> You're saying a scientist should give his code to the oil companies to pick > apart line by line?
Correct. That's how science works.
It's interesting that, in science, you address the arguments, you don't attack the messenger or any hidden motivations. But in politics, it's exactly the opposite -- you always look for the hidden motivations behind positions and publically-espoused reasoning.
> Usually missing information stories are fairly low key; the loss of a few thousand > student records is cause for concern for those involved, but hardly national security.
Yeah! The problems of tiny organizations are not really worthy of national, much less international, attention.
> This one is slightly different...'The company -- whose clients include Scotland Yard > and the Crown Prosecution Service '...
Wait, I thought you said this was slightly different. Sounds like the same class of problems as that of a small school, from the point of view of the $2.1 trillion spending, 15 aircraft carrier battlegroup wielding, moon-landing, shuttle-launching, eh, it's only $500 billion for this war, that savings & loan bailout, that geezer drug benefit cha-CHING-ing nation.
It was transparently obvious years ago that this step would be made eventually, and that oil running out would be a chimera. Nobody listened because it's much more fun to disasterbate.
Don't worry, though. You guys can still disasterbate about the new, indefinite ability of humanity to burn fossil fuels.
Or is it because the US has well-developed, long-established "heat islands" of large cities, where much of the developing world is doing just that...developing...large cities...even as we speak.
The non-pixellated version would have to exist somewhere, otherwise it would just re-paste the exact same pixellated part from another copy in cyberspace.
Speaking of which, how would it even tell which "part" to use? The pixellated or non-pixellated one? Statistically, the pixellated one would probably be chosen because it would probably outnumber the non-pixellated one, even if it is available.
Ahh, just go to Youtube and discover the joys of fully clothed Japanese girls kissing...
You have to presume non-exponential growth for you argument to be true. I see no reason to think that Earth wouldn't directly colonize hundreds of worlds, perhaps a lot more, if space travel becomes easy (not necessarily fast, but highly reliable machinery + hibernation/freeing) for relatively cheap = medium-sized organizations could afford it.
Give each world a few thousand years to "power up" the population (and tech will just continue to advance, remember, and be shared by radio messages, if slowly), then they'll send off more colonies.
In other words, your idea seems like it'd be the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, only 1 civilization (or daughter colony of a linear-expanding one, for that matter) need violate the rule in order to clog the universe with people, or the equivalent.
"Apparently the method is polynomial in time, but exponential in energy..." to which Charles Stross replies "Ah, so that's what the short duration GRBs are!"
Slashdot reader: Who is Charles Stross?
- Women
"She wears an over the shoulder boulder holder..."
Why not give refunds for those who are healthy. It is the same thing, but a much more positive and effective incentive. Didn't anyone read "How to win friends and influence people"?
Telling people, "You're bad. BAD!" doesn't exactly make people want to be on your side.
> Sounds innocuous enough... until they they shine "the evil color" at you and you start puking!
Really, now. Was this their first priority? Shouldn't they first have worked on the light pattern that sends women into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy?
> 1. Use a combination of surgical examination, dissection of dead tissue, and MRI > and other dynamic techniques to produce a model of the physics of a human brain > 2. Wait until Moore's law puts a computer within your price range that is capable > of running that model at faster than 1 model second per real second > 3. Implement it > > You now have a machine that is slightly more intelligent than a human.
No you don't. You have a buffoon who wants to watch 30 episodes per second of Big Brother.
And parsimmony would keep the number of large, major limbs small. Heck, most species on Earth that went bipedal started losing their forelimbs when the uses evaporated. T-Rex, various flightless birds, etc. Pretty much just tree climbers retained the forelimbs in conjunction with a (mostly) upright posture.
So don't expect too many intelligent civilizations based on 6 or 8-legged designs, to say nothing of hundred-legged ones. There probably aren't that many large animals with those designs (also presumes intelligence requires something roughly on the size of a human, or at least no less than a small dog or so.)
For intra-solar system travel, perhaps. But for interstellar, the difference in time between an ion and a normal rocket or push-plate vehicle are relatively small, everything else being equal. Jumping up to 90% or 99% the speed of light within a few days won't lop off that much time vs. building up to it over 6 months or a year, so great are the distances, and thus time, to be covered.
