Loved the ADM-5's. I think the very first PC I every saw was an IMSAI 8080 with an ADM-5. At that point it was like a little piece of the future plopped into the middle (okay, late part) of the 70's.
They seem to be keeping the most interesting shots and other data to themselves - and no surprise, the only benefit the scientists get out of their participation in the project is publication rights. I'm quite sure that we'll see the most interesting stuff before too terribly long.
Of course there's always the mysterious "horned" Opportunity object, which simply up and disappeared from one day to the next. I still suspect that it may have been a torn bit of material from the airbags that got blown away, but all the same it's an odd thing.
When I first read the story, all I could think about were E.R.B.'s descriptions of the huge naval vessels floating through the air of a dead planet
I really don't want to sound like an Anime Fanboy here, but you might like to check out Last Exile if you haven't already seen it. It's a decent little series with some really impressive graphics, built around exactly that kind of concept...
I think you're missing the point here. Clearly the reason many people didn't like Episodes I and II was that they saw them in analog. Jar-jar isn't funny in analog, only in high-clarity digital. Lucas understands this and is trying to help us all to really get his film-making genius.
Looks interesting, but some of these live bio-linux-type CDs need fuller listings on their sites of what software is included in the distribution. Just looking at the website I end up asking "what sequence alignment viewers/editors are there?", "Does it have MrBayes? Phylip?" and so on. Bioknoppix in particular seems pretty but has a very limited set of software listed...
I've been thinking about this lately - one could probably improve the signal/noise ratio quite a bit by creating a "second-line" Slashdot site on which only people with Excellent karma can post.
First off it would eliminate nonsense like fp, goatse.cx, GNAA and the like. Secondly it would ensure that the people posting had "come up the ranks" as it were in the regular forums and thus might in theory at least have something worthwhile to say. Plus it would make karma count for something again.
As Cory Doctorow noted, totally public forums don't really work. They are garbage-magnets; there needs to be a way to filter the user base without being cliquey (sp?) and without enforcing an overly harsh set of membership criteria.
That seems very expensive - about 8 years ago I had two bigger reels (a 5-inch and an 8-inch) of Super 8 transferred to VHS for about $50. This was some little Mom&Pop video/camera shop but they did a decent enought job of it. I then captured it all through my old All-In-Wonder card.
Still, I keep the old reels around. Like someone else said, they're a pretty decent archival medium themselves.
I also found out what a staggeringly bad cinematographer I was when I was 10.
I wonder - if NASA is planning on dumping it in the ocean anyway, is there any particular reason why someone couldn't pay a group like Orbital Recovery to just grab it before it re-enters, and park it in a safe orbit. NASA has already abandoned it, so presumably they won't object to someone else using it...
Actually now that I've gone and made an effort to RTFA I repent me a bit of my earlier harshness. Since the fellow is using this to help drum up business, then it is roughly the same thing as the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.
...and just for the record - nice red Civic Si 5-speed, actually, though I'd still rather ride around in an SUV than in the Star Wars Wienermobile.
Deeply Arrested Adolescence
on
The Star Wars Car
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I mean, just wow. I cannot imagine the headspace of someone who could drive around in that thing and not feel embarassed.
It seems to me the really "big things" were driven by new abilities suddenly being given to large numbers of people. Witness the PC (computing power for the masses), computers games (amazing fun new technology available to everytone), and the web (point-and-click internet for the masses). Heck, even the porn industry - in my day it took work to get your pron, sonny. I don't think it's possible to decide what the "next big thing" will be and then go out and create it, but I'm reasonably certain that some invisible business web of accounting computers ain't gonna be it.
Cheap, easy, unregulated mid-range wireless networking? Now that could do it - allowing the masses to create their own interweb and plug into it by just sticking a box into their computer.
During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.
Even if they're only referring to station-based science activities (such as they are) here, this would be the nail in the coffin for the original justifications about the need for a space station at all.
I wonder if they're really going to scrap two or three decades of real and exciting space science just to land a couple of people on Mars?
