Most people have no real appreciation of the scale involved in psace travel. As daunting as our own solar system is, even that pales in comparison to the scales involved in traveling to other solar systems. Currently it takes us about 9 years for a probe to reach Pluto. When I ask people to guess how long it would take that same probe to reach the nearest solar system (a mere 4.2 light years away), people's estimates are usually comically far off.
120,000 years is the correct answer. Most people guess between 100-1000. That's why people think it is plausible for mankind to colonize space. They don't appreciate the scale we're talking about.
That's with current technology. So basically, it's too hard so let's not try.
Jesus. The human race is too busy farting into our own couch to even think of getting our fat asses off it and trying something new.
Hell, there are whole classes of artists who are doing an end-run around the RIAA's megalopy. Pretty soon, they won't have much of anything to pirate that isn't already 20 years old.
I don't know why we don't start boxing in nations who do not control their spammers and hackers. Telling the USSR, just for an example, to shut down their known, easily-found spamming operations or get blackholed right off the fucking face of the planet would go a long way towards ending this stupidity.
I'm sure somewhere in the Wikileaks memos someone could find evidence that all of our world leaders are polishing each others' fucking knobs on this issue . . . sometimes I think the world is run by toddlers who've escaped the daycare.
Well, living in a trailer park in bumfuck FL he probably doesn't realize who Assange actually is, or where he is, or what he actually does.
It sounds to me like someone put Pitchford up to this. And has the court thrown this complaint out with gales of derisive laughter yet? If not, may I volunteer to provide the laughter?
Except that they ripped off the "FarmTown" game, which existed LONG before it. I'm not sure how it isn't a total copyright violation, but I'm sure that by the time the litigation got through the works, it would probably be too late for whoever ACTUALLY did all the hard work of coming up with that game to recoup their losses.
Zynga are nothing more than a bunch of thieves. Whether their theft is legalized or not is probably up for debate, but it's theft nonetheless.
one thing I know is that the foundations of *non-magical thinking* were preserved by the clerical population, not the secular one
Preserving this knowledge in a dark back room is not the same as advancing it. You forgot to mention that the only reason it WAS preserved was because literacy was generally reserved for the wealthy, who controlled the Church, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The intellectual bankruptcy of your position is obvious.
You're trying to explain quite simple things to someone who can't understand that "government" in the US means "the people"
To take that further, those who want to shrink "government" are really interested in reducing the power of democracy to redress the needs and grievances of the people by taking away their ability to do so. Of course, always in favor of the moneyed elite.
There is a disturbing movement in the USA that reminds me of the Royalists; willing serfs who are terrified of self-determination. That would be right-wingers and Libertarians.
Given the enormous explosion in literacy and printing press technology over the last 100 years, I would say he's probably closer than you think. Also, it's estimated that human knowledge doubles every 7 years -- that would mean a doubling of the number of things written down or published.
What would resolve this is to discover how many books existed 100 years ago, and 50 years ago.
I'm a little skeptical that the gov't could be as effective
Republicans have spent years convincing you by their deliberate incompetence and stupidity that government can't be more efficient than private industry.
Think that Google needs to figure out why their browser constantly times out when my other two browsers don't. It's one of the reasons I would never try to use Chrome OS because if their timeout algorithm is the same as the one in the browser, such an OS could never function from my house. I realize I may have a latent connection or some other issue with my network, but for crying out loud, every OTHER time I try to browse with Chrome it says "Oops! I can't find that."
I NEVER have this problem with IE or Firefox. And I specifically include IE in that to rub it the fuck in. Chrome sucks. I won't use it as my main browser until they figure that crap out. And it sounds like Firefox will be Chrome-like soon enough so that I can get the simplicity and functionality I want both at the same time.
That neither BP nor any other drilling outfit has the expertise or quality control to do this kind of a job right. They keep whining about how "hard" it is to do this kind of work. Maybe they should get into something easy like ditch-digging.
I imagine how that kind of attitude would go over well with my management. "It's just too hard" to be oncall for a week out of every three. And I fuck up badly enough that the entire company is in jeopardy, and it's "just too hard" for me to clean it up.
"I'm sorry, mr. Toad. I guess you should try something easier, like flipping burgers!"
You mean like the guys who just turned our campaign finance system over to corporations.
Cut the bullshit with that "originalist" crap. That is the most obtuse intellectual fraud perpetrated on the American people in at least a generation. "Originalist" seems to equate "cherrypicked for conservative values," and often includes outrageous interpretations of what the Constitution means.
Of course, I don't give conservatives much credit for knowing what's in the Constitution. Like the Bible, it seems to be a document that exists entirely in their minds which does little more than confirm their vile prejudices and selfish habits.
Arguments such as this are useful if you're cold because like anything else made entirely of straw you can set them on fire and they burn nice and pretty.
