Have you ever seen the movie "Cube"? - Humanity in a nutshell.
To me it seems like the only way is to create society incentivizing learning and compassion and give everybody opportunity to learn, not just skills, but to learn to be a conscience human being responsible for his/her own actions, curious, active, assertive, non violent in pursuing its goals, knowing and understanding the history and last but not least participating in the democratic process - we should be OK then. Ignorance and corruption are very serious diseases for any society.
Also psychology should be part of the basic curriculum, people should know how inherently biased and vulnerable to manipulation we all are. If we knew ourselves better, we would be less prone to exploitation and more understanding to others.
There are no perfect solutions in imperfect world.
Despite some limitations slashdot voting system is OK in most of the cases. Even in hotly debated topics I see rarely some revenge or 'troll' marking due to just not being in favor of a certain point of view, though it does happen. It's a forum to discuss and to get an idea of what people think, not an oracle after all.
I heard once about a test of trucks:
On a nice sunny summer day they loaded few trucks in the morning with the same weight of sand, after which the trucks had to perform certain performance tests - one truck was outstanding.
It turned out, that the test was sponsored by the winning truck manufacturer, all the trucks were loaded with wet sand and weighted immediately, however the winning truck was the last to be tested way in the afternoon of the very hot day.
I heard lots of good things about coffee from many sources. It seems to be even helpful for some brain degeneration diseases, so I am not saying it cannot be true, just asking what was the control group drinking: water, vegetable smoothie or sodas? Or, in general, what were the control parameters of this study (ethnicity is not enough)?
Indeed JWST is terribly over budget and just a mistake of cleaning thrusters with improper detergent resulted in their damage and $600mln repair costs (close to the whole New Horizons mission). The project is terribly mismanaged, however it does not mean that JWST itself is not worth building. In this case Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems became too comfortable with costs+profits contracting model, which still dominates government projects.
I think this mismanagement should not be taken lightly and the contractor should be held liable for the mistakes, and the future contracts should be based on paying for achieved milestones, however the scientific value of JWST is too important to just cancel it - just my personal opinion.
I hope that answering the profound question of whether we are alone would be one of the scientific goals for humankind in the XXI century - we have technology to pursue the answer and JWST is one key element.
Solar system with regard to (potentially) habitable environments:
Venus:
it is speculated that there are proper conditions in the upper atmosphere, which contains water vapor and where temperatures are right, spots of UV absorption are detected, yet not explained
Earth:
abundance of life, the earliest fossils indicate that life started as soon as there were proper conditions, some even speculate that there might be intelligent life;-)
Mars:
had proper conditions in the past, is smaller so it cooled faster (if any life, then likely much sooner then on Earth), had water and denser atmosphere, now there are complex organic molecules (recently detected by Curiosity) and seasonal changes of methane, which is a clue, however can also be explained by some geological processes
Ceres:
organics and "... may have a remnant internal ocean of liquid water under the layer of ice..." wiki
Jupiter:
Europa - vast subsurface H2O ocean with detected plumes, Ganymede - subsurface H2O ocean (additionally own magnetic field), Callisto - small subsurface H2O ocean (likely)
Saturn:
Enceladus - subsurface H2O ocean, detected plumes, very likely conditions similar to Earth ocean vents (which are hypothesized to be the cradle for life), Titan - surface methane lakes with rain and thick atmosphere, hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean with enough organics to "cook" something
Pluto:
hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean
All the above we know, because we send some probes there, we have never sent any probe capable of directly detecting life only organics (except Vikings) and mostly organics were detected (Vikings detected life - however the results were inconclusive, aka there is other explanation for the data). There are still places like Triton, which is geologically active and is expected to be very similar to Pluto.
Vast number of exoplanet in habitable zones, which we now have technology to remotely sense (not money or commitment however).
For comparison:
New Horizons: $700 million for research development and over 10 years mission crew, on time under budget, threatened multiple times with cancellation
B-2 bomber: $737 million per bomber, project cost: $44.75 billion
Star Wars the Last Jedi: $200–250 million budget, $1.333 billion revenue
It's not good news, however considering potential science return it's still worth. This telescope will have capability of taking spectras from exoplanets - potentially finding signatures for habitability or even life.
