Asia will care. They're already competing fiercely, and when the biggie competitor backs out of the game out of sheer stupidity, taking over world scientific hegemony will go even quicker than planned.
There are a lot of things don't like about the US, but in science they really have been the kings for a good while now. The combination of big governement spending (a great big chunk of the world science spending) and free and open publication and debate are largely to thank for it. That unique position also forms one of the major bases for their international military and economic dominance.
Watching ignorant leaders try to throw that advantage away (or thinking they can dictate results yet keep the benefits of real results) leaves me at a loss of whether to laugh or to cry.
You crticize the Bible and the worst that will happen is a Christian will try to refute the criticism
That has not always been the case, and in many communities it still isn't. Thankfully, in our time in most of the "christian" world, yes you can criticise and teach heresy with impunity and not be burned at the stake like in the old days. This only because the churches were (very much against their will) forced out of their positions of political power. The long and violent history of the church clearly shows that the current (though deteriorating) vogue of peace is not intrinsic to christianity itself any more than it is to islam.
I sincerely hope that islam will similarily be brought under control, but that will have to happen from inside the muslim communities. The world outside cannot directly effect any change to islamic culture, and attempts to do so only empower the conservatives hardliners. What chance would the arab world stand in forcing even a very reasonable change on a major church?
The directives are subject to interpretation like everythinge else. And France has quite a bit of clout within the EU system, so I suppose they are not too afraid of sanctions, and rather hope to gather sufficient support for their interpretation, or else for changing the directive.
Who would want to run an iTune on anything other than an iPod anyway, it would be like putting a lawnmower engine in a Ferrari.
Some of us plan to hang on to the music we buy for many years to come. iPod may be your favourite player right now, but already the are a couple of serious contestants, and who knows when a competitor shows up that you just have to have, or when apple is once again taken over by idiots and start selling cappy players, o you move into a different maret segment than they prefer to serve. Do you really want to be unable to play your accumulated collection on anything else than official apple hardware or software?
OK, so: you basically don't bother to read the article, but still take the time to tell those of us who did about your unqualified and irrelevant assumptions. How can we ever repay you?
I take it you believe that radical christians posess these traits? Maybe you out to take a look at something outside that window, as a change from your belly-button.
Zooming all the way out, it seems the entrie southern hmisphere has a greater elevation than the northern one. Doesn't that just mean they've got the center wrong? Not tryng to be a wise-ass, just curious what the explenation is.
Why should they? Their business model so far has been identifying web services that there is a demonstrated demand for, and then doing them better than anyone else. Sometimes internally, sometimes by buying a core and polishing it up to goole standard. There is no reason for them to move into "first mover" territory.
That is best done by startups, and when you look at the alternatives, it is a lot better that they buy the best of the startups rather than just take their idea, do it themselves, and put the small innovators out of business Microsoft-style.
Anybody else who objects is simply echoing the fears which were fed to them by coal lobbyists.
Ooh, ohh, let me try too: "Anybody who disagrees with me is merely posessed by Satan and needs to be burned at the stake, as demonstrated by the fact that they disagree with me!".
Applying natural selection as a template, lets look at what it really is. Natural selection is the phenomena of being removed from the gene pool prior to reproduction. Anything else that happens will allow your genes to carry on, which is how evolution works.
This is a gross simplification. Sure, being killed off before reproducing is a very strong and effective form of evolutionary pressure, but not the only one. Reproductive success is also very important. Not just whether you reproduce at all: In species with sexual reproducion (where genes/traits relatively quickly can spread across through a population without the source being the sole ancestor), simply facilitating slightly more offspring that survive to reproduce will also eventually make a trait rise to prominence. This can be achieved in many ways, the most obvious ones being increased reproduction or superior nurture.
A lot of things seen in nature (and also some seemingly conflicting drives in human behavior) only make sense in the light of sexual selection, survival boosting between related individuals, and other complex and conflicting ways that can help a gene succesfully proliferate.
As opposed to the much greater environmental impact and economic costs associated with mining, processing, transportation, harmful waste products and finite resource base associated with coal, our current favorite source of electricity?
No, just pointing out that using helium only takes away one of the "dirty" aspects.
Yes, it is a good idea for the coolant part. But remember it does nothing for the waste problem, the uranium mining, transport and processing needed to produce the fuel, transport and trade with radioctive fuel and waste materials, the "dirty" building which will sooner or later need to be decommissioned, the finite uranium resources available, the potential misuse for weapons, etc. etc.
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001
on
Alien Rain Over India
·
· Score: 1
But realistically, if we can pollinate other planets with our germs, then it seems more than likely that other planets could eject matter which eventually cross pollinates with us. The question is whether something like that could survive in the harsh radiation of space.
