No, their delivery mechanism has serious flaws. It was designed to be cheap and fast, and not to tangle when being deployed (like small parachutes would), so of course, they're going to either make it to the ground, or get stuck on a leaf - not a branch. First rain or even a good wind, and the leaf tears, sending the mouse to the ground.
And since it will be a day before the mouse thaws out enough to be attractive (and how sticky can the glue be at sub-zero temps - they only tested 250 in individual hand drops so the glue was already at room temp), these mice are going to be eaten by a lot more than snakes.
No need - he's made an extraordinary claim (that life must be flourishing everywhere) with zero proof. What he said was stupid at first glance, and that doesn't change when you look deeper into it. Call me back when they discover life on ONE extra-solar body.
The fermi paradox is proof that it hasn't happened. The galaxy would have already been overrun by mechanicals - very aggressive bots - long ago otherwise.
Most people don't know how. Heck, most people still don't know about TPB or torrents. The people who would be targeted for this are self-selected.
Just like most people still forward chain emails about not flashing your headlights because the Crips will kill you, and believe Bill Gates will send them $2,450 for forwarding an email ("Who's Steve Ballmer? What do you mean, Bill Gates isn't the head of Microsoft any more?")
Besides, I don't see you offering a better solution.
The locking of the tectonic plates is dependent on water. There's no water on the moon. No water on Venus. No plate tectonics - all the plates are locked. It's not the weight of the oceans, but the way that superheated water at depth still acts as a lubricant, that allows the plates to slip.
First, those who are going to pay the price won't pirate it - they're not "lost sales" or a "price cut". Only the people with the pirated copy get the message. Duh! Or did you not read my original proposal ???!!!
Second, even if not one of them converts, you're still getting marketing and feedback information that can be useful. For example - "What one feature would make you decide to buy this program instead of pirating it?"
Pluto isn't capable of supporting life. That's why, when you're talking about life, you have to unclude (don't you like that word - I just made it up:-) Pluto and other detrius from the Oort cloud.
If it weren't for the greenhouse effect, earth would be pretty much a frozen ball. An average temperature of -40F is not pretty.
Re:JavaScript is ok, DOM is a train wreck
on
JavaScript Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
That 16% is mostly corporate and governmental users - and you can be sure that their home boxes are more up-to-date. Those are the ones that mostly can't even upgrade XP to the latest service pack because they're locked in to IE6.
Unless you're the one who locked them in in the first place, you're not selling to them anyway, so who cares?
As I pointed out earlier, the claim that life will be found there because life flourishes everywhere is incredibly stupid. We have no proof that life exists in ANY other solar system. Their generalization would be like seeing on black sheep and claiming that all sheep are black.
One data point is an anecdote, not a universal truth.
Also, your "argument from authority" is the same one that can be used to justify creationism, eugenics, and genocide. Nice try, but you fail.
Pluto isn't a planet, and even if we were to classify it as one, it's not capable of sustaining life, so no - the earth:moon system is unique in our solar system.
The closest analog would be CowboyNeal and the Goat Guy.
How many planets do you know that are large enough to support life that also have a large-enough moon to raise decent tides? There's only one - and we're a freak. I posted the calculations of the odds of another earth-moon system - in this galaxy, somewhere in my journal, but I'll give you the executive summary: we're IT. Unique.
Read the literature. Volcanism only helps emit CO2 into the atmosphere - it doesn't take rock that has absorbed CO2 and, through plate subduction, recycle the crustal material back under the crust, thus acting as a CO2 sink.
So, if the plates are locked, atmospheric CO2 quickly passes the tipping point and you end up with Venus - except that if it were the Earth (plus the mass of the moon, plus the other ejecta that were blasted away when the moon was created by the impact), instead of 22 atmospheres, we'd be at 45 atmospheres. In other words, instead of Venus being the hottest planet in the solar system, it would be Earth.
Forget oceans - all the water vapor is tied up in an H2SO4 haze.
Dark side? It would be almost as hot. That dense an atmosphere is very efficient at redistributing heat - plus, light bends almost completely around the planet due to the dense atmosphere. The dark side wouldn't be dark anyway - not with rocks so hot they glow.
When it comes to inhabitable planets, there's no place like home.
That still doesn't change the fact that the scientist made an extremely foolish assertion about life flourishing everywhere. Best example? Compared to the Sun (>99.8% of all the system's mass), the planets are a rounding error - and there's no life on the sun.