With regard to the cost, treading into unknown is inherent to any discovery, thus the costs are hard to predict, "we do it not because it's easy, but because it's hard". In my opinion unlimited fund is not OK, however little bit over the current cost is acceptable (even though so much over-budged) - nobody questions today the heritage of Hubble, or New Horizons, or Cassini, or Curiosity.
It isn't that bad with the recognition (I think).
Linus is quite well known, and to be fair he was not alone, he wrote the kernel, but at the time there was quite a lot GNU software to go along and make Linux OS.
Let's not be too harsh on the media, good for Musk a landing booster and Tesla Roadster cruising through the void are better suited for TV then Linux source code or rows and rows of computer racks.
Do you own a vehicle? Do you fly in an airplane? Do you eat food that you did not personally grow? Do you use any medical equipment? If so - you're part of the problem...
Yes, I am, but I am not denying the problem exists and I am trying to solve it.
Again, as I mentioned in my original post there are benefits of industrialization, however there is a difference between knowing a problem and doing nothing, and knowing the problem and trying to solve it. We are fortunately at the stage of development that we can do a lot, "green" energy became at least equal in costs to fossil based energy production (not even counting for health costs). Green energy is more decentralized by it's nature, which additionally makes it more resilient to any potential enemies attacks - a bonus.
Please keep in mind that it was not a trial, but a decision whether to have a trial or to dismiss it. Quantifying anything is a job for lawyers during a trial if there was any.
I am not a side at this case, so I am not obliged to prove anything, also I am free (guaranteed by constitution) to express my opinion that there is enough evidence to start a trial. I repeat not to convict - but to start a trial. There is evidence of companies knowing about environmental impact and there is evidence of them actively lobbying against any actions.
There is no need to be so offensive about the issue, we all have only one planet and there is no plan B, I think a dialog and open-mindedness is the best way to move forward.
How do you quantify the damages to you personally...
Health costs due to carcinogens in the air and my taxes being spent on more devastating weather events, also slowly more apparent increased costs of food production.
... for this 'misinformation campaign'?
As long as opinions are based on believes instead of facts it is hard to discuss anything.
The case is not reported adequately. The problem here is not that big oil companies have influenced climate (indeed, humanity benefited from the energy and plastics) - the problem is that they have known about their impact on climate for a while now and still kept spending resources to actively deny it and undermine research about it - similar to what happened with tobacco companies and health effects of smoking tobaccos. This fact, in my opinion, has enough merit for a trial.
He does have a certain point of view, however he always makes fun of himself as well and whatever he discusses it's always in a comedy style, which is much better way (making people laugh) then the other side extremes.
He does raise awareness to important neglected issues, like e.g. taking full guardianship of somebody's life without their consent, without any evidence of them needing it, without proper medical diagnosis and finally without any training or license required.
It's not about that, it's about the fact that there is no sufficient protection of critical US telecom infrastructure from foreign espionage.
Do you mean spying in a "read-only" sense, or potential sabotage?
The article suggest ability to take control of the satellites. With the control of the satellites quite a lot can happen - from manipulating of the transmitted data, through bricking it, to even trashing it and the orbit it is in (satellites have some fuel for maneuvering, usually enough to reach the final orbit after launch and to reach "trash" orbit or de-orbit at the end of life).
I'm sure the USA looks for holes in other countries' infrastructure to use in case of a conflict. Maybe even "add" holes for future use. Who knows.
I am pretty sure the spying game is well on, but regardless of this, having such a deep penetration of critical systems is quite dangerous and would require some reevaluation of protocols, training, security clearances - I do not know how this suppose to work, but apparently it did not.
I support it, one doesn't need a straw to drink.
As much as other sources of plastic contamination are important, plastic straws are part of the problem: http://www.smash.com/harrowing...
If a child's parents are criminals, then removing that child from their custody to ensure her safety is moral and good.
