Notice that the two organizations have separately made maps. The next step will be scanning for differences between them... After that everyone will be looking at the details of what the exact structures are for different chemicals and which genes are different in people with different traits.
The map is not the territory. We'll now know where the countries are on the continent, but we need to know where every road is and what the differences are between countries.
What you really have to wonder about is the code review process which has an approval method for Easter Eggs. I can see it in games where there's a market for publications with game secrets, but why make a word processor larger with them?
"There are a couple pieces on The Big Bang that are sort of similar."
Yes, those musical pieces using the creation of universes as instruments are impressive. Great bass, but there's this annoying hiss that never seems to end.
I don't know when the next new performance around here is, as I don't know the tour schedule.
Anything which wipes out all humans makes for a poor story and is irrelevant to we humans -- after the fact. The situations less than worst-case are what we can deal with.
Of course, at present we have all of our eggs on one planet so we have to deal with the consequences of that.
Actually, if we knew the orbits of all the asteroids in the neighborhood then we could select a small one which only needs a small deflection to use for nudging a larger one. Billiards, anyone?
Wasn't it that movie where they flitted around with an Orion Drive without explaining how it worked? They did use the only drive which could give them the acceleration which they needed, but politics wouldn't let them even acknowledge its impressive physics or engineering. It may as well have been a warp drive or magic -- "Turn on the Orion Drive!" Flash, Zoom...
We humanoid primates have only been around for a few hundred thousand years, and we evolved from a tiny genetic population. There may have been large extinction events 500,000 years ago but our ancestors happened to survive them. Too bad about the silver cities of the Gladlings getting wiped out along with all of them.
Not that history is any comfort if something happens to land on your house now.
Our part of the galaxy obviously has enough debris from past supernova explosions to have heavy elements which are solid at many temperatures. Most of the mass is in the lighter elements which tend to be gases (hydrogen and helium). Obviously as there is a fair amount of metallic dust around here, most planets would have some. There is more gas than solids, so planets which can retain gases will tend to be larger.
The small metallic planets simply weren't able to hang on to most gases -- look at Venus and how hot it gets and imagine how much gas is boiling off its upper layers. There are calculations someplace of the actual numbers. We'd probably be like that if the collision which split the Moon off the Earth hadn't also blasted away a lot of the gases.
If you forget how much more gas is around, remember the Sun. The vast majority of the Solar System's mass is in there.
But we're just getting back to normal temperatures after the last Ice Age and the Little Ice Age.
Actually, if you're a member of "the world was always the way I see it now and should always remain the waiy it is now" movement, we should move a bunch of asteroids up around geosynchronous orbit. We'll have to move them to eclipsing positions to shade the Earth when The Authorities decide we're getting "too warm", crash one to make clouds when we're "way too warm", and put mirrors on them to give us more sun when we're "too cool". After all, The Authorities and their experts are always right. And how well is your toilet flushing?
Well, if we actually find one then we'll look at the actual situation. If it's going to hit in 24 hours then we all go to the basement and hope. If it's going to hit in 24 years then we look at its size and orbit -- even if it's too big and too far away for us to move, maybe we can hit it with a smaller one which we can reach and move.
Until we look at the actual situation we won't know. Not looking simply means we have no choice. Such as a few years ago when a chunk of rock was seen just after its closest approach to Earth -- closer than the Moon.
Right. You can test as much as you want but you can't prove the program will always do what is desired (the obvious example is the Windows BSOD).
The trust has to begin with a trusted algorithm, then the trust has to follow in an unbroken chain through all the coding and testing. And the entire system has to be trusted -- although you might do this process with a cryptographic library, you also have to trust the system library routines, the program loader, the network library and drivers... At least with environments such as MULTICS the trusted items can be well isolated from the untrusted, but it's still a big job making and keeping it clean.
Fortunately, there is a difference between a provably secure environment and an environment which is secure enough in practice. People have been creating small provably-secure environments at great expense for 30 years, but most people can't use or afford the results.
There have been efforts to blend mathematical algorithm provers with programming tools. Perhaps someone will succeed with something general enough to be able to review existing code.
Down on the bottom of the PayPal home page, click on the Help link. They say there that they're making money by investing the balances on all the accounts (just as a bank does).
Last time I looked, they were planning business services -- now I see that they sell business services also, so they have another source of revenue.
And if you look on the side of the main page, there is insurance on the accounts. If you're concerned, try to keep the balance of your PayPal account under $100,000.