I'm sure Obama could figure out how to use an iPod. I'm also sure he's far more intelligent than the majority of Americans -- and judging from the knee-jerk right-wing stupidity of the comments regarding Obama, I think he's probably more intelligent than most of the readers of/. After all, he's the President, and you're goofing off on company time.
But unlike his predecessor, he doesn't seem to be spending most of his time goofing off such that he would HAVE time to learn how to use a trivial device that plays music. Instead, he's got his hands full with, you know, running the country.
75% of everything I have on disk is a copy of something else, but unfortunately I usually have lost the copy somewhere in the process of moving, moving from one machine to the next, or trying to clear up disk space so I can download more stuff to leave on my disk.
My English degree says you're wrong. Those "correct" and "incorrect" rules were mostly created by English gentry around the time the printing press was invented so they could still have something that separated them from the lower classes. Since literacy wasn't going to be the key anymore, silly and often counterproductive rules were adopted.
Turzyx, there's a reason why "rocket scientist" is synonymous with "friggin' blazing genius."
And there's also a reason why you'll never be one, because you clearly don't even begin to appreciate the blazing heat of genius required to understand how to launch a rocket without killing its passengers and laying waste to vast tracts of land as far as the eye can see.
"However she still may be violating company policy about using work assets for personal affairs."
Maybe. That's another can of worms. I use my personal computer to work from home. I'm expected to be available every few weeks for a week of "on-call" activity where work can intrude quite firmly into my home.
The line between working at home and "homing" at work, to badly coin a phrase, is getting blurrier every year.
And companies have a choice of either shutting people out of their personal lives completely for 8-10 hours a day (and getting the exact same shutout when those people go home) or learning to be modestly flexible. So far the trend is that companies are learning to bend just a bit.
I'm trying to picture China attacking the goose that lays the golden egg.
And Iran has no capability to attack the US. Never has and never will.
Try to stick to real threats, plz. We just finished almost a decade of pointless conflict in a nation that never attacked us and never had the capability to. I have taken from this experience that MOST of the "threats" to the US are made up by politicians wanting to funnel money into secret wartime projects under the cover of fear, panic, and chaos.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people have no real appreciation of the scale involved in psace travel. As daunting as our own solar system is, even that pales in comparison to the scales involved in traveling to other solar systems. Currently it takes us about 9 years for a probe to reach Pluto. When I ask people to guess how long it would take that same probe to reach the nearest solar system (a mere 4.2 light years away), people's estimates are usually comically far off.
120,000 years is the correct answer. Most people guess between 100-1000. That's why people think it is plausible for mankind to colonize space. They don't appreciate the scale we're talking about.
That's with current technology. So basically, it's too hard so let's not try.
Jesus. The human race is too busy farting into our own couch to even think of getting our fat asses off it and trying something new.
Hell, there are whole classes of artists who are doing an end-run around the RIAA's megalopy. Pretty soon, they won't have much of anything to pirate that isn't already 20 years old.
This is a lobbyist whose primary work seems to have consisted of attacking her industry's customers.
Neither conscience nor intelligence seem to reside within these folks.
Has anyone clued the RIAA in to the fact that their business model is D-E-A-D?
I don't know why we don't start boxing in nations who do not control their spammers and hackers. Telling the USSR, just for an example, to shut down their known, easily-found spamming operations or get blackholed right off the fucking face of the planet would go a long way towards ending this stupidity.
I'm sure somewhere in the Wikileaks memos someone could find evidence that all of our world leaders are polishing each others' fucking knobs on this issue . . . sometimes I think the world is run by toddlers who've escaped the daycare.
Well, living in a trailer park in bumfuck FL he probably doesn't realize who Assange actually is, or where he is, or what he actually does.
It sounds to me like someone put Pitchford up to this. And has the court thrown this complaint out with gales of derisive laughter yet? If not, may I volunteer to provide the laughter?
Except that they ripped off the "FarmTown" game, which existed LONG before it. I'm not sure how it isn't a total copyright violation, but I'm sure that by the time the litigation got through the works, it would probably be too late for whoever ACTUALLY did all the hard work of coming up with that game to recoup their losses.
Zynga are nothing more than a bunch of thieves. Whether their theft is legalized or not is probably up for debate, but it's theft nonetheless.
Preserving this knowledge in a dark back room is not the same as advancing it. You forgot to mention that the only reason it WAS preserved was because literacy was generally reserved for the wealthy, who controlled the Church, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The intellectual bankruptcy of your position is obvious.
To take that further, those who want to shrink "government" are really interested in reducing the power of democracy to redress the needs and grievances of the people by taking away their ability to do so. Of course, always in favor of the moneyed elite.
There is a disturbing movement in the USA that reminds me of the Royalists; willing serfs who are terrified of self-determination. That would be right-wingers and Libertarians.
Given the enormous explosion in literacy and printing press technology over the last 100 years, I would say he's probably closer than you think. Also, it's estimated that human knowledge doubles every 7 years -- that would mean a doubling of the number of things written down or published.
