Unison does a better job, in that it checks for changes while it's running and can be configured to retry until there are none. However, it can still be tripped up by changes that touch multiple files; it doesn't give an atomic snapshot either.
In practice, though, it's never failed in giving me working backups.
Your philosophical position would be wrong. Nothing particularly unusual happens at the event horizon, from the POV of someone falling through it. Well, communicating with the outside world does become impossible, but mass doesn't suddenly turn into energy or anything.
What happens later is a somewhat different story. The event horizon also marks the point at which gravitational twisting has switched one of the spatial dimensions (specifically, the one with an axis going through you and the singularity) and [i]time[/i]. You can't escape, because that would require going back in time.
Unfortunately, this also means that absolutely any acceleration you do means you hit the singularity sooner. Remember time dilation? Right. Keep those thrusters off, and you'll live slightly longer.
If you had swerved like that while I was in the car, then - assuming we survived - once we stopped, I would have punched you as hard as I could, preferably on the nose. Then I would have called the police, explained the situation, and made sure your license was taken away.
Not all teenagers are so eager to get killed, moron.
We've actually got a fair number of inventions stockpiled that would, by themselves, change space travel a lot. What we don't have is a good economic or military reason to go there in the first place, but that will probably be changing.
So, since I feel like getting them straight anyway, here's a list of possibilities that would help. Some are more plausible, others less, but they are all at least possible. Not in any particular order.
- Stripperiffic space suits. Yes. It's rather amusing, but you can make a space suit far lighter and more convenient simply by making it skin-tight; punctures could still happen but then won't release air. You'd probably still wear something over it, but without pressurization of the external part. NASA keeps intending to design them, all the enabling technologies are in place, they just can't get the budget.
Benefits: Lighter, better agility, may remove the prebreathing requirement for going into space - and cheaper.
Seen in: Rocket Girls. It's not as hard as Planetes, but it's actually surprisingly plausible in retrospect. (Some components really aren't at all, but they do get the suits right.)
- Nuclear pulse engines. The Orion project. Better thrust to weight ratio and ISP than any other engine system we could currently make, but depends on detonating nuclear bombs and thus suffers from needing a large ship to be workable. Also has political issues.
Seen in: Just about every hard-SF novel ever.
- Nuclear thermal engines. Uses a fission reactor to heat some medium (often water) until it's really really hot, which is then left to shoot out the thruster. Easier to miniaturize than nuclear pulse engines, and has at least twice the ISP of a chemical rocket, while still maintaining enough thrust to fight gravity. Not very radioactive. Has been built, but is again politically troublesome and has never been used in a real rocket.
Seen.. almost nowhere. A pity, it's a good design.
- Stable antimatter, of various kinds. It's obviously the best fuel, and is needed if you want to build a (highly theoretical) pion engine, but antimatter is extremely expensive. Tiny amounts of antimatter could be used to initiate fusion, which would allow nuclear pulse engines to be drastically scaled down and also make them far more efficient - to the point of allowing interstellar hops in a reasonable amount of time.
It is believed by some that if we just try, we can generate antimatter at far higher efficiencies than today's best, by quite a lot of orders of magnitude. As it happens, the US air force is in fact trying, in order to build positronium-powered gamma-ray "lasers", ostensibly for initiating fusion in inertial containment reactors. We'll see.
- Nanotechnology, mainly nanofactories. Almost certain to arrive on the scene within 10-40 years; there will likely be difficulties (not that anyone's found any yet), but there are many paths to them, including working examples of nanofactories. (You're made of them..)
Four main benefits: * Nanofactories make manufacturing in general cheaper, but in particular manufacturing of parts you don't need mass-produced. Space equipment will likely fall in this category for a long time. * Most rocket failures are due to some tiny flaw. Atomically perfect manufacturing will reduce the chance of these, though incorrect assembly is of course still possible. In the limit, it may be possible to build larger assemblies as a single part in a nanofactory, eliminating even that variation. * Colonization of other planets, or in general independence of earth, is impossible so long as you need several billion tons of industry and several million people to build everything needed by a colony. Nanofactories could drastically reduce these counts, though it won't eliminate them. * And, of course, it reduces the penalty for complexity a lot while permitting far stronger materials in many places; having a full set of sensors in every cubic millimeter of a rocket would drastically increase safety, as most f
It's not particularily realistic, though.. ironically, because it's attempting to be realistic. Science marches on; it's showing what we could do now, not what we'll be able to do in the timeframe it's set.
We've gotten pretty good at DNA sequencing lately. Would it be possible to sequence all the bacteria in the sea and store for later, or are there too many for that?
For the most part, you're right. The early-20th century gold standard had a lot more in common with modern economics than most of those people would like to admit.
I've seen them argue that the reason it failed is *because* it had fractional reserve banking, however. You know, because that meant people couldn't all get their gold out.
I've also been reading about the economic system (or lack thereof) of 17th-century Russia, whose largest problem was a lack of money - caused, again, by a lack of fractional reserve banking. It's definitely not a purely theoretical problem, just an outdated one.