As long as you're doing peer-to-peer, both sides know the IP of the other. Encryption does not matter, it's just a question of whether either side is using the IP address (either from the client or by extracting it off the network). If the transfer is going through a server or anonymizer, the authorities just have to go to that server or anonymizer to get the info.
There are some new credit card services available, such as PayPal. You open an account, you put money in your account from your credit card, you tell PayPal to transfer money to another PayPal account. The recipient can log in and request a check. It seems to be popular on EBay.
Slashdot Mirror
The map is not the territory. We'll now know where the countries are on the continent, but we need to know where every road is and what the differences are between countries.
What you really have to wonder about is the code review process which has an approval method for Easter Eggs. I can see it in games where there's a market for publications with game secrets, but why make a word processor larger with them?
I don't know when the next new performance around here is, as I don't know the tour schedule.
Most of our atmosphere is in the lower 10 miles. That won't cause more than in irritation to an asteroid which is 10 miles in diameter.
Of course, at present we have all of our eggs on one planet so we have to deal with the consequences of that.
Reread the start of the book. An impact on Earth is featured, and that is not Rama.
Actually, if we knew the orbits of all the asteroids in the neighborhood then we could select a small one which only needs a small deflection to use for nudging a larger one. Billiards, anyone?
Wasn't it that movie where they flitted around with an Orion Drive without explaining how it worked? They did use the only drive which could give them the acceleration which they needed, but politics wouldn't let them even acknowledge its impressive physics or engineering. It may as well have been a warp drive or magic -- "Turn on the Orion Drive!" Flash, Zoom...
Did you consider a mass driver? Take chunks of the asteroid itself and throw them off into space. The asteroid becomes its own reaction mass.
Not that history is any comfort if something happens to land on your house now.
The small metallic planets simply weren't able to hang on to most gases -- look at Venus and how hot it gets and imagine how much gas is boiling off its upper layers. There are calculations someplace of the actual numbers. We'd probably be like that if the collision which split the Moon off the Earth hadn't also blasted away a lot of the gases.
If you forget how much more gas is around, remember the Sun. The vast majority of the Solar System's mass is in there.
Actually, if you're a member of "the world was always the way I see it now and should always remain the waiy it is now" movement, we should move a bunch of asteroids up around geosynchronous orbit. We'll have to move them to eclipsing positions to shade the Earth when The Authorities decide we're getting "too warm", crash one to make clouds when we're "way too warm", and put mirrors on them to give us more sun when we're "too cool". After all, The Authorities and their experts are always right. And how well is your toilet flushing?
Until we look at the actual situation we won't know. Not looking simply means we have no choice. Such as a few years ago when a chunk of rock was seen just after its closest approach to Earth -- closer than the Moon.
That's why in "The Mote in God's Eye" the asteroids had all been moved to nice stable orbits. Rather than continually track them, put them in corrals.
The trust has to begin with a trusted algorithm, then the trust has to follow in an unbroken chain through all the coding and testing. And the entire system has to be trusted -- although you might do this process with a cryptographic library, you also have to trust the system library routines, the program loader, the network library and drivers... At least with environments such as MULTICS the trusted items can be well isolated from the untrusted, but it's still a big job making and keeping it clean.
Fortunately, there is a difference between a provably secure environment and an environment which is secure enough in practice. People have been creating small provably-secure environments at great expense for 30 years, but most people can't use or afford the results.
There have been efforts to blend mathematical algorithm provers with programming tools. Perhaps someone will succeed with something general enough to be able to review existing code.
But do you want a car that says "I think I can, I think I can..."?
Also a similar concept to "The Two Faces of Tomorrow".
Last time I looked, they were planning business services -- now I see that they sell business services also, so they have another source of revenue.
And if you look on the side of the main page, there is insurance on the accounts. If you're concerned, try to keep the balance of your PayPal account under $100,000.
Didn't "taxation without Blue Book representation" just get removed in MN?
The poster's Pennsylvania is particularly messy. IIRC the last set of tax books that I looked at, each city has their own taxes also.
As long as you're doing peer-to-peer, both sides know the IP of the other. Encryption does not matter, it's just a question of whether either side is using the IP address (either from the client or by extracting it off the network). If the transfer is going through a server or anonymizer, the authorities just have to go to that server or anonymizer to get the info.
There are some new credit card services available, such as PayPal. You open an account, you put money in your account from your credit card, you tell PayPal to transfer money to another PayPal account. The recipient can log in and request a check. It seems to be popular on EBay.
For that matter, is this tall box too tall to fit on the lower shelves at CompUSA so it has to be put on the eye-level top shelf?