I am sure there are ways for the right spore or something else to survive space conditions for a long time, and I suppose it is theoretically possible that a lttle bit of it could hitch a ride on a rock, surviving the cataclysmmic impact that flung it into space. The ridiculous part here is the idea that this big rock would carry the tons and tons of living stuff, enough to color the rain in a region for months, apparently consisting of little else. How the hell did that thing get up in space?
My biggest gripe with teh panspermia is simpler though: who nees it? What is it for? It has this nasty but always unspoken premise that there is some other place where the environment made it easier for life to start than early earth was. What sort of place would that be? How would you optimise it? I'm not dismissing the possibility, but to me occams razor amkes the whole thing rather unatracctive for furteher study, at least until we know more about primitive biolygy.
It reminds me a bit of the IDers way of thinking: Because we don't understand exactly how that could happen, they throw out the extremely successful and promising but theory we have beacause it is not entirely complete, and in its place we put a more or less arbitrary idea which is fancyful and exhilerarting, but sadly has no evidence to support it, and if you examine it closer doesn't even try to offer any explenations. It mereley moves the whole problem firmly out of reach so we don't have to worry about the details.
OK, so switching from a biblical god to alien life forms does have the advantage of being unencumbered by troublesome antique traditions and moral codes, but it still seems like the same basic machanism at work, and its not very conductive to real insights about the natural world.
IIRC, the pebble bed designs usually use helium as primary coolant, and helium simply doesn't get "dirty". The natural isotopes (He3 an He4) are stable, and the others are both hard to create and have half-lives of under one second.
And what precisely did you find left-leaning about the article? You did read the article, didn't you?
As it turns out, you guessed right that the article was not very balanced, but not he way you thing. The imbalance here stemmed from the way informed criticism of the technology (not of local economic issues) were awarded about one sentence in an great big sales-brochure-like presentation of the proponents' view.
Yes, valid criticisms do exist, and from solid sources too. Google it. Not necessarlily saying they're wnough to tip the scales in the "no-go" direction, but pretending there are none, or that this article was anything close to balanced, is just ridiculous.
And what's "left" about believing in pshychic phenomena, anyway?
If some programmers at Microsoft with too much free time can slip an entire fucking _flight simulator_ into a business product and get it shipped past management, how safe does that make you feel about Microsoft products in general?
First of all: it wasn't an "entire fucking flight simulator", it was a very rudimentary 3d landscape engine with only the most primitive of control schemes. It probably takes two or three screenfulls of code to implement if done efficiently; no much more than the code for a custom button widget, and a total drop in the ocean for Excel's codebase.
Secondly: Yes, when you run any program you do trust the programmer. Did you really expect Microsoft or any oter office-app developer to do all-out code reviews with a "don't trust the primary developer" attitude? That is hideously expensive, and is usually only done for very security/safety-critical code. The presence of benign easter eggs does not change this, or change the level of trust deserved.
technology is going to keep you a live from more than 200-500 years
Even then it will only protect you from natural causes. Frustrated younguns will probably have instigated several waves of "geriatric cleansing" by teh time any significant number of people reach anything like 200.
The first tomb raider was awesome. The controls and fluid movemnts were in a class noone had visited since the original Prince of Persia (and only a few since), and the environments, lighting etc. was very atmospheric for its time. As long as you accepted that the underlying game was basically a series platform/timing puzzles (much like PoP, BTW), it was a damn fine game. And well received in the press.
BTW, although she always had a somewhat unrealistic body, the really huge boobies only came in the follow-ups. In the original they were fairly normally sized, albeit abnormally triangular, and apparently constructed of tempered steel or something.
Anyway, point is, the strongest PKI based lock is pointless on a hollow core door with 1ply and cardboard, or even on vastly stronger doors if it is in a position to have heavy objects rammed at it.
I wouldn't say pointless. Sure, you always need to be aware of what the weak link is, but for less than high-security applications there are still some important differences between a traditional lock and a door you have to bash open, even if the brute force route is available to anyone:
- detection during attack (breaking in is noisy, picking is not) - detection after attack (if the lock is picked shut again, you probably won't know unless you already suspect something and examine closely) - pshychological barrier (bashing in a door will for most people require a little more motivation than fooling or even breaking a lock).
The worst anyone could do is bash the reader but that ain't gonna open the door.
No, but it would be an efficient DOS attack. Of course you could glue the knock-protected door shut or something too, but it's a bit more involved than just trashing a card reader.
Of course you could do the same thing with a contactelss card reader behind the door.
Slashdot Mirror
Will anyone really care? Will anyone notice?
Asia will care. They're already competing fiercely, and when the biggie competitor backs out of the game out of sheer stupidity, taking over world scientific hegemony will go even quicker than planned.