It also presumes that no wild civilization ever makes it to interstellar levels of technology before having given up on their wackiness. One look at our society shows this probably would not be the case with us.
There must be plenty of such out there, where what the rest of the galactic society does becomes irrelevant as the crazy civilization breaks free of their own solar system. But at that point, they might very well just get stomped on as a plague, but that's a different issue.
In any case, given how the more virulent religions tend to overwhelm and infuse into the less virulent ones, I'd hate to presume that galactic civilization was some standard of pacificism and freedom. More likely, we'd be introduced to the "true" religion, whatever it is, and, oh, by the way, you have a 75% tax rate on everything to pay for the cumulative legislation of a billion years of a galactic Congress.
The whole point of the Fermi Paradox is that even if civilizations take a ridiculously long time to travel between stars, and between colonization and sending out their own child colonies, the entire universe (not just one galaxy) should still long since be clogged to the gills.
Slashdot Mirror
> You're saying a scientist should give his code to the oil companies to pick
> apart line by line?
Correct. That's how science works.
It's interesting that, in science, you address the arguments, you don't attack the messenger or any hidden motivations. But in politics, it's exactly the opposite -- you always look for the hidden motivations behind positions and publically-espoused reasoning.
> That would appear to be Tim Berners-Lee
Ahh, my nemesis finally has a name!
> Usually missing information stories are fairly low key; the loss of a few thousand
> student records is cause for concern for those involved, but hardly national security.
Yeah! The problems of tiny organizations are not really worthy of national, much less international, attention.
> This one is slightly different...'The company -- whose clients include Scotland Yard
> and the Crown Prosecution Service '...
Wait, I thought you said this was slightly different. Sounds like the same class of problems as that of a small school, from the point of view of the $2.1 trillion spending, 15 aircraft carrier battlegroup wielding, moon-landing, shuttle-launching, eh, it's only $500 billion for this war, that savings & loan bailout, that geezer drug benefit cha-CHING-ing nation.
It was transparently obvious years ago that this step would be made eventually, and that oil running out would be a chimera. Nobody listened because it's much more fun to disasterbate.
Don't worry, though. You guys can still disasterbate about the new, indefinite ability of humanity to burn fossil fuels.
Worst than that -- he had to reverse engineer the data, since "Mr. Bush Is Keeping Me Down" would not release the original data .
Or is it because the US has well-developed, long-established "heat islands" of large cities, where much of the developing world is doing just that...developing...large cities...even as we speak.
>> I want a picture of me with no face, and see what face it gives me! (c'mon clint eastwood)
>
> My bet is on Nicholas Cage or John Travolta.
My bet is on the red-headed kid who's in love with Meg Griffin.
The non-pixellated version would have to exist somewhere, otherwise it would just re-paste the exact same pixellated part from another copy in cyberspace.
Speaking of which, how would it even tell which "part" to use? The pixellated or non-pixellated one? Statistically, the pixellated one would probably be chosen because it would probably outnumber the non-pixellated one, even if it is available.
Ahh, just go to Youtube and discover the joys of fully clothed Japanese girls kissing...
You have to presume non-exponential growth for you argument to be true. I see no reason to think that Earth wouldn't directly colonize hundreds of worlds, perhaps a lot more, if space travel becomes easy (not necessarily fast, but highly reliable machinery + hibernation/freeing) for relatively cheap = medium-sized organizations could afford it.
Give each world a few thousand years to "power up" the population (and tech will just continue to advance, remember, and be shared by radio messages, if slowly), then they'll send off more colonies.
In other words, your idea seems like it'd be the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, only 1 civilization (or daughter colony of a linear-expanding one, for that matter) need violate the rule in order to clog the universe with people, or the equivalent.
Dennis Miller Ratios for various Slashdot topics:
..."
- Quantum Computing
"Apparently the method is polynomial in time, but exponential in energy
to which Charles Stross replies "Ah, so that's what the short duration GRBs are!"
Slashdot reader: Who is Charles Stross?
- Women
"She wears an over the shoulder boulder holder..."
Slashdot reader: "She?"
Now that's something Slashdot readers need a hell of a lot more education in.
