But if we're talking about communicating with, observing with a telescope, or sending objects to another solar system, 200ly is about as good as it gets.
So you consider having to wait 20 generations (it's a round trip, remember) to hear the answer to your question, if there is an answer, "communicating with" someone? You believe it's possible to "send an object" 200 light years, when it has taken almost 40 years to send an object around 3 light-HOURS away from earth (Voyager 1 is about 120 AU from us now).
I think there is a problem with the wiring of the human brain; when people see the number "200" somehow this is a familiar number used regularly by people. $200 for groceries. $200 for a hotel. $200 here, and there. The brain obviously skips over the difficult-to-understand light year part and just sticks with good old familiar "200".
I argue that 200 light years is as good to us as 2 million light years. We will never get there. Ever. The rest of your argument consists in believing in magic like project Orion which completely ignores passengers being fried by cosmic radiation at 0.08c even if all the other "minor technical details" could be worked out. And then there is the slight problem of a 2500 year trip when compared to an organism that lives at best 70 or 80-odd years with few exceptions. There are only a few structures humans have ever built that have lasted 2500 years or more, and even then they did not endure unscathed. Entire civilizations have come and gone in that time span. What makes you think a complicated space-craft could be kept running for that amount of time?
Comparing something incredibly huge to something several orders of magnitude bigger might make the first seem small in comparison, yet it's the mathematical equivalent of a straw man argument: the fact remains that 200ly is an impossible distance, not "practically next door". In fact the first man-made radio signals haven't even reached it yet, assuming they were powerful enough to be detected. And those are travelling at the speed of light, not some miniscule fraction of it.
Confirming that engineering has nothing to do with math.
It's actually a basic physics matter. F=ma hasn't changed. When m = several million tonnes of rock, you are going to need a F of a lot of force to start it moving, and another F of a lot of force to stop it moving. This is while completely ignoring the energy required to a) get all your magic propulsion equipment out there in the first place and b) the astronomical distances involved meaning you're going to need to accelerate/decelerate for quite a while if you want to reach earth this millenium. 10 miles an hour just ain't going to cut it.
Maybe you are just desperate to believe in the dream. Hell we can't even move cars reliably with solar power, I think it's wishful thinking to think about moving asteroids with them.
It will stop eventually at a new equilibrium. Of course the coral reefs and many other species will be extinct but hey, mass extinctions happen all the time on this rock.
Yes let's think of an extremely energy intensive task we can do, like moving billions of tonnes of ore billions of km through space, at a time when the Earth will be running out of cheap portable energy. Methinks the money could be better allocated elsewhere along more realistic goals, but it's their money not mine so they can do whatever they want. I'm just wondering if there exists such a thing as a species-wide denial, wondering if resources are running out at such a fast rate that those who have the wealth to control said resources are actually considering plans like this as an act of desperation or not, and wondering how billionaires can forget to count. When we're all dead from starvation/disease due to exceeding our resources in 100 years or so, how can they imagine there will be a huge demand for raw materials?
Can you please provide any links to folks that have claimed that Macs dont' get malware?
PC's get viruses..., the implication that Macs don't. There are plenty more examples although I am sure Apple has never been foolish enough to state outright that Mac's don't get malware the implication is clear often enough. And do your own fucking homework.
If you factor out the super-loyal Toyota Prius buyers, the repurchase rate drops to under 25%
So basically if you don't count the people who are likely to buy another hybrid, then people aren't likely to buy another hybrid. Instead of trying to claim that "the hybrid market is broken" how about admitting that every hybrid sucks except the Prius? And no, I don't own a Prius or even a Toyota.
So the power company says "I know, let's make a bunch of money by using smart meters. That way we can fire all the people we used to send out to go read meters, and we can maximize our profits by having variable billing throughout the day."
"Oh, and let's make sure to contract these meters out to the lowest bidder because after all, people are morons and if they don't realize that we're shafting them by getting them to pay more for their electricity, certainly they will never be smart enough to figure out our meters"
"Oh shit, our meters can be hacked! These guys are CRIMINALS help help government HELP come save us!". That way we don't have to invest in more secure meters, or go back to the old meters. No, we can continue with minimal staff, continue with crappy hackable meters, and stick the cost of our broken business model to the government, the court system, and of course the prison system. Why should we have to share any of these unforseen costs from a business model we forgot to think through properly? Maximum profit is our GOD GIVEN RIGHT.