Fermi's paradox uses the singular datum "I don't see any obvious evidence of aliens" to make assumptions about where they are. A necessary assumption for the paradox to hold any meaning whatsoever is "I am capable of detecting alien presence, past or current, if it exists." Frankly I think this assumption is bollocks. We're talking about geological stretches of time and evidence that could be as insignificant as a few scattered bolts, as well as a vastly unexplored solar system - for all we know there's a 100 meter craft moored in the asteroid belt. We are incapable of detecting the necessary evidence which allows us to make any inference about the existence of aliens other than "They may or may not exist based upon the fact that I can't see any evidence of them", which is pretty much where we started.
1. Sufficient time has passed for any race to colonize the galaxy. So they should be here or in the neighbourhood. Obviously they are not. Either they don't exist, or they don't like to leave home.
Obviously based upon what? That they didn't stop by for a friendly chat with Carl Sagan? I'm not asking anyone to prove a negative, but you must do so before you can use the paradox to show anything.
2. Sufficient time has passed for a race to be sending out signals, even when they don't like to travel. We don't hear them. Maybe we don't listen to the right frequencies or right spot in the sky, or aliens just don't like to talk. And if you wanted to communicate with someone, wouldn't you use easily detectable signals? You wouldn't send a neutrino beam.
Maybe. SETI@Home isn't even finished yet. We'll see. Even then maybe we just need to use the square kilometer array instead. Or if they have colonized the galaxy, what need have they of silly slow EM signals? They already know where all the primitive planets are, so they can contact them at leisure.
3. Sufficient time has passed for engineering projects we can imagine, but are quite far off for us of course. For example building a gigantic shell around a star to harvest all its energy. It might appear to be magic for us, but you wouldn't foul our detectors. They would certainly indicate something. We would be able to see such star engineering projects in the sky, but we don't. This indicates that there is no intelligent life, or that no one has really advanced very far.
We don't detect truly massive engineering projects (ie, entire sections of galaxies, portions of star clusters, etc, but has anyone looked and would anyone take them seriously if they did?) but I'm not sure we have the angular resolution to detect smaller ones yet...
Anyway, I'm actually pretty excited about the near future. It is just possible we might start to get for-real data on other terrestrial planets within the next few decades. At that point some actual science can begin, which would be terribly cool.
Well put - on a similar note if we were to suddenly come across a planet full of Cro-Magnons, I don't think it would occur to us to immediately land and start handing out toaster ovens. At best they would be an interesting subject of study, and we'd certainly have nothing worthwhile to say to them.
More likely of course the comparison might be closer to handing out tire pressure gauges to a bee hive - both pointless and unappreciated.
The Profound Dialog has always been one of the background fantasies of SETI - while it would be *great* to know we were not the only intelligence in the universe, they might have a lot less to say to us than people seem to be hoping for.
Re:Fermi's paradox?
on
Lonely Planets
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Fermi's paradox has lots of assumptions. Foremost, that we would recognize it if "they" were here or had been here. Leaving UFOs to the side for a bit, they could easily be here without detection. If they arrived for a couple of weeks 50000 years ago (let alone 1 million or 20 million) we would never know about it unless they decided to leave a permanent monument - but presupposing they would do so makes assumptions about their motives, which I think is a danerously silly practice since we're already talking hypotheticals here.
Fermi's paradox seems to me to be asking us: if life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, then why aren't they landing on the White House lawn or at least running around yelling "Helllooooo! We're Alieeeennnns! Over HEEEREE!". Since we don't see them either they never existed at all, or their motives preclude setting up a colony or an "ALIENS WERE HERE" monument. Since we can't decide between these alternatives, that's not much use.
Its name is "The US Health Care System" - anyone who can afford it (ie, most politicians and business leaders) goes to the states for their health care needs. That is already the de facto second tier.
I made the mistake of watching on CNN instead of just loading up NASA TV. Miles O'Brien does a good job, but I found myself yelling "Oh just shut the fark up and let me listen to what's happening already!" Of course they have to pander to the understanding impaired, but all the same their coverage obscured more of the event that it enlightened.
The USA did great - nobody can hold a candle to it in this kind of thing. America should be justifiably proud of the job done by the first-rate people at JPL/NASA.
All the same there's only one thing worse than a sore loser and that's an ungracious winner. There's really no need to go strutting and preening and engaging in dominance poses about it. It shows quite a bit more class to just win and then be decent about it.
