Mddle of the desert on Earth supports a solvent (liquid water) and the poles of Earth have tons of water.
A basic "unit" of life on Earth is a "cell". A cell contains solvent (i.e. fluid).
Mars doesn't have the atmospheric pressure today to support most of the simple liquids available in any quantities in the universe.
Both water and ammonia would sublimate on Mars today ( solid evaporates directly to gas, skipping liquid phase like a block of carbon dioxide melting here on Earth) --- ammonia is sometimes suggested as a possible alternative biochemistry possibility).
Without liquids as possibility, would be very hard to maintain life or any kind of biochemistry since solvents act as transport.
Billions of years ago, Mars had more atmosphere and a good chance of liquid water and I'd be surprised if Mars didn't have simple life once --- but we don't see vegetation on Mars or lichen on rocks, and while we can't rule out Martian extremophiles existing today somewhere, if there was life on Mars once, it is pretty clear it didn't adapt to figure out a way to thrive there today.
That makes the odds for Earth bacteria attempting such a feat rather bleak, as any native Martian simple live would have the opportunity to adapt over decent timescales.
Title of TFA = "Bacteria from Earth can easily colonize Mars"
And article makes no such claim.
It says spores would survive to Mars, which isn't surprising.
Once there, then what?
No singificant amounts water, no source of nutrients to digest, no oxygen to convert sugar to energy. temperatures around -40 celsius, possibly toxic soil and atmospheric pressure low enough it might affect metabolism otherwise --- and little shielding from ultraviolet light (no ozone layer).
Article title is fun proof of what happens when someone with to no interest/education in science tries to interpret information and draw a conclusion.
How is that going to work? Joe wants some pyramid schemes, escort services, some payday loans so he'll go buy some bitcoins or something since he can't use his bank account, Visa or Paypal?
Sounds awfully complicated for Joe to go through that trouble.
Ah, yes. Will drive everything to the black market.
Just like those guys on the corner that sell ripped CDs and DVDs for cheap. Oh wait, that was the 1990s!
So I guess the common Joe that wants porn will be forced off the internet to find porn and will have to turn to dark alleys and buy illegal copies of Hustler!!
"Maybe that's part of it. I think this is Big Government nanny state in action."
Can you imagine unsanitary restaurants whining back in the 1960 when EVIL "health inspectors" started telling restaurants that employees had to watch hands, and make sure cockroaches didn't snack on the food.
And everyone whined "Big Government" is taking our FREEDOMS!
We have the right to serve cockroach-germ-contanimated food!!
But no, seriously, if you are ok with health inspectors making sure your chicken doesn't have salmonella and your burger is made of cow and not 20% sawdust --- why do have a problem with fraudster industries getting oversight?
Back in the 1950s cereals and even tobacco products claimed outrageous health benefits.
Here is how the day for a typical poor person works:
1) Wake up, watch some porn 2) Go get a PayDay loan 3) Go buy some lottery tickets 4) Go to the credit repair service after not winning lottery 5)Sign up for some pyramid schemes 6) Watch some descrambled cable TV from neighbors cable connection 7) Party by doing some fireworks while smoking some tobacco and a bit of shooting some guns
These businesses really do prey on poor people. On one hand, you might think targeting these industries might be ineffective because people with really bad common sense are hard to stop from self-destructive activities.
Why aren't they just scanning driver's licenses as a requirement of buying lottery tickets and then compiling a list of super-habitual "blow all their money types".
These industries are organized crime, engaging in fraud/deceit and wrecking lives and run by criminals, and are run by the mafia types.
Is it unique to the cell phone industry? Insurance companies do it. Your realtor does it and likewise so do apartment complexes. The vast majority of car dealerships pay their sales staff on gross.
The right price is the absolute most the customer is willing to pay. Ask Apple.
Many companies with a great product or service and bad survival skills go out of business.
A great company that goes out of business isn't much use to the world.
Now, you might think the above is "evil". But you are "evil" too.
Your goal is pay the least amount possible, isn't it? If you are like me, you don't take into consideration whether or not such a price is sustainable for the company selling the service.
Services like Netflix and Redbox are awesome, but now there are almost no video rental stores.
I have a suggestion for your next article: Why does popcorn and soda and Twizzlers cost so damn much at movie theatre!