Maybe we should sent an expedition to check for life on the sun at night when it's cooler?
There's also a problem if we do find life on other planets in-system - they may just be contamination from our past (meteor impacts).
After looking at the evidence, that's what I go with. Most impacts would have produced an asteroid belt, or eventually cleared out the zone as material got ejected towards Venus or Mars - or accumulated back into one large body with very small moons. The earth-moon double planet is a very very exceptional situation. We don't see anything remotely like it anywhere else in the system.
There's no free water - it's all a sulfuric acid haze. Spin-locked planets don't have enough tidal stress to drive plate tectonics, so there's no recycling of CO2 - all the CO2 that's in limestone, etc., that gets subducted? It gets baked out into the atmosphere instead. You end up with YAV - Yet Another Venus.
We're here not just because we're in the Goldilocks zone, but also because we're a double-planet (earth and moon). Lots of gravitational stress to help encourage crustal slip along fault lines, and free water to help with the slippage. A runaway greenhouse effect caused by much higher CO2 concentrations converts the water to H2SO4. Once the water is gone (it's still liquid at depth even at 150C because of the pressure), the plates lock up completely, and you get Venus.
Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can
We have only ONE place that we know life flourishes.
In addition, since the planet always has the same side facing the sun, the lack of tidal pumping means the crust of the planet is locked, which means no plate tectonics, which means no CO2 recycling, which means a Venus-like planet.
Sorry, but unless you can find life living with zero free water and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, fuggedaboudit.
Re:JavaScript is ok, DOM is a train wreck
on
JavaScript Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Every shop I've interviewed at will charge at least double if the customer wants IE6 support, for the simple reason that it involves a LOT of breaking things to make them work. Your argument could have been made about Netscape 4, or even IE3 in Windows for Workgroups. It's not valid.
Businesses had plenty of warning about lock-in. Let them feel the pain. It's the only way they'll correct their behaviour.
IE6 has a very small market - business and government that are stuck not being able to update because of custom apps. Let them install a second browser. It's not like you can't run IE and Firefox/Seamonkey/Opera/Safari at the same time.
The flaw in your argument is that several thousand people are regularly using the app without buying it.
Um, no - the flaw in your argument is that nowhere do we see any evidence that these people are regularly using the app. Now if they had created an app that, when pirated, said "Look, we know you swiped this. Here's the deal - if you want, we'll give you a free license for one year - just tell us why you swiped it, for our market research. If at the end of the year, you still like it, we'll sell it to you half price, or we can repeat this every year, and you'll have it for free as long as you tell us why it's still not worth paying even half price for."
If you had bothered to understand my original post, I didn't even want to look at the game. At the time, I thought the premise was dumb. No alternate universe needed, just more than 2 brain cells to rub together.
Why should I use jQuery when I'm comfortable writing the code myself? Really? It doesn't give me anything I need that I don't already have. Maybe if you're new to javascript, sure, but many of us write our own that do what we need, as we need it.
Re:JavaScript is ok, DOM is a train wreck
on
JavaScript Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
test your code with IE6 every day.
Why? Let them upgrade. Or let them pay 3x the price for IE6 support (because it's a minimum of 2x, and that's if you can still find a machine that has IE6 to test on that you can boot).
"oh, but business..." Don't give me that business. Either they pay the price, or they don't get. IE6 support is a messy business, and doesn't give enough returns for the work.
Slashdot Mirror
And since it will be a day before the mouse thaws out enough to be attractive (and how sticky can the glue be at sub-zero temps - they only tested 250 in individual hand drops so the glue was already at room temp), these mice are going to be eaten by a lot more than snakes.
Turbos regularly go into the 100,000+ rpm region.
The fermi paradox is proof that it hasn't happened. The galaxy would have already been overrun by mechanicals - very aggressive bots - long ago otherwise.
Didn't think so.
Just like most people still forward chain emails about not flashing your headlights because the Crips will kill you, and believe Bill Gates will send them $2,450 for forwarding an email ("Who's Steve Ballmer? What do you mean, Bill Gates isn't the head of Microsoft any more?")
Besides, I don't see you offering a better solution.
The locking of the tectonic plates is dependent on water. There's no water on the moon. No water on Venus. No plate tectonics - all the plates are locked. It's not the weight of the oceans, but the way that superheated water at depth still acts as a lubricant, that allows the plates to slip.