The situation in Norway is more or less the same, with a few differences.
- The minimum period of time your device has to work for is two years, not one. This caused a bit of trouble with cellphone manufacturers who claimed batteries and/or phones were not meant to last that long. Poor dears.
- If the device can be reasonably expected to last significantly longer, it's five years.
- If there isn't a physical store involved (e.g. buying over the internet), you can return your purchase within 14 days of arrival, no questions asked. You'll still be out the postage. I used this to "borrow" some large HDDs once.
- Shops are *required* to inform the customer of these facts, so most people know.
The shielding is directional. Windows would have little effect if the sun is right above you, though you should probably try to get in the back seat.
Just try to stay in the EM shadow of something conductive. Yes, the radiation will "bend" around shielding in an attempt to get at you (EM is almost malevolent in that way, but it's just normal low-frequency wave action), but even if that happens you'll still have blocked *most* of it.
We might - might - have functional, useful nanofactories in another decade or so. More likely two.
But nanofactories are bulky (well, relatively) things; not something you can inject, and definitely not capable of killing bacteria. What you'd obviously do is use them to build the nanobots you want. Which means designing and testing them first, which can't be done until we have nanofactories. So probably five years for that.
So that's fifteen to twenty-five years before we can even try. Nanotechnology in mature form will have been around for years before we even try introducing it into the body. Interfacing with biology is about the hardest thing we can try to make it do.
If you go faster, you get less time to do.. whatever you'd want to do during the flight. If you <i>want</i> to work slower, slow down the computer running your brain.
Oh, you were planning to go in a biological body? Shame on you, that will never happen when uploading makes it so much cheaper.
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Unison does a better job, in that it checks for changes while it's running and can be configured to retry until there are none. However, it can still be tripped up by changes that touch multiple files; it doesn't give an atomic snapshot either.
In practice, though, it's never failed in giving me working backups.
Your philosophical position would be wrong. Nothing particularly unusual happens at the event horizon, from the POV of someone falling through it. Well, communicating with the outside world does become impossible, but mass doesn't suddenly turn into energy or anything.
What happens later is a somewhat different story. The event horizon also marks the point at which gravitational twisting has switched one of the spatial dimensions (specifically, the one with an axis going through you and the singularity) and [i]time[/i]. You can't escape, because that would require going back in time.
Unfortunately, this also means that absolutely any acceleration you do means you hit the singularity sooner. Remember time dilation? Right. Keep those thrusters off, and you'll live slightly longer.
Germ theory is medical science. We didn't magically understand that there was such a thing as "contaminated water"; we had to learn that.
That's why I always say "evening", no matter the time of day!
Speaking as a former teenager..
If you had swerved like that while I was in the car, then - assuming we survived - once we stopped, I would have punched you as hard as I could, preferably on the nose. Then I would have called the police, explained the situation, and made sure your license was taken away.
Not all teenagers are so eager to get killed, moron.
We've actually got a fair number of inventions stockpiled that would, by themselves, change space travel a lot. What we don't have is a good economic or military reason to go there in the first place, but that will probably be changing.
So, since I feel like getting them straight anyway, here's a list of possibilities that would help. Some are more plausible, others less, but they are all at least possible. Not in any particular order.
- Stripperiffic space suits. Yes. It's rather amusing, but you can make a space suit far lighter and more convenient simply by making it skin-tight; punctures could still happen but then won't release air. You'd probably still wear something over it, but without pressurization of the external part. NASA keeps intending to design them, all the enabling technologies are in place, they just can't get the budget.
Benefits: Lighter, better agility, may remove the prebreathing requirement for going into space - and cheaper.
Seen in: Rocket Girls. It's not as hard as Planetes, but it's actually surprisingly plausible in retrospect. (Some components really aren't at all, but they do get the suits right.)
- Nuclear pulse engines. The Orion project. Better thrust to weight ratio and ISP than any other engine system we could currently make, but depends on detonating nuclear bombs and thus suffers from needing a large ship to be workable. Also has political issues.
Seen in: Just about every hard-SF novel ever.
- Nuclear thermal engines. Uses a fission reactor to heat some medium (often water) until it's really really hot, which is then left to shoot out the thruster. Easier to miniaturize than nuclear pulse engines, and has at least twice the ISP of a chemical rocket, while still maintaining enough thrust to fight gravity. Not very radioactive. Has been built, but is again politically troublesome and has never been used in a real rocket.
Seen.. almost nowhere. A pity, it's a good design.
- Stable antimatter, of various kinds. It's obviously the best fuel, and is needed if you want to build a (highly theoretical) pion engine, but antimatter is extremely expensive. Tiny amounts of antimatter could be used to initiate fusion, which would allow nuclear pulse engines to be drastically scaled down and also make them far more efficient - to the point of allowing interstellar hops in a reasonable amount of time.
It is believed by some that if we just try, we can generate antimatter at far higher efficiencies than today's best, by quite a lot of orders of magnitude. As it happens, the US air force is in fact trying, in order to build positronium-powered gamma-ray "lasers", ostensibly for initiating fusion in inertial containment reactors. We'll see.