"Audience level" of various Slashdot articles:
- Traveling Salesman: Assume knows what P=?NP means, exponential complexity algorithms
- Badonkadonk: Assume reader doesn't even know yet women don't have weiners.
People get confused enough with the current system.
Charge more for unhealthy?
Why not give refunds for those who are healthy. It is the same thing, but a much more positive and effective incentive. Didn't anyone read "How to win friends and influence people"?
Telling people, "You're bad. BAD!" doesn't exactly make people want to be on your side.
WOW! I can't believe God did this just to give us something to talk about for 30 seconds!
For He is Lord,
He is Lord,
He is Lorrrrrrd!
> Sounds innocuous enough... until they they shine "the evil color" at you and you start puking!
Really, now. Was this their first priority? Shouldn't they first have worked on the light pattern that sends women into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy?
> 1. Use a combination of surgical examination, dissection of dead tissue, and MRI
> and other dynamic techniques to produce a model of the physics of a human brain
> 2. Wait until Moore's law puts a computer within your price range that is capable
> of running that model at faster than 1 model second per real second
> 3. Implement it
>
> You now have a machine that is slightly more intelligent than a human.
No you don't. You have a buffoon who wants to watch 30 episodes per second of Big Brother.
And parsimmony would keep the number of large, major limbs small. Heck, most species on Earth that went bipedal started losing their forelimbs when the uses evaporated. T-Rex, various flightless birds, etc. Pretty much just tree climbers retained the forelimbs in conjunction with a (mostly) upright posture.
So don't expect too many intelligent civilizations based on 6 or 8-legged designs, to say nothing of hundred-legged ones. There probably aren't that many large animals with those designs (also presumes intelligence requires something roughly on the size of a human, or at least no less than a small dog or so.)
For intra-solar system travel, perhaps. But for interstellar, the difference in time between an ion and a normal rocket or push-plate vehicle are relatively small, everything else being equal. Jumping up to 90% or 99% the speed of light within a few days won't lop off that much time vs. building up to it over 6 months or a year, so great are the distances, and thus time, to be covered.
It also presumes that no wild civilization ever makes it to interstellar levels of technology before having given up on their wackiness. One look at our society shows this probably would not be the case with us.
There must be plenty of such out there, where what the rest of the galactic society does becomes irrelevant as the crazy civilization breaks free of their own solar system. But at that point, they might very well just get stomped on as a plague, but that's a different issue.
In any case, given how the more virulent religions tend to overwhelm and infuse into the less virulent ones, I'd hate to presume that galactic civilization was some standard of pacificism and freedom. More likely, we'd be introduced to the "true" religion, whatever it is, and, oh, by the way, you have a 75% tax rate on everything to pay for the cumulative legislation of a billion years of a galactic Congress.
> Specifically, the problems with today's networks, says the
> author, is that their content is not available to everyone.
No, they're a huge success. Your problem (you, "the author") is that nobody wants to invite you to be their friend. I wonder why?
The whole point of the Fermi Paradox is that even if civilizations take a ridiculously long time to travel between stars, and between colonization and sending out their own child colonies, the entire universe (not just one galaxy) should still long since be clogged to the gills.
> Not to mention quests you can do in netherstorm to get blues and greens that are PLENTY good enough
Exactly. Top gear only makes a difference "all other things being equal". But other things include:
1. Intelligence of play
2. Quality of play
3. Intelligence of equipment selection
A good player, quick on the draw, will mop up the floor with a buffoon in Tier whatever purple rainbow whatever.
> The players that raid 40+ hours a week, that progress the fastest,
> tend to make up a very low % of the population.
True, and they tend to be made up of, in decreasing popluation size:
1. Teenagers whose parents don't give a rat's ass.
2. Flunking college students.
3. A handful of people who inherited a ton of money or won a lottery.
Strange definition of "progress", though.
Woe be to the stupid company that releases an expansion pack that doesn't have rewards better than the best equipment currently available.
Brazen Brass Killij, anyone?
> This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm,
Sweet!
1. No sperm!
2. Therefore, the mountain god Yahweh doesn't infuse the cell with a soul.
3. Therefore it is not a person.
4. Profit!
We did it! We did it! Humanity finally tricked Yahweh!