Can't have been much of an earthquake. Usually there is absolutely no doubt in your mind what is happening when you're in a "real" earthquake, it's pretty clear you're about to die. That's what it felt like in the 7.8 I was in.
Actually I had GEnie exclusively for Air Warrior II, a multi-player game that was years ahead of its time.
However you are entirely correct about the correlation between manners and hourly fees. It's almost completely impossible today to find the level of discussion anywhere on websites on the internet that even approached what was found on "forums" and "round-tables" of the $6/hr services. And the minute multi-player games became "flat monthly fee" instead of by the hour, said games were filled with idiots who would do nothing but spam begging messages to other players asking for free stuff. I guess academics and sociologists will try to explain it otherwise, but it's fairly obvious to us who lived through it and saw it happen.
Some people can afford things that others can't. But in America although having money may not actually be a crime yet, it certainly is very suspicious. And the interesting part is that people don't even stop to analyze this sort of society, where everyone is "free" but citizen I think you are spending too much, how can you afford it? You must be a criminal...
It is schadenfreude. So laugh it up, fuzzball. That is the only thing that make you human.
To be honest I am not proud at all of being human. My dog seems to be a lot happier than I am, and life is much less complicated for her. But on the other hand I can't help what I was born as, but at least I don't go around pretending to be something that I am not. You obviously believe yourself to be standing on morally superior ground, but what would happen if I pointed out that morals don't exist in the first place? They're just an arbitrary set of filters and checks that you think are important but that the universe could care less about. What will any of this have mattered when our sun turns into a red giant? So yeah, I laugh because it pleases me that my suspicions have been confirmed, that it was "too good to be true", and that Macs aren't running the "perfect OS" either. Anything else you read into my comment is a creation of your own consciousness.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't answer that question then your society is not worth saving.
But if we're talking about communicating with, observing with a telescope, or sending objects to another solar system, 200ly is about as good as it gets.
So you consider having to wait 20 generations (it's a round trip, remember) to hear the answer to your question, if there is an answer, "communicating with" someone? You believe it's possible to "send an object" 200 light years, when it has taken almost 40 years to send an object around 3 light-HOURS away from earth (Voyager 1 is about 120 AU from us now).
I think there is a problem with the wiring of the human brain; when people see the number "200" somehow this is a familiar number used regularly by people. $200 for groceries. $200 for a hotel. $200 here, and there. The brain obviously skips over the difficult-to-understand light year part and just sticks with good old familiar "200".
I argue that 200 light years is as good to us as 2 million light years. We will never get there. Ever. The rest of your argument consists in believing in magic like project Orion which completely ignores passengers being fried by cosmic radiation at 0.08c even if all the other "minor technical details" could be worked out. And then there is the slight problem of a 2500 year trip when compared to an organism that lives at best 70 or 80-odd years with few exceptions. There are only a few structures humans have ever built that have lasted 2500 years or more, and even then they did not endure unscathed. Entire civilizations have come and gone in that time span. What makes you think a complicated space-craft could be kept running for that amount of time?
Comparing something incredibly huge to something several orders of magnitude bigger might make the first seem small in comparison, yet it's the mathematical equivalent of a straw man argument: the fact remains that 200ly is an impossible distance, not "practically next door". In fact the first man-made radio signals haven't even reached it yet, assuming they were powerful enough to be detected. And those are travelling at the speed of light, not some miniscule fraction of it.
"Only" 200 light years. Sigh.
It's actually a basic physics matter. F=ma hasn't changed. When m = several million tonnes of rock, you are going to need a F of a lot of force to start it moving, and another F of a lot of force to stop it moving. This is while completely ignoring the energy required to a) get all your magic propulsion equipment out there in the first place and b) the astronomical distances involved meaning you're going to need to accelerate/decelerate for quite a while if you want to reach earth this millenium. 10 miles an hour just ain't going to cut it.
Maybe you are just desperate to believe in the dream. Hell we can't even move cars reliably with solar power, I think it's wishful thinking to think about moving asteroids with them.
You seem to think you have a choice in the matter. But cheer up, everything dies.
Now if only it was strontium clathrates I could go trigger happy with my sieged dread...
It will stop eventually at a new equilibrium. Of course the coral reefs and many other species will be extinct but hey, mass extinctions happen all the time on this rock.
