They would notice whatever gas your Star Trek rock monsters exhaled is unusual in an atmosphere.
A lifeless world is going to have an undisturbed atmospheric composition.
Like: hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, methane, water, ammonia, sulfur dioxide. The type of gases common in the universe for raw gas giants and rocky planets.
Detecting anything else in unusual quantities means something worth examining is altering the atmosphere.
On Earth, the oxygen and nitrogen would arouse suspicion -- pure oxygen molecules and pure nitrogen aren't found elsewhere in any significant quantities (for reasons that don't require too much explanation... oxygen is highly reactive, hence that dangerous "Oxider" warning sign you see from time to time.).
I've been in the above situation 7 or 8 times. Sometimes writing these off as an impossible task is the right thing to do --- but usually it is a little late for that if the situation wasn't detected early. I personally have usually just toughed it out --- sometimes the "idiot" gets fired, other times the idiot gets busy and offers less resistance and/or listens better if you invest the time to explain or lay out options.
Sadly, educating the "idiot" often is part of the "job description" -- wanted or not --- and with enough patience or tact, you usually can prevail.
If not, the old adage applies: beware of what you ask for, you might just get it!
Structure contracts, fees, tangible goals so if the "expert" slows you down, you get paid more.
The idea of avoiding idiots is lunacy, you make due with the cards dealt. If they have an "idiot" as an "expert", this speaks a lot about them and they probably need your help quite a bit.
If they didn't need your help, they wouldn't have hired you!
Protip: Your search engine results are censored. (DCMA takedowns, NSA, porn filters, sites deemed infected by viruses, even -- *GASP* political filtering even in Western countries -- no kidding, various local laws that muck with search engines, stuff snuffed out by anti-terrorism laws).
Hint: Google is probably more filtered because it is more successful, everyone knows what Google is --- most non-nerds people probably don't know what Bing is.
>"Why, exactly, 'should' we try to get people to do what they don't want to do?"
Shit, man, what is wrong with you? Social engineering is FUN:
Do you know why this topic comes up often?
1) Males in the tech industry have trouble finding females that share that passion. 2) Repeat #1
This is the classic "have cake and eat it too" problem. Men in tech wish there were women who enjoyed talking about devices, source code licenses, functional programming, Star Trek TNG or about Hobbits or some such thing, arguing about strong client versus weak client, whether compiled versus interpreted versus JIT is the way to go.
The world needs Oculus Rift more than it needs another Wolfenstein game. And your comment is true, John Carmack still does have the imagination in technical matters to be up to this task, especially if he is passionate about it like he is.
Carmack said long ago he planned to actively develop well into his 70s and I believe it.
"but I'm sure it would work a lot better if it wasn't written in Java."
I'd give up the modest goal "work a lot better" and trade it in for "it happens to work a lot".
Exits quickly, but Eclipse is spectacularly slow preventing actual work from getting done. It is like a low FPS video game where the problem is supposed to be your setup, but I've never found a computer powerful enough to run Eclipse at a tolerable speed considering my impatience.
Nothing wrong with being an ass, if the cause is just and the talent is used in moderation.
The results and tact that Linus uses this falls clearly in the acceptable category. He believes in high standards, but never goes out-of-bounds into silly land.
The horn is an easy to access button that makes a noise. And like the other primates, if we have an emotional response we press the only button available because it is THERE.
We give babies toys that make a noise when you press different buttons, and adults we are little different and still enjoy pressing the button that makes a noise.
Blackberry ruled phone features back then with an iron fist with a level of popularity and dominance that I don't think any large percentage of developers would have expected Java to be an *important* programming language 5 years out.
I never argued Java didn't exist on phones back then. I bet something like a Treo might have Java of some flavor even before your example. Possibly.
Programming is always going to be a mess and there will never stop being new platforms.
This is something to accept in an industry that is by definition always going to be on the bleeding edge of change.
It is part of the fun --- go back 30 years and it was mainframe vs. personal computer and IBM PC vs. Apple vs. Commodore --- in the 1990s hardware graphics acceleration and web browser and GUIs were the agent of change.
Ask if anyone thought Objective C or Java were going to be important programming languages on phones in 2005?
It's true. The cows we have today aren't more advanced than yesterday's cows, but rather today's cows are groomed towards the goal of a higher quality hamburger. And these cows are therefore probably less capable and less advanced than cows from 100 years ago.
Evolution doesn't have a goal, it is a drift towards survivability and therefore reproduction in the current status quo.
I mentioned discussed TIVOization and how NVIDIA can easily within their rights publish closed-sourced drivers for Linux. Android is open source, but certain key apps like Gmail, Maps, Google Play are closed sourced (this was a recent article here).
Debian is GPL 2 as well, I figure you know this but from your comment I can't tell and it isn't clear if you understand the licenses but you could Google and see why and how changes to the GPL have been made over time.
Slashdot Mirror
They would notice whatever gas your Star Trek rock monsters exhaled is unusual in an atmosphere.
... oxygen is highly reactive, hence that dangerous "Oxider" warning sign you see from time to time.).
A lifeless world is going to have an undisturbed atmospheric composition.
Like: hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, methane, water, ammonia, sulfur dioxide. The type of gases common in the universe for raw gas giants and rocky planets.
Detecting anything else in unusual quantities means something worth examining is altering the atmosphere.
On Earth, the oxygen and nitrogen would arouse suspicion -- pure oxygen molecules and pure nitrogen aren't found elsewhere in any significant quantities (for reasons that don't require too much explanation
"I'm saying that until we know about it and how it works, there's no basis to look for it."
Why?
Astronomers, biologists, people at NASA have been considering many possibilities for life for 60+ years.
