So if the paradox holds, we are alone because even using clumsy slow ships, life should have clogged not just the galaxy but the universe by now.
Ergo we are the first, or close to it in a coincidence.
But...maybe it happened and we are in a simulation. An ethically questionable one to be sure, but maybe a simulation. In which case we would additionally have no reason to think our physics in any way resembles "the real world".
So...either there is no life out there, or there is, but "out there" is outside this simulation.
In neither case is there intelligent life out in (what appears to be) the cosmos.
Reminds me of a local murder case decades ago, where a teen had been murdered in a store robbery where he worked, having given a speech in class earlier that week about how to talk one's way out of being murdered in a robbery.
The payload, about as tall as a single-story apartment
This is a strange description. What does "apartment" add to it, aside from it being used to flower the descriptions of 3-story things, of which normal homes are usually not.
You also benefitted immensly from the oil companies, powering the industrial might, and therefore wealth of the West, with a hundred years of technological amd medical wonders.
Balancing this is exactly what elected officials are supposed to do.
Or is The Power of The Vote, the justification to any number of intrusive laws, something only believed in when the instrusion is in accordance with your own desires?
"You've been pwned! (Mealey-mouthed words about nebulous undergrounds with your email and hash or something something com-pleet something somrthing trading)"
So...was it an ancient MMO I played for 2 months a decade ago, or is it a major email provider for my master account?
To use the sentiments of the currenlaw enforcement of the US, at the highest levels: "It's public info. Why shouldn't we be able to use it?"
Why shouldn't they be able to use public info to build an automated panopticon to track definitively where everyone is at all times?
Answer: Because that is a dictator's wet dream. Tracking phone "metadata" without a warrant would trivially allowed The Tyrant King George to round up all the founding fathers.
Facial recognition live tracking, license plate live tracking, all feeding into the computerized panopticon tracker, well, China and Russia are well on their way to "Imagine a boot stepping on a human face...forever."
US constitutional design orients around not building these things to begin with, and certainly not using them without a warrant.
The 4th Amendment forbids the king from filching through your papers not because "you have nothing to hide", but rather most people, especially the powerful challengers to power, might very well have broken a law here or there.
Government does not get to seek out those violations because you are a politically uppity citizen.
We've had two disgusting displays by the past two presidents. Trump and his jail Hillary stuff, and Obama, who, when S&P downgraded the US' credit rating in response to $1.4 trillion a year borrowing, ordered the SEC to look into them, amd announced it publically. And they found some dirt and prosecuted...this politically uppity private group who dared.
God help the waiter who, when wandering by, absentmindedly wonders if Linux would be destroyed by hacker assaults the way Windows was, were it to become similarly popular and thus the focus of attacker attention, giving the lie to the slashdot denizen belief that it is inherently much more secure, when it just hasn't been pounded on round the clock by a thousand motivated hackers in corrupt countries.
Or maybe it’s time to stop being racist and actually bring proper jobs housing food and sanitation to African countries if you want their raw materials.
It's the corruption and dictatorship that keeps people poor. Japan has few resources but is economically free with rule of law to protect investments from robbers and corruption, so people can respond to needs.
In places like this, you need kickback permission to do anything, and if you manage that, have to give a cut to the kleptocrats. Or it's a failed state and you just close up shop because of armed looting robbery. The kleptocrats may keep your competitors out of business, which is the opposite of a free market.
It's difficult and dangerous and low reward to start an enterprise there.
It has nothing to do with quality of government marshalling of a desirable resource. No resources needed to lift a society out of dirt-floor poverty.
The price gouging via government surcharge there is to line the pockets of the kleptocrats, either via direct corruption or indirect (bribes) or most likely both. This is why dictatorships form.
The free market, stuffed by this government-controlled monopoly, is looking for "substitutes" in the economic sense, which is why the price of commodities drops decade after decade sans "intervention", which screws this process up.
This has a granularity of years though, to bring prices back down, if not a decade or more. But it is reliable as sin.
If the entire Slashdot community can agree on *anything*, it should be that a shortage of meat and beer is indeed a crisis worthy of drastic government intervention.
How much you wanna bet it is the fault of government via over-regulation?
Greedy capitalists can keep commodities supplied, if not oversupplied.
There are myriad things that, once someone notes it, are "obvious". In retrospect. It takes some work to be the first.
The one-click purchase patent is a good example. Many found it obvious...after the fact. Before then, programmers had a dozen confirmations before a purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
So if the paradox holds, we are alone because even using clumsy slow ships, life should have clogged not just the galaxy but the universe by now.
Ergo we are the first, or close to it in a coincidence.
But...maybe it happened and we are in a simulation. An ethically questionable one to be sure, but maybe a simulation. In which case we would additionally have no reason to think our physics in any way resembles "the real world".
So...either there is no life out there, or there is, but "out there" is outside this simulation.
In neither case is there intelligent life out in (what appears to be) the cosmos.
One need only find evidence of another civilization to prove 2.
Reminds me of a local murder case decades ago, where a teen had been murdered in a store robbery where he worked, having given a speech in class earlier that week about how to talk one's way out of being murdered in a robbery.
The payload, about as tall as a single-story apartment
This is a strange description. What does "apartment" add to it, aside from it being used to flower the descriptions of 3-story things, of which normal homes are usually not.