Second, even if not one of them converts, you're still getting marketing and feedback information that can be useful. For example - "What one feature would make you decide to buy this program instead of pirating it?"
Pluto isn't capable of supporting life. That's why, when you're talking about life, you have to unclude (don't you like that word - I just made it up :-) Pluto and other detrius from the Oort cloud.
If it weren't for the greenhouse effect, earth would be pretty much a frozen ball. An average temperature of -40F is not pretty.
Unless you're the one who locked them in in the first place, you're not selling to them anyway, so who cares?
One data point is an anecdote, not a universal truth.
Also, your "argument from authority" is the same one that can be used to justify creationism, eugenics, and genocide. Nice try, but you fail.
The yellow clouds of Venus are sulfuric acid, not water. Evidently, there's more than enough sulfer. :-)
It's like all those "we'll double your order - just pay separate shipping and handling!"
The closest analog would be CowboyNeal and the Goat Guy.
How many planets do you know that are large enough to support life that also have a large-enough moon to raise decent tides? There's only one - and we're a freak. I posted the calculations of the odds of another earth-moon system - in this galaxy, somewhere in my journal, but I'll give you the executive summary: we're IT. Unique.
So, if the plates are locked, atmospheric CO2 quickly passes the tipping point and you end up with Venus - except that if it were the Earth (plus the mass of the moon, plus the other ejecta that were blasted away when the moon was created by the impact), instead of 22 atmospheres, we'd be at 45 atmospheres. In other words, instead of Venus being the hottest planet in the solar system, it would be Earth.
Forget oceans - all the water vapor is tied up in an H2SO4 haze.
Dark side? It would be almost as hot. That dense an atmosphere is very efficient at redistributing heat - plus, light bends almost completely around the planet due to the dense atmosphere. The dark side wouldn't be dark anyway - not with rocks so hot they glow.
When it comes to inhabitable planets, there's no place like home.
Maybe we should sent an expedition to check for life on the sun at night when it's cooler?
There's also a problem if we do find life on other planets in-system - they may just be contamination from our past (meteor impacts).
After looking at the evidence, that's what I go with. Most impacts would have produced an asteroid belt, or eventually cleared out the zone as material got ejected towards Venus or Mars - or accumulated back into one large body with very small moons. The earth-moon double planet is a very very exceptional situation. We don't see anything remotely like it anywhere else in the system.
We're here not just because we're in the Goldilocks zone, but also because we're a double-planet (earth and moon). Lots of gravitational stress to help encourage crustal slip along fault lines, and free water to help with the slippage. A runaway greenhouse effect caused by much higher CO2 concentrations converts the water to H2SO4. Once the water is gone (it's still liquid at depth even at 150C because of the pressure), the plates lock up completely, and you get Venus.
We have only ONE place that we know life flourishes.
In addition, since the planet always has the same side facing the sun, the lack of tidal pumping means the crust of the planet is locked, which means no plate tectonics, which means no CO2 recycling, which means a Venus-like planet.
Sorry, but unless you can find life living with zero free water and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, fuggedaboudit.
Businesses had plenty of warning about lock-in. Let them feel the pain. It's the only way they'll correct their behaviour.
IE6 has a very small market - business and government that are stuck not being able to update because of custom apps. Let them install a second browser. It's not like you can't run IE and Firefox/Seamonkey/Opera/Safari at the same time.
Um, no - the flaw in your argument is that nowhere do we see any evidence that these people are regularly using the app. Now if they had created an app that, when pirated, said "Look, we know you swiped this. Here's the deal - if you want, we'll give you a free license for one year - just tell us why you swiped it, for our market research. If at the end of the year, you still like it, we'll sell it to you half price, or we can repeat this every year, and you'll have it for free as long as you tell us why it's still not worth paying even half price for."
If you had bothered to understand my original post, I didn't even want to look at the game. At the time, I thought the premise was dumb. No alternate universe needed, just more than 2 brain cells to rub together.
Why should I use jQuery when I'm comfortable writing the code myself? Really? It doesn't give me anything I need that I don't already have. Maybe if you're new to javascript, sure, but many of us write our own that do what we need, as we need it.
Why? Let them upgrade. Or let them pay 3x the price for IE6 support (because it's a minimum of 2x, and that's if you can still find a machine that has IE6 to test on that you can boot).
"oh, but business ..." Don't give me that business. Either they pay the price, or they don't get. IE6 support is a messy business, and doesn't give enough returns for the work.