The problem is that in this case also refuges seeking asylum are by default assumed to be criminals.
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Does it mean that "all people are equal, but some are more equal"?
Where I hope that is true, I seriously doubt an Atheist is going to be at peace. If he was right, there is nothing (no peace, just nothing), if he was wrong... Well, let's just say, there will be no peace then either.
This phrase is just to express my admiration for his achievements.
With regard to the "judgement", well, there are quite many versions of what we will be judged upon. One thing is sure, Mr Hawking did not bury his golden coin in the sand.
Agree. Categorizing is OK as long as there is the main box with all emails in a chronological order. Spam filter is perfectly enough and creating any other personal filters is pretty easy to do.
With regarding to news they should be chronological, how on Earth anybody might think otherwise is a total mystery. I had to gave up all the "smart" news aggregators even though they had nice features of selecting my own sources - they simply are the opposite of smart. I kept seeing the same news for weeks, just because they had more "likes".
The very nature of news is to know something you didn't know and not to be comforted by worldview, which some AI algorithm categorized you into. "Local" and "global" tabs are OK, but altering timeline - definitely NO. As long as this AI does not truly understand what articles are about and just categorizes news by tensors in words space - they will be unacceptable editors.
Nope, Henry Ford incorporated in 1903 and made a profit in 1903. Tesla has been around for 15 years and still making no profit.
Surely you know you are lying by telling only half the truth, right? I mean, if you knew he started in 1899 and nearly went bankrupt with a low-quality, over-priced car, and then re-incoroprated in 1903, you also know that he didn't start shipping the Model-T until 1908. Before that he was selling a custom, low-volume, high-end roadster, the model 999. You might have heard, Tesla also started out selling a low-volume, high-end roadster.
Interesting, good to know.
But I will give you this, Musk is a thin-skinned narcissistic ayn-randian asshole, but at least he's not a god damn nazi.
And what make you think so? I heard interviews with him, and he seems quite a humble person, extremely humble comparing to some other CEOs.
If God ever gets copyright rights, I foresee a LOT of prior art patent lawsuits.
Kind of aside from the major topic, hearing about patenting genes and the dinosaurs' fossils being sold on auctions and all the law, which is focused more on accumulating money than expanding knowledge (which for me - the knowledge and people - are the true value of civilization) it came to me, a purely theoretical thought: what if some alien aristocrat bought the whole solar system like 5bln years ago (a gas cloud then). So he comes and claims his property and says, OK I see you're sentient beings, I will not be harsh and I will compromise, lets agree that I own the Earth but the law of the land you created applies (a side note: in the US anything found on your property belongs to the owner and in some states the owner has the right to kill any trespassers without a warning).
So as the old proverb says: beware of what you wish for, because it might come true (my addition) and you might be on the other side.
To me the long scale seems more logical 'ards' as thousands (10^3) and 'lions' as millions (10^6), but unification is more important in this case, and we all know which one will win.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever seen the movie "Cube"? - Humanity in a nutshell.
To me it seems like the only way is to create society incentivizing learning and compassion and give everybody opportunity to learn, not just skills, but to learn to be a conscience human being responsible for his/her own actions, curious, active, assertive, non violent in pursuing its goals, knowing and understanding the history and last but not least participating in the democratic process - we should be OK then. Ignorance and corruption are very serious diseases for any society.
Also psychology should be part of the basic curriculum, people should know how inherently biased and vulnerable to manipulation we all are. If we knew ourselves better, we would be less prone to exploitation and more understanding to others.
There are no perfect solutions in imperfect world.
Despite some limitations slashdot voting system is OK in most of the cases. Even in hotly debated topics I see rarely some revenge or 'troll' marking due to just not being in favor of a certain point of view, though it does happen. It's a forum to discuss and to get an idea of what people think, not an oracle after all.
I heard once about a test of trucks: On a nice sunny summer day they loaded few trucks in the morning with the same weight of sand, after which the trucks had to perform certain performance tests - one truck was outstanding.