An old expression: "Nice guys finish last" --- in business this means you are broke and your business is rendered into non-existence, which helps no one.
You are a polite and conscientious fellow, but many people buying cellphones (not you or me) really don't mind confusing cell phone plans are solely preoccupied with monthly cost, even if paying upfront is cheaper in the long run.
Protip: 85% of consumers are really bad with money. If you aren't, then your aren't in the majority.
Instead, why not ask average people on the street WHY they are voluntarily signed up for a confusing cell phone plan.
>That would only explain why they overprice their services, not why they do it in a confusing manner.
Do they?
I don't know that their service is overpriced. They have cell phone towers virtually everywhere, an expensive network of data centers and telecommunications operations that route calls, expensive satellites with 50-60 years of technology to get to that point. And you can do fancy things impossible 10 years ago like have internet access virtually anywhere with you at all times and it works reliably.
And the phone service is reliable.
No one likes to pay bills, but everyone voluntarily signed up for cell phone service with those companies.
They could have decided to go with super-cheap prepaid phones, use landlines or VOIP, Skype, etc.
I use TMobile and they don't have confusing contracts, but I still don't enjoy paying the bill, but I don't like making my car payment either.
I'm not sure where you are going with this. The phone companies all have government oversight too and have to do things like 911 service, etc.
Any time someone says something is overpriced, the next question is "Over-priced versus what?" or "Ok, there are usually alternatives why not do those instead?"
No one enjoys paying bills, but at the same time having reliable internet access everywhere, ability to do voice commands and text messages is rather convenient, which is why I don't have a $50 prepaid phone. But the choice is there, so I voluntarily decide to have a smartphone.
I'm not arguing against you, I'm suggesting there are alternate angles to view an issue.
This article is pretty bad from this prespective. It raises certain questions and explores them, while ignoring all other possible questions.
Which is a very pretentious way of thinking.
A few of the comments here hit it head on (i.e. upfront costs too high, lock-in, etc.).
But a really large factor = in the 1990s there were tons of cell phone companies and it was an emerging market.
And these cell phone companies had major infrastructure expenditures because at the time coverage was mostly near major cities.
The typical WIN-WIN arrangement with customer and provider is the customer gets a low price (and all the greatness of a phone that works anywhere, unlike a landline) and the provider gets the security of having a stable cashflow to continue to improve their product and experience.
But Verizon and AT&T are monopoly utilities, thank goodness there is still T-Mobile as a 3rd option.
I am disappointed by this article, even in a few of the question are good, in that apparently the author of the article didn't think that any history of the cell phone industry was important to see the present in context of the past. History always sheds quite a bit of light on the present.
"You show up in person to buy or sell drugs and it's a sting. " You mail them and it gets seized or the target and/or sender gets arrested via tracking.
That this site will be used for selling sex toys in "Moslem countries" and maybe unauthorized copies of "Star Wars" or where people in Muslim countries can share Dutch Cartoons or where people in Christian countries can share copies of "Of The Origin of Species."
Then again, maybe it will be like the previous "Silk Road" and be all about opium and kitty porn and services to kill people.
Your heart is in the right place, but your post is a bit of joke in the sense you don't go visit mafia thugs to share free speech except in funny 1980s movies.
Well, you probably agree that life is likely to be made of molecules, right?
If you agree that life is made of molecules, then you need to have an environment that can form complex molecules and that it needs to do it during a period of a several billion years.
1) A boiling planet isn't going to form complex molecules the same way plasma doesn't form complex molecules (plasma = too hot to keep electrons). 2) A 3-degrees above absolute zero planet isn't going to form complex molecules in a trillion years because super cold makes everything into a solid that would react very, very slowly at best. 3) The star system better not emit intense bursts of energy 15-times per second, like a pulsar that emit high intensity radiation like xrays that knock apart chemical bonds and rip molecules apart.
So sure, maybe there is life around that is unusual compared to ours, but if it is made of molecules, we sure know what doesn't support stable evolution of chemical complexity in a reasonable period of time (several trillions years for a cold planet to facilitate reactions means everything in the entire universe except some small red dwarfs will have long died out).
203 years from now when there are no more fossil fuels and the sky is scorched black from pollution, these landmines will be the sole source of energy for the remaining humans --- err Morlocks --- an each one will be treasured for the precious contents.