- Nanotechnology, mainly nanofactories. Almost certain to arrive on the scene within 10-40 years; there will likely be difficulties (not that anyone's found any yet), but there are many paths to them, including working examples of nanofactories. (You're made of them..)
Four main benefits:
* Nanofactories make manufacturing in general cheaper, but in particular manufacturing of parts you don't need mass-produced. Space equipment will likely fall in this category for a long time.
* Most rocket failures are due to some tiny flaw. Atomically perfect manufacturing will reduce the chance of these, though incorrect assembly is of course still possible. In the limit, it may be possible to build larger assemblies as a single part in a nanofactory, eliminating even that variation.
* Colonization of other planets, or in general independence of earth, is impossible so long as you need several billion tons of industry and several million people to build everything needed by a colony. Nanofactories could drastically reduce these counts, though it won't eliminate them.
* And, of course, it reduces the penalty for complexity a lot while permitting far stronger materials in many places; having a full set of sensors in every cubic millimeter of a rocket would drastically increase safety, as most f
Or watching.
It's not particularily realistic, though.. ironically, because it's attempting to be realistic. Science marches on; it's showing what we could do now, not what we'll be able to do in the timeframe it's set.
I predict the sun will eventually be disassembled, shut down, and used to fuel fusion reactors. ;)
See how that goes? I might even be right, though there's a good chance we'll decide to keep this solar system as some kind of preservation instead.
Let the games begin. Meanwhile, I've got at least 6to4 working.
IPv4 addresses are non-transferable except in large blocks. You're quite right it would be craziness - the core routers would break down.
We've gotten pretty good at DNA sequencing lately. Would it be possible to sequence all the bacteria in the sea and store for later, or are there too many for that?
He threatened to shoot me in the face!
Help! I want out!
It asks the browser to do the lookup, it doesn't do it on the server by IP.
FF 3.7, at least, will ask the user if he wants to proceed before letting the JS code know where it is.
The android OS eats memory like nobody's business. Using java will do that.
The iPhone has only 128MB of memory. Androids typically have at least twice that - the nexus one has four times as much.
'nuff said.
For the most part, you're right. The early-20th century gold standard had a lot more in common with modern economics than most of those people would like to admit.
I've seen them argue that the reason it failed is *because* it had fractional reserve banking, however. You know, because that meant people couldn't all get their gold out.
I've also been reading about the economic system (or lack thereof) of 17th-century Russia, whose largest problem was a lack of money - caused, again, by a lack of fractional reserve banking. It's definitely not a purely theoretical problem, just an outdated one.
It's an amusing story, but that exact thing - on a larger scale - is what happens if an economy has too little money in it.
It's why we can't use a gold standard. The money supply has to expand or shrink at the same rate as the economy.
Even if they never cared about the option, they might enjoy an extra 130 pounds.
This really should be publicized better. :-)
Interesting. For comparison purposes, then:
The situation in Norway is more or less the same, with a few differences.
- The minimum period of time your device has to work for is two years, not one. This caused a bit of trouble with cellphone manufacturers who claimed batteries and/or phones were not meant to last that long. Poor dears.
- If the device can be reasonably expected to last significantly longer, it's five years.
- If there isn't a physical store involved (e.g. buying over the internet), you can return your purchase within 14 days of arrival, no questions asked. You'll still be out the postage. I used this to "borrow" some large HDDs once.
- Shops are *required* to inform the customer of these facts, so most people know.
That is no longer the case. However, it doesn't matter; you shouldn't be using the headers directly, you should be using GLEW.
I'm pretty sure that was around a few years back, too.
The shielding is directional. Windows would have little effect if the sun is right above you, though you should probably try to get in the back seat.
Just try to stay in the EM shadow of something conductive. Yes, the radiation will "bend" around shielding in an attempt to get at you (EM is almost malevolent in that way, but it's just normal low-frequency wave action), but even if that happens you'll still have blocked *most* of it.
I don't know where you're posting from, but you should realize that this story was submitted from a 3D Flatland.
Rules of thumb for four-dee universes do not apply here.
A good, long while.
We might - might - have functional, useful nanofactories in another decade or so. More likely two.
But nanofactories are bulky (well, relatively) things; not something you can inject, and definitely not capable of killing bacteria. What you'd obviously do is use them to build the nanobots you want. Which means designing and testing them first, which can't be done until we have nanofactories. So probably five years for that.
So that's fifteen to twenty-five years before we can even try. Nanotechnology in mature form will have been around for years before we even try introducing it into the body. Interfacing with biology is about the hardest thing we can try to make it do.
A what?
Let's try not to bring in fictional "evidence", okay?
More to the point, the astronauts explicitly agreed to the risk. They knew what they were doing.
It's really not the same thing as bridge building at all. xD
I don't see how that is an advantage.
If you go faster, you get less time to do.. whatever you'd want to do during the flight. If you <i>want</i> to work slower, slow down the computer running your brain.
Oh, you were planning to go in a biological body? Shame on you, that will never happen when uploading makes it so much cheaper.