It turned out, that the test was sponsored by the winning truck manufacturer, all the trucks were loaded with wet sand and weighted immediately, however the winning truck was the last to be tested way in the afternoon of the very hot day.
I heard lots of good things about coffee from many sources. It seems to be even helpful for some brain degeneration diseases, so I am not saying it cannot be true, just asking what was the control group drinking: water, vegetable smoothie or sodas? Or, in general, what were the control parameters of this study (ethnicity is not enough)?
I just provided some perspective.
Indeed JWST is terribly over budget and just a mistake of cleaning thrusters with improper detergent resulted in their damage and $600mln repair costs (close to the whole New Horizons mission). The project is terribly mismanaged, however it does not mean that JWST itself is not worth building. In this case Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems became too comfortable with costs+profits contracting model, which still dominates government projects.
I think this mismanagement should not be taken lightly and the contractor should be held liable for the mistakes, and the future contracts should be based on paying for achieved milestones, however the scientific value of JWST is too important to just cancel it - just my personal opinion.
I hope that answering the profound question of whether we are alone would be one of the scientific goals for humankind in the XXI century - we have technology to pursue the answer and JWST is one key element.
Indeed, last time I checked it was "mostly harmless", however the latest development might validate changing this description.
Solar system with regard to (potentially) habitable environments:
Venus:it is speculated that there are proper conditions in the upper atmosphere, which contains water vapor and where temperatures are right, spots of UV absorption are detected, yet not explained
Earth:abundance of life, the earliest fossils indicate that life started as soon as there were proper conditions, some even speculate that there might be intelligent life ;-)
Mars:had proper conditions in the past, is smaller so it cooled faster (if any life, then likely much sooner then on Earth), had water and denser atmosphere, now there are complex organic molecules (recently detected by Curiosity) and seasonal changes of methane, which is a clue, however can also be explained by some geological processes
Ceres:organics and "... may have a remnant internal ocean of liquid water under the layer of ice ..." wiki
Jupiter:Europa - vast subsurface H2O ocean with detected plumes, Ganymede - subsurface H2O ocean (additionally own magnetic field), Callisto - small subsurface H2O ocean (likely)
Saturn:Enceladus - subsurface H2O ocean, detected plumes, very likely conditions similar to Earth ocean vents (which are hypothesized to be the cradle for life), Titan - surface methane lakes with rain and thick atmosphere, hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean with enough organics to "cook" something
Pluto:hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean
All the above we know, because we send some probes there, we have never sent any probe capable of directly detecting life only organics (except Vikings) and mostly organics were detected (Vikings detected life - however the results were inconclusive, aka there is other explanation for the data). There are still places like Triton, which is geologically active and is expected to be very similar to Pluto.
Vast number of exoplanet in habitable zones, which we now have technology to remotely sense (not money or commitment however).
For comparison:
It's not good news, however considering potential science return it's still worth. This telescope will have capability of taking spectras from exoplanets - potentially finding signatures for habitability or even life.
With regard to the cost, treading into unknown is inherent to any discovery, thus the costs are hard to predict, "we do it not because it's easy, but because it's hard". In my opinion unlimited fund is not OK, however little bit over the current cost is acceptable (even though so much over-budged) - nobody questions today the heritage of Hubble, or New Horizons, or Cassini, or Curiosity.
It isn't that bad with the recognition (I think).
Linus is quite well known, and to be fair he was not alone, he wrote the kernel, but at the time there was quite a lot GNU software to go along and make Linux OS.
Let's not be too harsh on the media, good for Musk a landing booster and Tesla Roadster cruising through the void are better suited for TV then Linux source code or rows and rows of computer racks.
Do you own a vehicle? Do you fly in an airplane? Do you eat food that you did not personally grow? Do you use any medical equipment? If so - you're part of the problem...
Yes, I am, but I am not denying the problem exists and I am trying to solve it.