"My wife wears a fine cloth coat!"
"My wifi character wears a fine brown outfit!"
And an explosion of human life was the result.
You also benefitted immensly from the oil companies, powering the industrial might, and therefore wealth of the West, with a hundred years of technological amd medical wonders.
Balancing this is exactly what elected officials are supposed to do.
Or is The Power of The Vote, the justification to any number of intrusive laws, something only believed in when the instrusion is in accordance with your own desires?
Thread is about a massive dictatorship with 1.4 billion under their thumb, and the guy in power is consolidsting power, and censoring.
And you wanna wrench it around to beat up on the US. What's it like being a programmed leaf node in the growth of a large memeplex?
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a dictatorship. Chavez holding up a Chomsky book doesn't make it anything else.
He jailed opposition. He shut down opposition news papers. He got the power to rule by decree (the dictate part of dictstorship).
"You've been pwned! (Mealey-mouthed words about nebulous undergrounds with your email and hash or something something com-pleet something somrthing trading)"
So...was it an ancient MMO I played for 2 months a decade ago, or is it a major email provider for my master account?
Dunni just sign up for password1.
To use the sentiments of the currenlaw enforcement of the US, at the highest levels: "It's public info. Why shouldn't we be able to use it?"
Why shouldn't they be able to use public info to build an automated panopticon to track definitively where everyone is at all times?
Answer: Because that is a dictator's wet dream. Tracking phone "metadata" without a warrant would trivially allowed The Tyrant King George to round up all the founding fathers.
Facial recognition live tracking, license plate live tracking, all feeding into the computerized panopticon tracker, well, China and Russia are well on their way to "Imagine a boot stepping on a human face...forever."
US constitutional design orients around not building these things to begin with, and certainly not using them without a warrant.
The 4th Amendment forbids the king from filching through your papers not because "you have nothing to hide", but rather most people, especially the powerful challengers to power, might very well have broken a law here or there.
Government does not get to seek out those violations because you are a politically uppity citizen.
We've had two disgusting displays by the past two presidents. Trump and his jail Hillary stuff, and Obama, who, when S&P downgraded the US' credit rating in response to $1.4 trillion a year borrowing, ordered the SEC to look into them, amd announced it publically. And they found some dirt and prosecuted...this politically uppity private group who dared.
China to Google: Give us access to your stuff or gtfo.
Google: Ram it home! Lemme lube that up for you first, sir!
God help the waiter who, when wandering by, absentmindedly wonders if Linux would be destroyed by hacker assaults the way Windows was, were it to become similarly popular and thus the focus of attacker attention, giving the lie to the slashdot denizen belief that it is inherently much more secure, when it just hasn't been pounded on round the clock by a thousand motivated hackers in corrupt countries.
Quick, someone test the asinine modern druids who claim religious rights over it, to see if they know the theorem.
Test the politicians who roll over and let it happen too.
That's not so much a robot as an assembly line.
Or maybe it’s time to stop being racist and actually bring proper jobs housing food and sanitation to African countries if you want their raw materials.
It's the corruption and dictatorship that keeps people poor. Japan has few resources but is economically free with rule of law to protect investments from robbers and corruption, so people can respond to needs.
In places like this, you need kickback permission to do anything, and if you manage that, have to give a cut to the kleptocrats. Or it's a failed state and you just close up shop because of armed looting robbery. The kleptocrats may keep your competitors out of business, which is the opposite of a free market.
It's difficult and dangerous and low reward to start an enterprise there.
It has nothing to do with quality of government marshalling of a desirable resource. No resources needed to lift a society out of dirt-floor poverty.
The price gouging via government surcharge there is to line the pockets of the kleptocrats, either via direct corruption or indirect (bribes) or most likely both. This is why dictatorships form.
The free market, stuffed by this government-controlled monopoly, is looking for "substitutes" in the economic sense, which is why the price of commodities drops decade after decade sans "intervention", which screws this process up.
This has a granularity of years though, to bring prices back down, if not a decade or more. But it is reliable as sin.
If the entire Slashdot community can agree on *anything*, it should be that a shortage of meat and beer is indeed a crisis worthy of drastic government intervention.
How much you wanna bet it is the fault of government via over-regulation?
Greedy capitalists can keep commodities supplied, if not oversupplied.
"I am not fucking!" Drax the Slashdotter shouted angrily.
...news at eleven.
Seriously, how is this a surprise to anyone?
There are myriad things that, once someone notes it, are "obvious". In retrospect. It takes some work to be the first.
The one-click purchase patent is a good example. Many found it obvious...after the fact. Before then, programmers had a dozen confirmations before a purchase.
To the perverted everything has to be perverted.
Headline: "Pervert Proves His Own Point"
See also:
1. Dendelions growing up, flowering, and seeding in less than a week to squeeze between weekly mowings.
2. Trump voting masses appearing smaller than they are because of fears of talking about it in social media or even polite company.
The week Taser went public, suddenly there were news articles about how tasers could kill.
Somebody was up to something. Always follow the money.
while a loved one could be called a "doy," "pet," "dou-dou," "bubele," "alanna" or "babber."
Sorry, socially inept slashdotters. swn be your babber.
Do not put your mouth on that "straw" in the blindfold test in the store room.