Easy, scare enough voters into voting for people who will keep the grant money coming.
Excuse me? Your reply demonstrates rather clearly that you have no experience whatsoever with the byzantine complexities of scientific funding. If only life were that simple!
It will create gigantic flames and whatnot, of course, towering into the Slashdot sky. However this is just a measure of the contentious nature of the question - to what extent did the US administration knowingly lie and/or exaggerate the Iraq threat in order to create the case for a war they had already decided upon?
However much the ultra-right crazies may froth about it, it is a fair question.
It was stated categorically by almost all the top figures in the White House that such weapons existed and were a clear and present danger. It even made it into the SOTU.
So far, however, such claims appear to have been false. Read that however you will, but the question of honesty is relevant and important.
I just find it interesting that simply *asking where they are, after all* might be considered flamebait.
Actually, just for the record, I manage a major scientific project. Making unachievable promises in my case is a perk of being one of the money-men and industry-liason types above me.
However, many of the concepts that are commonly thrown about in project management are meaningful and useful, even though they sound like crap upon first hearing them. I defend my use of the prefix "meta" - there are organizational skill sets which can be applied to a variety of project structures, regardless of the actual goal, because it is all about getting people to work together without making a mess of it. Obviously this has to be tempered with an understanding of the particular subject as well (duh).
I find it interesting that there are so many hostile responses to this book and/or review thus far. That more or less lets me know where most slashdotters are on the corporate totem pole. As I've recently started doing a great deal of project management work myself, many of the topics mentioned in the review that seem "fuzzy" or "stupid" merely reflect meta-generalizations about concepts and interactions that just don't enter into the strictly goal-oriented world of the people being managed.
Let me put that in a less obscure way: the day-to-day skills involved in molding order out of chaos when you're trying to get ten different people to achieve ten different but integrated goals, while simultaneously fielding nonsense requests from above and money strangulation from the side, are just not the same challenges that most people face. Hence talking about them sounds a great deal like mumbo-jumbo.
Slashdot Mirror
Loved the ADM-5's. I think the very first PC I every saw was an IMSAI 8080 with an ADM-5. At that point it was like a little piece of the future plopped into the middle (okay, late part) of the 70's.
They seem to be keeping the most interesting shots and other data to themselves - and no surprise, the only benefit the scientists get out of their participation in the project is publication rights. I'm quite sure that we'll see the most interesting stuff before too terribly long.
Of course there's always the mysterious "horned" Opportunity object, which simply up and disappeared from one day to the next. I still suspect that it may have been a torn bit of material from the airbags that got blown away, but all the same it's an odd thing.
What about a fluffy feather duster? I have yet to see any electrostatically charged dust problems that a feather duster can't solve.
I'm only half joking.
When I first read the story, all I could think about were E.R.B.'s descriptions of the huge naval vessels floating through the air of a dead planet
I really don't want to sound like an Anime Fanboy here, but you might like to check out Last Exile if you haven't already seen it. It's a decent little series with some really impressive graphics, built around exactly that kind of concept...
I think you're missing the point here. Clearly the reason many people didn't like Episodes I and II was that they saw them in analog. Jar-jar isn't funny in analog, only in high-clarity digital. Lucas understands this and is trying to help us all to really get his film-making genius.
Looks interesting, but some of these live bio-linux-type CDs need fuller listings on their sites of what software is included in the distribution. Just looking at the website I end up asking "what sequence alignment viewers/editors are there?", "Does it have MrBayes? Phylip?" and so on. Bioknoppix in particular seems pretty but has a very limited set of software listed...
I've been thinking about this lately - one could probably improve the signal/noise ratio quite a bit by creating a "second-line" Slashdot site on which only people with Excellent karma can post.
First off it would eliminate nonsense like fp, goatse.cx, GNAA and the like. Secondly it would ensure that the people posting had "come up the ranks" as it were in the regular forums and thus might in theory at least have something worthwhile to say. Plus it would make karma count for something again.
As Cory Doctorow noted, totally public forums don't really work. They are garbage-magnets; there needs to be a way to filter the user base without being cliquey (sp?) and without enforcing an overly harsh set of membership criteria.