"I will stick with my current strategy -- buy physical CDs"
Garth Brooks loves you
Your side of the argument is well taken.
Now you must honor your words: take off all your clothes and go run into the jungle and live.
"Why would anyone use Bing in the first place?"
Dictionary: "Bing is a wheat flour-based Chinese food with a flattened or disk-like shape"
Maybe the name Bing sounds like it should be a very familiar and Chinese-friendly search engine.
Maybe Chinese people feel uncomfortable with scary American names like "Yahoo!".
Perhaps, most Chinese people have a friend named Bing?
I've been in the above situation 7 or 8 times. Sometimes writing these off as an impossible task is the right thing to do --- but usually it is a little late for that if the situation wasn't detected early. I personally have usually just toughed it out --- sometimes the "idiot" gets fired, other times the idiot gets busy and offers less resistance and/or listens better if you invest the time to explain or lay out options.
Sadly, educating the "idiot" often is part of the "job description" -- wanted or not --- and with enough patience or tact, you usually can prevail.
If not, the old adage applies: beware of what you ask for, you might just get it!
Structure contracts, fees, tangible goals so if the "expert" slows you down, you get paid more.
The idea of avoiding idiots is lunacy, you make due with the cards dealt. If they have an "idiot" as an "expert", this speaks a lot about them and they probably need your help quite a bit.
If they didn't need your help, they wouldn't have hired you!
Maybe. Maybe not. Discussion of it probably won't lead to any insights.
Alexander Fleming had the idea of eliminating diseases by having kids drink a pink liquid extracted from fungus.
Who would have thought drinking fungus-juice would kill pathogens?
The brain offers many mysteries we need to unravel, many of them are probably very counter-intuitive and defy present day "logic".
> Could the sun be mostly iron?
No, the sun is made of charcoal. This was clearly proved in the 1800s.
Protip: Your search engine results are censored. (DCMA takedowns, NSA, porn filters, sites deemed infected by viruses, even -- *GASP* political filtering even in Western countries -- no kidding, various local laws that muck with search engines, stuff snuffed out by anti-terrorism laws).
Hint: Google is probably more filtered because it is more successful, everyone knows what Google is --- most non-nerds people probably don't know what Bing is.
Just tried the beta site.
Slashdot has always been "information-dense" and reading friendly.
The new layout really does bleach the identity of the site out and make it unenjoyable --- the text doesn't span the page.
>"Why, exactly, 'should' we try to get people to do what they don't want to do?"
Shit, man, what is wrong with you? Social engineering is FUN:
Do you know why this topic comes up often?
1) Males in the tech industry have trouble finding females that share that passion.
2) Repeat #1
This is the classic "have cake and eat it too" problem. Men in tech wish there were women who enjoyed talking about devices, source code licenses, functional programming, Star Trek TNG or about Hobbits or some such thing, arguing about strong client versus weak client, whether compiled versus interpreted versus JIT is the way to go.
Not bloody likely.
The world needs Oculus Rift more than it needs another Wolfenstein game. And your comment is true, John Carmack still does have the imagination in technical matters to be up to this task, especially if he is passionate about it like he is.
Carmack said long ago he planned to actively develop well into his 70s and I believe it.
It's called RonPaulCoin now. Geez!
"but I'm sure it would work a lot better if it wasn't written in Java."
I'd give up the modest goal "work a lot better" and trade it in for "it happens to work a lot".
Exits quickly, but Eclipse is spectacularly slow preventing actual work from getting done. It is like a low FPS video game where the problem is supposed to be your setup, but I've never found a computer powerful enough to run Eclipse at a tolerable speed considering my impatience.
Dude, quit complaining and buy a new computers.
No seriously, that wasn't a typo.
Nothing wrong with being an ass, if the cause is just and the talent is used in moderation.
The results and tact that Linus uses this falls clearly in the acceptable category. He believes in high standards, but never goes out-of-bounds into silly land.
Something to admire, in my book.
The horn is an easy to access button that makes a noise. And like the other primates, if we have an emotional response we press the only button available because it is THERE.
We give babies toys that make a noise when you press different buttons, and adults we are little different and still enjoy pressing the button that makes a noise.
Blackberry ruled phone features back then with an iron fist with a level of popularity and dominance that I don't think any large percentage of developers would have expected Java to be an *important* programming language 5 years out.
I never argued Java didn't exist on phones back then. I bet something like a Treo might have Java of some flavor even before your example. Possibly.
Programming is always going to be a mess and there will never stop being new platforms.
This is something to accept in an industry that is by definition always going to be on the bleeding edge of change.
It is part of the fun --- go back 30 years and it was mainframe vs. personal computer and IBM PC vs. Apple vs. Commodore --- in the 1990s hardware graphics acceleration and web browser and GUIs were the agent of change.
Ask if anyone thought Objective C or Java were going to be important programming languages on phones in 2005?
My phrase twas a quote from the Family Guy episode Blue Harvest.
It's true. The cows we have today aren't more advanced than yesterday's cows, but rather today's cows are groomed towards the goal of a higher quality hamburger. And these cows are therefore probably less capable and less advanced than cows from 100 years ago.
Evolution doesn't have a goal, it is a drift towards survivability and therefore reproduction in the current status quo.
... isn't a parsec a unit of distance, not time?
I mentioned discussed TIVOization and how NVIDIA can easily within their rights publish closed-sourced drivers for Linux. Android is open source, but certain key apps like Gmail, Maps, Google Play are closed sourced (this was a recent article here).
Debian is GPL 2 as well, I figure you know this but from your comment I can't tell and it isn't clear if you understand the licenses but you could Google and see why and how changes to the GPL have been made over time.
^^^ Winner. And no I don't like the argument, these governments *should* be using Free Software. But in reality, probably a negotiating tactic.