc., then I picture them as being younger (as young as High School).
Also, under no circumstances (that I can recall) have I ever pictured a Slashdotter as living in his Mom's basement, but I may, at some point in the future, make some joke about that, as well.
Just giving you advance warning, so that, when that time comes, you don't have to waste your time pointing out how that joke is getting old as well.
Or the one about Natalie Portman and hot grits.
And so forth.
You see, I, for one, do not welcome our new joke-criticizing overlords.
(Granted, it was a very large drainage ditch.)
My guess (my hope) is that by the time that I am 80 or so, robotics (and/or nanotechnology and/or AI) will have advanced to the point where I won't need humans to take care of me.
And if I'm the only human on Mars, I would expect to have all of that space-age technology available to me.
In addition, at 1/3rd of Earth's gravity, I will be less likely to injure myself if I fall, and the lower gravity will help in other ways, too.
"Some jokes never get old" should be "Some jokes never get old, except in Soviet Russia, where the old never get some jokes".
- Some jokes never get old, and
- I was speaking from personal experience.
That's your opinion.I lived by myself for over twenty years once (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me), and it was great (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me).
During the last five years of that time, I was working out of my house, too, so there were time spans when I wouldn't leave the house or see or even talk to anyone for days at a time.
I never got lonely, even though I was alone.
(I had my computer upstairs and a well-equipped workshop in my basement.)
I'm living with my parents now (because they're getting old and they need someone younger around to help out) and we get along great, but when the inevitable occurs, even though I'll miss them, I'll be fine living by myself again (until I get old myself, I guess).Well, I've never had kids (except for a short span when I had a girlfriend living with me, and those were actually her kids, not mine), but that just means that I am doing my part to keep the human population on this planet down, plus I'm not in a financial sinkhole like many people who have kids.
(I assume that you are typing about medicine; if you are typing about sex, have you not heard of celibacy?
Most people on this forum are, uh, "intimately" familiar with that term.)
Anything to get away from these morally bankrupt governments here on Earth.
* When I type "totally self-sufficient", I mean totally.
That includes the capability to create all replacement parts, including electronics and so forth.
If you are in seat 23B on the plane, you sit in chair 23B until boarding time.
Of course, different planes have different configurations, so the arrangement of chairs in the waiting area will have to be somewhat generic.
Still, if it corresponds even roughly to the seating on the plane, it should make boarding the plane proceed more quickly.
I would assume that the Constitution is part of the law that you are sworn to uphold.
In fact, it trumps lower laws.
So, if you believe that a law is unconstitutional, then you are doing your duty (and not breaking your word or your oath) by finding a person not guilty on that basis, IMO.
Unfortunately, some judges and attorneys don't like people who think like that.
I was rejected for jury duty after I told that judge that I would use the Constitution of the United States as part of the process for determining whether or not the defendant was guilty.
If that was the reason that I was rejected (they never told me why), then I think that this is wrong.
Look at all of the campaign promises being made by the people currently running for US President, and all of the lies being told by the current (and former) administration(s).
Is everyone here too young to remember Joni Mitchell?
I might have some of the words wrong but:From "Big Yellow Taxi", by Joni Mitchell
To illustrate, suppose that two people of the same age are on the short list to win one of the prizes.
Since the committee can't make up its mind, it is about to decide to split the award between the two of them.
But then, one of them dies just before that decision is made.
The living one will get the prize, and the dead one won't.
Send that shaved-headed chick and her husband, FedEx, into space.
After all, they're halfway there already.
(For more, please read this post and its responses, a bit further down, for why an asteroid may be a better place than Luna or Mars to build an off-Earth habitat.)The physics are already there (for an asteroidal or other micro-gravity human habitat), and the technology is there, or nearly so.
Probably more research needs to be done on systems to prevent a spinning habitat from wobbling, but my guess is that a sufficiently smart system can avoid wobbling by shifting water around to compensate for the movements of humans and other masses.
Also, (I have not seen this mentioned elsewhere, but I doubt that I am the first person to have thought of it), by using counter-rotating masses with co-incident centers of gravity and equal angular momentum, one can avoid using rocket fuel to spin up the habitat in the first place (or to spin it down, in case of emergencies or need for repairs that can't be done at 1G).
Essentially, the habitat acts like one big electric solar-powered motor, with half of the habitat acting as the stator, and the other half acting as the rotor.
(One example would be a rotating central wheel flanked by two smaller counter-rotating wheels (possibly with a non-rotating central axis for micro-gravity science/industry and to make spacecraft docking less hazardous), but other configurations are possible.)
In addition, the magnetic fields produced by such a large motor may help to shield the habitat from some kinds of radiation.
The ecosystem thing is still problematic, but it's getting there as well.
(IIRC, Biosphere2, while a bit of a publicity stunt, might have succeeded (scientifically) had the chemical properties of the concrete been taken into account.)
It seems to me that a space-based environment, where sunlight is (almost) always available (except when transiting behind planetary bodies, but such occurrences can be reduced or possibly eliminated by choosing an appropriate orbit), would be more conducive to growing things than an environment that's dark for two weeks every month.
(Yes, one can grow things using artificial lighting (many "recreational plant" growers can attest to that), but then there's all of the problems with energy storage and so forth that one doesn't have in space, where sunlight is almost always available.)
As far as useful jobs go, I would think that there are more useful (can't-be-done-on-Earth) jobs in a micro-gravity environment, like in the hub of a space habitat, than in a merely low-gravity environment such as one would find on the Moon.
In a spinning habitat, one can experiment with/utilize many different levels of gravity, from nearly zero (at the hub) to greater than 1G (by dropping a cable from the rim).
In addition, the vacuum near a space habitat is harder than the vacuum on the Moon (which has an (admittedly very very tenuous) atmosphere).
This may be more useful for certain experiments/industries.
Most watches made during these troubled times utilize LCDs, which, when broken, give no time at all.
This works from xterm as well as from a VT.
If you're using (g)vim, you can have a macro set up that will save, compile, and insert error messages in the file you're working on, so you can jump right to the lines in error.
(I'd post it here, but I've long since lost it (since I now use another method).)