That seems very expensive - about 8 years ago I had two bigger reels (a 5-inch and an 8-inch) of Super 8 transferred to VHS for about $50. This was some little Mom&Pop video/camera shop but they did a decent enought job of it. I then captured it all through my old All-In-Wonder card.
Still, I keep the old reels around. Like someone else said, they're a pretty decent archival medium themselves.
I also found out what a staggeringly bad cinematographer I was when I was 10.
I wonder - if NASA is planning on dumping it in the ocean anyway, is there any particular reason why someone couldn't pay a group like Orbital Recovery to just grab it before it re-enters, and park it in a safe orbit. NASA has already abandoned it, so presumably they won't object to someone else using it...
Actually now that I've gone and made an effort to RTFA I repent me a bit of my earlier harshness. Since the fellow is using this to help drum up business, then it is roughly the same thing as the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.
I mean, just wow. I cannot imagine the headspace of someone who could drive around in that thing and not feel embarassed.
It seems to me the really "big things" were driven by new abilities suddenly being given to large numbers of people. Witness the PC (computing power for the masses), computers games (amazing fun new technology available to everytone), and the web (point-and-click internet for the masses). Heck, even the porn industry - in my day it took work to get your pron, sonny. I don't think it's possible to decide what the "next big thing" will be and then go out and create it, but I'm reasonably certain that some invisible business web of accounting computers ain't gonna be it.
Cheap, easy, unregulated mid-range wireless networking? Now that could do it - allowing the masses to create their own interweb and plug into it by just sticking a box into their computer.
No kidding - here's another scary paragraph:
During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.
Even if they're only referring to station-based science activities (such as they are) here, this would be the nail in the coffin for the original justifications about the need for a space station at all.
I wonder if they're really going to scrap two or three decades of real and exciting space science just to land a couple of people on Mars?
I just assumed it was disturbed soil from the airbags before/during deflation. Am I missing something?
Fermi's paradox uses the singular datum "I don't see any obvious evidence of aliens" to make assumptions about where they are. A necessary assumption for the paradox to hold any meaning whatsoever is "I am capable of detecting alien presence, past or current, if it exists." Frankly I think this assumption is bollocks. We're talking about geological stretches of time and evidence that could be as insignificant as a few scattered bolts, as well as a vastly unexplored solar system - for all we know there's a 100 meter craft moored in the asteroid belt. We are incapable of detecting the necessary evidence which allows us to make any inference about the existence of aliens other than "They may or may not exist based upon the fact that I can't see any evidence of them", which is pretty much where we started.
1. Sufficient time has passed for any race to colonize the galaxy. So they should be here or in the neighbourhood. Obviously they are not. Either they don't exist, or they don't like to leave home.
Obviously based upon what? That they didn't stop by for a friendly chat with Carl Sagan? I'm not asking anyone to prove a negative, but you must do so before you can use the paradox to show anything.
2. Sufficient time has passed for a race to be sending out signals, even when they don't like to travel. We don't hear them. Maybe we don't listen to the right frequencies or right spot in the sky, or aliens just don't like to talk. And if you wanted to communicate with someone, wouldn't you use easily detectable signals? You wouldn't send a neutrino beam.
Maybe. SETI@Home isn't even finished yet. We'll see. Even then maybe we just need to use the square kilometer array instead. Or if they have colonized the galaxy, what need have they of silly slow EM signals? They already know where all the primitive planets are, so they can contact them at leisure.
3. Sufficient time has passed for engineering projects we can imagine, but are quite far off for us of course. For example building a gigantic shell around a star to harvest all its energy. It might appear to be magic for us, but you wouldn't foul our detectors. They would certainly indicate something. We would be able to see such star engineering projects in the sky, but we don't. This indicates that there is no intelligent life, or that no one has really advanced very far.
We don't detect truly massive engineering projects (ie, entire sections of galaxies, portions of star clusters, etc, but has anyone looked and would anyone take them seriously if they did?) but I'm not sure we have the angular resolution to detect smaller ones yet...
Anyway, I'm actually pretty excited about the near future. It is just possible we might start to get for-real data on other terrestrial planets within the next few decades. At that point some actual science can begin, which would be terribly cool.