It is our gift to future generations to package these valuable energy resources into tidy metal containers that we so thoughtfully buried for the benefit of future generations.
Well --- we kinda know what the bad for life indicators ARE!
1) Tidally locked gas giant with orbit of star = 3 days = sucks. 2) Shitty ice planet 15 AU from star = sucks. 3) Super Earth orbiting Pulsar and Blackhole Pulsar = Sucks 4) Hot Planet 318 the size of Jupiter = Sucks
Etc.
I think we know the definition of sucks = most of the ones we've found so far since our current methods tend to find the gigantic ones, so we certainly know what NOT to look for!!!
Any astronomer knows the meme "billions and billions". I think there was even a Carl Sagan skit on Saturday night live. In fact, Carl Sagan wrote a book in honor of the meme called "billions and billons"
Slashdot Mirror
Mddle of the desert on Earth supports a solvent (liquid water) and the poles of Earth have tons of water.
A basic "unit" of life on Earth is a "cell". A cell contains solvent (i.e. fluid).
Mars doesn't have the atmospheric pressure today to support most of the simple liquids available in any quantities in the universe.
Both water and ammonia would sublimate on Mars today ( solid evaporates directly to gas, skipping liquid phase like a block of carbon dioxide melting here on Earth) --- ammonia is sometimes suggested as a possible alternative biochemistry possibility).
Without liquids as possibility, would be very hard to maintain life or any kind of biochemistry since solvents act as transport.
Billions of years ago, Mars had more atmosphere and a good chance of liquid water and I'd be surprised if Mars didn't have simple life once --- but we don't see vegetation on Mars or lichen on rocks, and while we can't rule out Martian extremophiles existing today somewhere, if there was life on Mars once, it is pretty clear it didn't adapt to figure out a way to thrive there today.
That makes the odds for Earth bacteria attempting such a feat rather bleak, as any native Martian simple live would have the opportunity to adapt over decent timescales.
Title of TFA = "Bacteria from Earth can easily colonize Mars"
And article makes no such claim.
It says spores would survive to Mars, which isn't surprising.
Once there, then what?
No singificant amounts water, no source of nutrients to digest, no oxygen to convert sugar to energy. temperatures around -40 celsius, possibly toxic soil and atmospheric pressure low enough it might affect metabolism otherwise --- and little shielding from ultraviolet light (no ozone layer).
Article title is fun proof of what happens when someone with to no interest/education in science tries to interpret information and draw a conclusion.
1) In FireFox or Chrome I usually just type what I am searching for in the address bar.
...
2) On a phone, people tend to use a voice command to say what information they are looking for.
In the real olden days, people memorized phone "numbers" saying things like "Klondike" 5234 to an actual human phone exchange operator.
I think the actual digits and alphabet mapping actually came later (someone who knows, just jump in and correct!)
Hell, in the early days of the internet, half the sites seemed to be just pure IP addresses, no fancy domain names.
Evolution of the internet, I suppose
Can't be. More like watching 2 blind people fumble around and that maybe adding more blind people would induce creativity. Or something ...
> I will give it to Comcast & EA, this is definitely an interesting way to attack traditional consoles.
I think in the coming months we will hear about this again maybe once or twice and then a year later no remembers this article.
How is that going to work? Joe wants some pyramid schemes, escort services, some payday loans so he'll go buy some bitcoins or something since he can't use his bank account, Visa or Paypal?
Sounds awfully complicated for Joe to go through that trouble.
^^ Haha funney post of week #2
Ah, yes. Will drive everything to the black market.
Just like those guys on the corner that sell ripped CDs and DVDs for cheap. Oh wait, that was the 1990s!
So I guess the common Joe that wants porn will be forced off the internet to find porn and will have to turn to dark alleys and buy illegal copies of Hustler!!
^^ Haha funney post of the week!
Cash based in a web/phone/email world. What scammer wants the local person-to-person limitations of cash.
"Maybe that's part of it. I think this is Big Government nanny state in action."
Can you imagine unsanitary restaurants whining back in the 1960 when EVIL "health inspectors" started telling restaurants that employees had to watch hands, and make sure cockroaches didn't snack on the food.