There are a lot of things don't like about the US, but in science they really have been the kings for a good while now. The combination of big governement spending (a great big chunk of the world science spending) and free and open publication and debate are largely to thank for it. That unique position also forms one of the major bases for their international military and economic dominance.
Watching ignorant leaders try to throw that advantage away (or thinking they can dictate results yet keep the benefits of real results) leaves me at a loss of whether to laugh or to cry.
You crticize the Bible and the worst that will happen is a Christian will try to refute the criticism
That has not always been the case, and in many communities it still isn't. Thankfully, in our time in most of the "christian" world, yes you can criticise and teach heresy with impunity and not be burned at the stake like in the old days. This only because the churches were (very much against their will) forced out of their positions of political power. The long and violent history of the church clearly shows that the current (though deteriorating) vogue of peace is not intrinsic to christianity itself any more than it is to islam.
I sincerely hope that islam will similarily be brought under control, but that will have to happen from inside the muslim communities. The world outside cannot directly effect any change to islamic culture, and attempts to do so only empower the conservatives hardliners. What chance would the arab world stand in forcing even a very reasonable change on a major church?
The directives are subject to interpretation like everythinge else. And France has quite a bit of clout within the EU system, so I suppose they are not too afraid of sanctions, and rather hope to gather sufficient support for their interpretation, or else for changing the directive.
Who would want to run an iTune on anything other than an iPod anyway, it would be like putting a lawnmower engine in a Ferrari.
Some of us plan to hang on to the music we buy for many years to come. iPod may be your favourite player right now, but already the are a couple of serious contestants, and who knows when a competitor shows up that you just have to have, or when apple is once again taken over by idiots and start selling cappy players, o you move into a different maret segment than they prefer to serve. Do you really want to be unable to play your accumulated collection on anything else than official apple hardware or software?
OK, so: you basically don't bother to read the article, but still take the time to tell those of us who did about your unqualified and irrelevant assumptions. How can we ever repay you?
Surely not at the poles?
I take it you believe that radical christians posess these traits? Maybe you out to take a look at something outside that window, as a change from your belly-button.
Zooming all the way out, it seems the entrie southern hmisphere has a greater elevation than the northern one. Doesn't that just mean they've got the center wrong? Not tryng to be a wise-ass, just curious what the explenation is.
Can't these guys invent something new?
Why should they? Their business model so far has been identifying web services that there is a demonstrated demand for, and then doing them better than anyone else. Sometimes internally, sometimes by buying a core and polishing it up to goole standard. There is no reason for them to move into "first mover" territory.
That is best done by startups, and when you look at the alternatives, it is a lot better that they buy the best of the startups rather than just take their idea, do it themselves, and put the small innovators out of business Microsoft-style.
Anybody else who objects is simply echoing the fears which were fed to them by coal lobbyists.
Ooh, ohh, let me try too:
"Anybody who disagrees with me is merely posessed by Satan and needs to be burned at the stake, as demonstrated by the fact that they disagree with me!".
Wow, cool!
What ever happened to the theory of root races and our religious traditions? Adam and Eve?
It was selected away beacuse it's totally weak, dude.
Hopefully we'll eventually breed for kids that don't run out into the bloody road without looking.
If you think through the implications once more, I don't really think you hope for that at all. At least I hope you don't.
If you want to evolve
Individuals don't evolve.
Applying natural selection as a template, lets look at what it really is. Natural selection is the phenomena of being removed from the gene pool prior to reproduction. Anything else that happens will allow your genes to carry on, which is how evolution works.
This is a gross simplification. Sure, being killed off before reproducing is a very strong and effective form of evolutionary pressure, but not the only one. Reproductive success is also very important. Not just whether you reproduce at all: In species with sexual reproducion (where genes/traits relatively quickly can spread across through a population without the source being the sole ancestor), simply facilitating slightly more offspring that survive to reproduce will also eventually make a trait rise to prominence. This can be achieved in many ways, the most obvious ones being increased reproduction or superior nurture.
A lot of things seen in nature (and also some seemingly conflicting drives in human behavior) only make sense in the light of sexual selection, survival boosting between related individuals, and other complex and conflicting ways that can help a gene succesfully proliferate.
As opposed to the much greater environmental impact and economic costs associated with mining, processing, transportation, harmful waste products and finite resource base associated with coal, our current favorite source of electricity?
No, just pointing out that using helium only takes away one of the "dirty" aspects.
Buy a few copies of "Peoplware" and leave them on strategic desks.
Yes, it is a good idea for the coolant part. But remember it does nothing for the waste problem, the uranium mining, transport and processing needed to produce the fuel, transport and trade with radioctive fuel and waste materials, the "dirty" building which will sooner or later need to be decommissioned, the finite uranium resources available, the potential misuse for weapons, etc. etc.