What would resolve this is to discover how many books existed 100 years ago, and 50 years ago.
Republicans have spent years convincing you by their deliberate incompetence and stupidity that government can't be more efficient than private industry.
It's the most amazing flimflam in history.
Think that Google needs to figure out why their browser constantly times out when my other two browsers don't. It's one of the reasons I would never try to use Chrome OS because if their timeout algorithm is the same as the one in the browser, such an OS could never function from my house. I realize I may have a latent connection or some other issue with my network, but for crying out loud, every OTHER time I try to browse with Chrome it says "Oops! I can't find that."
I NEVER have this problem with IE or Firefox. And I specifically include IE in that to rub it the fuck in. Chrome sucks. I won't use it as my main browser until they figure that crap out. And it sounds like Firefox will be Chrome-like soon enough so that I can get the simplicity and functionality I want both at the same time.
That neither BP nor any other drilling outfit has the expertise or quality control to do this kind of a job right. They keep whining about how "hard" it is to do this kind of work. Maybe they should get into something easy like ditch-digging.
I imagine how that kind of attitude would go over well with my management. "It's just too hard" to be oncall for a week out of every three. And I fuck up badly enough that the entire company is in jeopardy, and it's "just too hard" for me to clean it up.
"I'm sorry, mr. Toad. I guess you should try something easier, like flipping burgers!"
You mean like the guys who just turned our campaign finance system over to corporations.
Cut the bullshit with that "originalist" crap. That is the most obtuse intellectual fraud perpetrated on the American people in at least a generation. "Originalist" seems to equate "cherrypicked for conservative values," and often includes outrageous interpretations of what the Constitution means.
Of course, I don't give conservatives much credit for knowing what's in the Constitution. Like the Bible, it seems to be a document that exists entirely in their minds which does little more than confirm their vile prejudices and selfish habits.
OMG. So what would Jack Bauer do?
Oh WAIT! Those are all FUCKING TELEVISION SHOWS!! Never mind. I thought I was responding to someone who had a fucking clue what reality was.
Arguments such as this are useful if you're cold because like anything else made entirely of straw you can set them on fire and they burn nice and pretty.
But, nice try.
I'm sure Obama could figure out how to use an iPod. I'm also sure he's far more intelligent than the majority of Americans -- and judging from the knee-jerk right-wing stupidity of the comments regarding Obama, I think he's probably more intelligent than most of the readers of /. After all, he's the President, and you're goofing off on company time.
But unlike his predecessor, he doesn't seem to be spending most of his time goofing off such that he would HAVE time to learn how to use a trivial device that plays music. Instead, he's got his hands full with, you know, running the country.
God. Is this going to become the new "Al Gore says he invented the Internet" bullshine?
I mean seriously. I haven't read the speech, but I'm pretty sure YOU haven't either.
You must not actually watch CNN.
75% of everything I have on disk is a copy of something else, but unfortunately I usually have lost the copy somewhere in the process of moving, moving from one machine to the next, or trying to clear up disk space so I can download more stuff to leave on my disk.
My English degree says you're wrong. Those "correct" and "incorrect" rules were mostly created by English gentry around the time the printing press was invented so they could still have something that separated them from the lower classes. Since literacy wasn't going to be the key anymore, silly and often counterproductive rules were adopted.
The number of flying animals killed by wind farms PALES in comparison to the number killed by cars, trucks, buildings, and so on. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php
Turzyx, there's a reason why "rocket scientist" is synonymous with "friggin' blazing genius."
And there's also a reason why you'll never be one, because you clearly don't even begin to appreciate the blazing heat of genius required to understand how to launch a rocket without killing its passengers and laying waste to vast tracts of land as far as the eye can see.
Stick to your day job, pal.
"However she still may be violating company policy about using work assets for personal affairs."
Maybe. That's another can of worms. I use my personal computer to work from home. I'm expected to be available every few weeks for a week of "on-call" activity where work can intrude quite firmly into my home.
The line between working at home and "homing" at work, to badly coin a phrase, is getting blurrier every year.
And companies have a choice of either shutting people out of their personal lives completely for 8-10 hours a day (and getting the exact same shutout when those people go home) or learning to be modestly flexible. So far the trend is that companies are learning to bend just a bit.
I have devices in both my eyes that allow me to see at better than 20/20 vision. They're flexible plastic discs that I attach to my corneas.
Every two weeks I throw them away and get a new pair.
I never knew I was a cyborg!
I'm trying to picture China attacking the goose that lays the golden egg.
And Iran has no capability to attack the US. Never has and never will.
Try to stick to real threats, plz. We just finished almost a decade of pointless conflict in a nation that never attacked us and never had the capability to. I have taken from this experience that MOST of the "threats" to the US are made up by politicians wanting to funnel money into secret wartime projects under the cover of fear, panic, and chaos.