I've no idea how they plan to move an asteroid
You should have stopped right there. Do a little math, why don't you? Ah no, calculus is HARD.
Yes let's think of an extremely energy intensive task we can do, like moving billions of tonnes of ore billions of km through space, at a time when the Earth will be running out of cheap portable energy. Methinks the money could be better allocated elsewhere along more realistic goals, but it's their money not mine so they can do whatever they want. I'm just wondering if there exists such a thing as a species-wide denial, wondering if resources are running out at such a fast rate that those who have the wealth to control said resources are actually considering plans like this as an act of desperation or not, and wondering how billionaires can forget to count. When we're all dead from starvation/disease due to exceeding our resources in 100 years or so, how can they imagine there will be a huge demand for raw materials?
It needs not to be someting criminal
Yet. Until the government makes it criminal.
Can you please provide any links to folks that have claimed that Macs dont' get malware?
PC's get viruses..., the implication that Macs don't. There are plenty more examples although I am sure Apple has never been foolish enough to state outright that Mac's don't get malware the implication is clear often enough. And do your own fucking homework.
You really shouldn't speak about yourself in that way. Such a lack of self-esteem.
If you factor out the super-loyal Toyota Prius buyers, the repurchase rate drops to under 25%
So basically if you don't count the people who are likely to buy another hybrid, then people aren't likely to buy another hybrid. Instead of trying to claim that "the hybrid market is broken" how about admitting that every hybrid sucks except the Prius? And no, I don't own a Prius or even a Toyota.
"Oh, and let's make sure to contract these meters out to the lowest bidder because after all, people are morons and if they don't realize that we're shafting them by getting them to pay more for their electricity, certainly they will never be smart enough to figure out our meters"
"Oh shit, our meters can be hacked! These guys are CRIMINALS help help government HELP come save us!". That way we don't have to invest in more secure meters, or go back to the old meters. No, we can continue with minimal staff, continue with crappy hackable meters, and stick the cost of our broken business model to the government, the court system, and of course the prison system. Why should we have to share any of these unforseen costs from a business model we forgot to think through properly? Maximum profit is our GOD GIVEN RIGHT.
To be fair, he said they are compliment.
Yep, it's like their jealous of your freedom and will change your way of life if you let them, or something.
Not to mention your apostrophe.
Can't have been much of an earthquake. Usually there is absolutely no doubt in your mind what is happening when you're in a "real" earthquake, it's pretty clear you're about to die. That's what it felt like in the 7.8 I was in.
Nope. Rich grand-daddy. However considering that it's much easier to lose a fortune than make one, I still think I deserve some credit.
Actually I had GEnie exclusively for Air Warrior II, a multi-player game that was years ahead of its time.
However you are entirely correct about the correlation between manners and hourly fees. It's almost completely impossible today to find the level of discussion anywhere on websites on the internet that even approached what was found on "forums" and "round-tables" of the $6/hr services. And the minute multi-player games became "flat monthly fee" instead of by the hour, said games were filled with idiots who would do nothing but spam begging messages to other players asking for free stuff. I guess academics and sociologists will try to explain it otherwise, but it's fairly obvious to us who lived through it and saw it happen.
Some people can afford things that others can't. But in America although having money may not actually be a crime yet, it certainly is very suspicious. And the interesting part is that people don't even stop to analyze this sort of society, where everyone is "free" but citizen I think you are spending too much, how can you afford it? You must be a criminal...
$200? I was a gamer, playing MegaWars III and IoK, and regularly ran $1000/month bills. But boy did we have fun.
That is all. Now get off my damned lawn.
It is schadenfreude. So laugh it up, fuzzball. That is the only thing that make you human.
To be honest I am not proud at all of being human. My dog seems to be a lot happier than I am, and life is much less complicated for her. But on the other hand I can't help what I was born as, but at least I don't go around pretending to be something that I am not. You obviously believe yourself to be standing on morally superior ground, but what would happen if I pointed out that morals don't exist in the first place? They're just an arbitrary set of filters and checks that you think are important but that the universe could care less about. What will any of this have mattered when our sun turns into a red giant? So yeah, I laugh because it pleases me that my suspicions have been confirmed, that it was "too good to be true", and that Macs aren't running the "perfect OS" either. Anything else you read into my comment is a creation of your own consciousness.