But realistically, if we can pollinate other planets with our germs, then it seems more than likely that other planets could eject matter which eventually cross pollinates with us. The question is whether something like that could survive in the harsh radiation of space.
I am sure there are ways for the right spore or something else to survive space conditions for a long time, and I suppose it is theoretically possible that a lttle bit of it could hitch a ride on a rock, surviving the cataclysmmic impact that flung it into space. The ridiculous part here is the idea that this big rock would carry the tons and tons of living stuff, enough to color the rain in a region for months, apparently consisting of little else. How the hell did that thing get up in space?
My biggest gripe with teh panspermia is simpler though: who nees it? What is it for? It has this nasty but always unspoken premise that there is some other place where the environment made it easier for life to start than early earth was. What sort of place would that be? How would you optimise it? I'm not dismissing the possibility, but to me occams razor amkes the whole thing rather unatracctive for furteher study, at least until we know more about primitive biolygy.
It reminds me a bit of the IDers way of thinking: Because we don't understand exactly how that could happen, they throw out the extremely successful and promising but theory we have beacause it is not entirely complete, and in its place we put a more or less arbitrary idea which is fancyful and exhilerarting, but sadly has no evidence to support it, and if you examine it closer doesn't even try to offer any explenations. It mereley moves the whole problem firmly out of reach so we don't have to worry about the details.
OK, so switching from a biblical god to alien life forms does have the advantage of being unencumbered by troublesome antique traditions and moral codes, but it still seems like the same basic machanism at work, and its not very conductive to real insights about the natural world.
IIRC, the pebble bed designs usually use helium as primary coolant, and helium simply doesn't get "dirty". The natural isotopes (He3 an He4) are stable, and the others are both hard to create and have half-lives of under one second.
And what precisely did you find left-leaning about the article? You did read the article, didn't you?
As it turns out, you guessed right that the article was not very balanced, but not he way you thing. The imbalance here stemmed from the way informed criticism of the technology (not of local economic issues) were awarded about one sentence in an great big sales-brochure-like presentation of the proponents' view.
Yes, valid criticisms do exist, and from solid sources too. Google it. Not necessarlily saying they're wnough to tip the scales in the "no-go" direction, but pretending there are none, or that this article was anything close to balanced, is just ridiculous.
And what's "left" about believing in pshychic phenomena, anyway?
If some programmers at Microsoft with too much free time can slip an entire fucking _flight simulator_ into a business product and get it shipped past management, how safe does that make you feel about Microsoft products in general?
First of all: it wasn't an "entire fucking flight simulator", it was a very rudimentary 3d landscape engine with only the most primitive of control schemes. It probably takes two or three screenfulls of code to implement if done efficiently; no much more than the code for a custom button widget, and a total drop in the ocean for Excel's codebase.
Secondly: Yes, when you run any program you do trust the programmer. Did you really expect Microsoft or any oter office-app developer to do all-out code reviews with a "don't trust the primary developer" attitude? That is hideously expensive, and is usually only done for very security/safety-critical code. The presence of benign easter eggs does not change this, or change the level of trust deserved.
technology is going to keep you a live from more than 200-500 years
Even then it will only protect you from natural causes. Frustrated younguns will probably have instigated several waves of "geriatric cleansing" by teh time any significant number of people reach anything like 200.
The first tomb raider was awesome. The controls and fluid movemnts were in a class noone had visited since the original Prince of Persia (and only a few since), and the environments, lighting etc. was very atmospheric for its time. As long as you accepted that the underlying game was basically a series platform/timing puzzles (much like PoP, BTW), it was a damn fine game. And well received in the press.
BTW, although she always had a somewhat unrealistic body, the really huge boobies only came in the follow-ups. In the original they were fairly normally sized, albeit abnormally triangular, and apparently constructed of tempered steel or something.
Anyway, point is, the strongest PKI based lock is pointless on a hollow core door with 1ply and cardboard, or even on vastly stronger doors if it is in a position to have heavy objects rammed at it.
I wouldn't say pointless. Sure, you always need to be aware of what the weak link is, but for less than high-security applications there are still some important differences between a traditional lock and a door you have to bash open, even if the brute force route is available to anyone:
- detection during attack (breaking in is noisy, picking is not)
- detection after attack (if the lock is picked shut again, you probably won't know unless you already suspect something and examine closely)
- pshychological barrier (bashing in a door will for most people require a little more motivation than fooling or even breaking a lock).
The worst anyone could do is bash the reader but that ain't gonna open the door.
No, but it would be an efficient DOS attack. Of course you could glue the knock-protected door shut or something too, but it's a bit more involved than just trashing a card reader.
Of course you could do the same thing with a contactelss card reader behind the door.