Well put - on a similar note if we were to suddenly come across a planet full of Cro-Magnons, I don't think it would occur to us to immediately land and start handing out toaster ovens. At best they would be an interesting subject of study, and we'd certainly have nothing worthwhile to say to them.
More likely of course the comparison might be closer to handing out tire pressure gauges to a bee hive - both pointless and unappreciated.
The Profound Dialog has always been one of the background fantasies of SETI - while it would be *great* to know we were not the only intelligence in the universe, they might have a lot less to say to us than people seem to be hoping for.
Fermi's paradox has lots of assumptions. Foremost, that we would recognize it if "they" were here or had been here. Leaving UFOs to the side for a bit, they could easily be here without detection. If they arrived for a couple of weeks 50000 years ago (let alone 1 million or 20 million) we would never know about it unless they decided to leave a permanent monument - but presupposing they would do so makes assumptions about their motives, which I think is a danerously silly practice since we're already talking hypotheticals here.
Fermi's paradox seems to me to be asking us: if life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, then why aren't they landing on the White House lawn or at least running around yelling "Helllooooo! We're Alieeeennnns! Over HEEEREE!". Since we don't see them either they never existed at all, or their motives preclude setting up a colony or an "ALIENS WERE HERE" monument. Since we can't decide between these alternatives, that's not much use.
Its name is "The US Health Care System" - anyone who can afford it (ie, most politicians and business leaders) goes to the states for their health care needs. That is already the de facto second tier.
I made the mistake of watching on CNN instead of just loading up NASA TV. Miles O'Brien does a good job, but I found myself yelling "Oh just shut the fark up and let me listen to what's happening already!" Of course they have to pander to the understanding impaired, but all the same their coverage obscured more of the event that it enlightened.
The USA did great - nobody can hold a candle to it in this kind of thing. America should be justifiably proud of the job done by the first-rate people at JPL/NASA.
All the same there's only one thing worse than a sore loser and that's an ungracious winner. There's really no need to go strutting and preening and engaging in dominance poses about it. It shows quite a bit more class to just win and then be decent about it.
Damn fine idea - wish I'd thought of it. That being said I'm still trying to make it work...
Excuse me? Your reply demonstrates rather clearly that you have no experience whatsoever with the byzantine complexities of scientific funding. If only life were that simple!
Interesting question - *is* it a troll?
It will create gigantic flames and whatnot, of course, towering into the Slashdot sky. However this is just a measure of the contentious nature of the question - to what extent did the US administration knowingly lie and/or exaggerate the Iraq threat in order to create the case for a war they had already decided upon?
However much the ultra-right crazies may froth about it, it is a fair question.
It was stated categorically by almost all the top figures in the White House that such weapons existed and were a clear and present danger. It even made it into the SOTU.
So far, however, such claims appear to have been false. Read that however you will, but the question of honesty is relevant and important.
I just find it interesting that simply *asking where they are, after all* might be considered flamebait.
Actually, just for the record, I manage a major scientific project. Making unachievable promises in my case is a perk of being one of the money-men and industry-liason types above me.
However, many of the concepts that are commonly thrown about in project management are meaningful and useful, even though they sound like crap upon first hearing them. I defend my use of the prefix "meta" - there are organizational skill sets which can be applied to a variety of project structures, regardless of the actual goal, because it is all about getting people to work together without making a mess of it. Obviously this has to be tempered with an understanding of the particular subject as well (duh).
It is actually kind of fun, in a peculiar way...
Well put.
I find it interesting that there are so many hostile responses to this book and/or review thus far. That more or less lets me know where most slashdotters are on the corporate totem pole. As I've recently started doing a great deal of project management work myself, many of the topics mentioned in the review that seem "fuzzy" or "stupid" merely reflect meta-generalizations about concepts and interactions that just don't enter into the strictly goal-oriented world of the people being managed.
Let me put that in a less obscure way: the day-to-day skills involved in molding order out of chaos when you're trying to get ten different people to achieve ten different but integrated goals, while simultaneously fielding nonsense requests from above and money strangulation from the side, are just not the same challenges that most people face. Hence talking about them sounds a great deal like mumbo-jumbo.
Or something like that.