And everyone whined "Big Government" is taking our FREEDOMS!
We have the right to serve cockroach-germ-contanimated food!!
But no, seriously, if you are ok with health inspectors making sure your chicken doesn't have salmonella and your burger is made of cow and not 20% sawdust --- why do have a problem with fraudster industries getting oversight?
Back in the 1950s cereals and even tobacco products claimed outrageous health benefits.
Yes, Obama clearly was pro-cable box descramblers and pro-fireworks when he ran for office.
Just one more way he didn't keep his promises!
Uh? No.
Those industries are run by organized crime and the mafia as "legitimate businesses" and engage in fraud, deceit and other felonies.
Porn, lottery tickets, credit repair services, payday lenders.
Here is how the day for a typical poor person works:
1) Wake up, watch some porn
2) Go get a PayDay loan
3) Go buy some lottery tickets
4) Go to the credit repair service after not winning lottery
5)Sign up for some pyramid schemes
6) Watch some descrambled cable TV from neighbors cable connection
7) Party by doing some fireworks while smoking some tobacco and a bit of shooting some guns
These businesses really do prey on poor people. On one hand, you might think targeting these industries might be ineffective because people with really bad common sense are hard to stop from self-destructive activities.
Why aren't they just scanning driver's licenses as a requirement of buying lottery tickets and then compiling a list of super-habitual "blow all their money types".
These industries are organized crime, engaging in fraud/deceit and wrecking lives and run by criminals, and are run by the mafia types.
Dollars. Tesla died broke.
Is it unique to the cell phone industry? Insurance companies do it. Your realtor does it and likewise so do apartment complexes. The vast majority of car dealerships pay their sales staff on gross.
The right price is the absolute most the customer is willing to pay. Ask Apple.
Many companies with a great product or service and bad survival skills go out of business.
A great company that goes out of business isn't much use to the world.
Now, you might think the above is "evil". But you are "evil" too.
Your goal is pay the least amount possible, isn't it? If you are like me, you don't take into consideration whether or not such a price is sustainable for the company selling the service.
Services like Netflix and Redbox are awesome, but now there are almost no video rental stores.
I have a suggestion for your next article: Why does popcorn and soda and Twizzlers cost so damn much at movie theatre!
An old expression: "Nice guys finish last" --- in business this means you are broke and your business is rendered into non-existence, which helps no one.
You are a polite and conscientious fellow, but many people buying cellphones (not you or me) really don't mind confusing cell phone plans are solely preoccupied with monthly cost, even if paying upfront is cheaper in the long run.
Protip: 85% of consumers are really bad with money. If you aren't, then your aren't in the majority.
Instead, why not ask average people on the street WHY they are voluntarily signed up for a confusing cell phone plan.
Peace out.
Would be easier just to "polarize the hull plating"
>That would only explain why they overprice their services, not why they do it in a confusing manner.
Do they?
I don't know that their service is overpriced. They have cell phone towers virtually everywhere, an expensive network of data centers and telecommunications operations that route calls, expensive satellites with 50-60 years of technology to get to that point. And you can do fancy things impossible 10 years ago like have internet access virtually anywhere with you at all times and it works reliably.
And the phone service is reliable.
No one likes to pay bills, but everyone voluntarily signed up for cell phone service with those companies.
They could have decided to go with super-cheap prepaid phones, use landlines or VOIP, Skype, etc.
I use TMobile and they don't have confusing contracts, but I still don't enjoy paying the bill, but I don't like making my car payment either.
I'm not sure where you are going with this. The phone companies all have government oversight too and have to do things like 911 service, etc.
Any time someone says something is overpriced, the next question is "Over-priced versus what?" or "Ok, there are usually alternatives why not do those instead?"
No one enjoys paying bills, but at the same time having reliable internet access everywhere, ability to do voice commands and text messages is rather convenient, which is why I don't have a $50 prepaid phone. But the choice is there, so I voluntarily decide to have a smartphone.
I'm not arguing against you, I'm suggesting there are alternate angles to view an issue.
> Microsoft, with pseudo-monopolies, don't/didn't do the same thing through funny math -- they just charged a lot for their products.
Microsoft didn't charge a lot of their products initially.
DOS was *free* and IBM offered the choice of MS-DOS (free) or CPM ($89).
And Microsoft's operating system became dominant as a result and they grew so large as to be a major threat to IBM's dominance by 1989.
This article is pretty bad from this prespective. It raises certain questions and explores them, while ignoring all other possible questions.
Which is a very pretentious way of thinking.
A few of the comments here hit it head on (i.e. upfront costs too high, lock-in, etc.).
But a really large factor = in the 1990s there were tons of cell phone companies and it was an emerging market.
And these cell phone companies had major infrastructure expenditures because at the time coverage was mostly near major cities.
The typical WIN-WIN arrangement with customer and provider is the customer gets a low price (and all the greatness of a phone that works anywhere, unlike a landline) and the provider gets the security of having a stable cashflow to continue to improve their product and experience.
But Verizon and AT&T are monopoly utilities, thank goodness there is still T-Mobile as a 3rd option.
I am disappointed by this article, even in a few of the question are good, in that apparently the author of the article didn't think that any history of the cell phone industry was important to see the present in context of the past. History always sheds quite a bit of light on the present.
"You show up in person to buy or sell drugs and it's a sting. "
You mail them and it gets seized or the target and/or sender gets arrested via tracking.
It's ALL GOOD as long as it is YOU!
That this site will be used for selling sex toys in "Moslem countries" and maybe unauthorized copies of "Star Wars" or where people in Muslim countries can share Dutch Cartoons or where people in Christian countries can share copies of "Of The Origin of Species."
Then again, maybe it will be like the previous "Silk Road" and be all about opium and kitty porn and services to kill people.
Your heart is in the right place, but your post is a bit of joke in the sense you don't go visit mafia thugs to share free speech except in funny 1980s movies.
Well, you probably agree that life is likely to be made of molecules, right?
If you agree that life is made of molecules, then you need to have an environment that can form complex molecules and that it needs to do it during a period of a several billion years.
1) A boiling planet isn't going to form complex molecules the same way plasma doesn't form complex molecules (plasma = too hot to keep electrons).
2) A 3-degrees above absolute zero planet isn't going to form complex molecules in a trillion years because super cold makes everything into a solid that would react very, very slowly at best.
3) The star system better not emit intense bursts of energy 15-times per second, like a pulsar that emit high intensity radiation like xrays that knock apart chemical bonds and rip molecules apart.
So sure, maybe there is life around that is unusual compared to ours, but if it is made of molecules, we sure know what doesn't support stable evolution of chemical complexity in a reasonable period of time (several trillions years for a cold planet to facilitate reactions means everything in the entire universe except some small red dwarfs will have long died out).
Very vague. Mentions 10 years olds. Doesn't say any specifics, don't say programming language or what they did.
...
Since non-programmer wrote article, sounds like some horseshit "feel good" newspaper column.
As far as I could tell by reading TFA
203 years from now when there are no more fossil fuels and the sky is scorched black from pollution, these landmines will be the sole source of energy for the remaining humans --- err Morlocks --- an each one will be treasured for the precious contents.
It is our gift to future generations to package these valuable energy resources into tidy metal containers that we so thoughtfully buried for the benefit of future generations.
Well --- we kinda know what the bad for life indicators ARE!
1) Tidally locked gas giant with orbit of star = 3 days = sucks.
2) Shitty ice planet 15 AU from star = sucks.
3) Super Earth orbiting Pulsar and Blackhole Pulsar = Sucks
4) Hot Planet 318 the size of Jupiter = Sucks
Etc.
I think we know the definition of sucks = most of the ones we've found so far since our current methods tend to find the gigantic ones, so we certainly know what NOT to look for!!!
We just give them a high intensity focused radio broadcast of "Big Bang Theory" or "The Office" and wait for them to become hooked.
Like Futurama aliens getting hooked on "Single Female Lawyer".
The rest handles itself. Two way communication is highly overrated anyway!
Any astronomer knows the meme "billions and billions". I think there was even a Carl Sagan skit on Saturday night live. In fact, Carl Sagan wrote a book in honor of the meme called "billions and billons"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billions_and_Billions:_Thoughts_on_Life_and_Death_at_the_Brink_of_the_Millennium
It is an astronomer inside joke. I made no apologizes any more than a programmer on slashdot making an inside C, or Perl or SQL joke.