Again, as I mentioned in my original post there are benefits of industrialization, however there is a difference between knowing a problem and doing nothing, and knowing the problem and trying to solve it. We are fortunately at the stage of development that we can do a lot, "green" energy became at least equal in costs to fossil based energy production (not even counting for health costs). Green energy is more decentralized by it's nature, which additionally makes it more resilient to any potential enemies attacks - a bonus.
You didn't quantify anything.
Please keep in mind that it was not a trial, but a decision whether to have a trial or to dismiss it. Quantifying anything is a job for lawyers during a trial if there was any.
I am not a side at this case, so I am not obliged to prove anything, also I am free (guaranteed by constitution) to express my opinion that there is enough evidence to start a trial. I repeat not to convict - but to start a trial. There is evidence of companies knowing about environmental impact and there is evidence of them actively lobbying against any actions.
There is no need to be so offensive about the issue, we all have only one planet and there is no plan B, I think a dialog and open-mindedness is the best way to move forward.
How do you quantify the damages to you personally ...
Health costs due to carcinogens in the air and my taxes being spent on more devastating weather events, also slowly more apparent increased costs of food production.
... for this 'misinformation campaign'?
As long as opinions are based on believes instead of facts it is hard to discuss anything.
The case is not reported adequately. The problem here is not that big oil companies have influenced climate (indeed, humanity benefited from the energy and plastics) - the problem is that they have known about their impact on climate for a while now and still kept spending resources to actively deny it and undermine research about it - similar to what happened with tobacco companies and health effects of smoking tobaccos. This fact, in my opinion, has enough merit for a trial.
It is futile though.
He does have a certain point of view, however he always makes fun of himself as well and whatever he discusses it's always in a comedy style, which is much better way (making people laugh) then the other side extremes.
He does raise awareness to important neglected issues, like e.g. taking full guardianship of somebody's life without their consent, without any evidence of them needing it, without proper medical diagnosis and finally without any training or license required.
Do you mean spying in a "read-only" sense, or potential sabotage?
The article suggest ability to take control of the satellites. With the control of the satellites quite a lot can happen - from manipulating of the transmitted data, through bricking it, to even trashing it and the orbit it is in (satellites have some fuel for maneuvering, usually enough to reach the final orbit after launch and to reach "trash" orbit or de-orbit at the end of life).
I'm sure the USA looks for holes in other countries' infrastructure to use in case of a conflict. Maybe even "add" holes for future use. Who knows.
I am pretty sure the spying game is well on, but regardless of this, having such a deep penetration of critical systems is quite dangerous and would require some reevaluation of protocols, training, security clearances - I do not know how this suppose to work, but apparently it did not.
As the article says, they do not know what communication was intercepted and that the foreign actors had access to satellites controls.
If all it's true it's pretty serious defense issue, far beyond "how dare".
Still seems to me an unusually cruel punishment considering the non violent nature of the crime, especially for innocent children.
I support it, one doesn't need a straw to drink.
As much as other sources of plastic contamination are important, plastic straws are part of the problem:
http://www.smash.com/harrowing...
If a child's parents are criminals, then removing that child from their custody to ensure her safety is moral and good.
The problem is that in this case also refuges seeking asylum are by default assumed to be criminals.
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Does it mean that "all people are equal, but some are more equal"?
Where I hope that is true, I seriously doubt an Atheist is going to be at peace. If he was right, there is nothing (no peace, just nothing), if he was wrong... Well, let's just say, there will be no peace then either.
This phrase is just to express my admiration for his achievements.
With regard to the "judgement", well, there are quite many versions of what we will be judged upon. One thing is sure, Mr Hawking did not bury his golden coin in the sand.
Agree. Categorizing is OK as long as there is the main box with all emails in a chronological order. Spam filter is perfectly enough and creating any other personal filters is pretty easy to do.
With regarding to news they should be chronological, how on Earth anybody might think otherwise is a total mystery. I had to gave up all the "smart" news aggregators even though they had nice features of selecting my own sources - they simply are the opposite of smart. I kept seeing the same news for weeks, just because they had more "likes".
The very nature of news is to know something you didn't know and not to be comforted by worldview, which some AI algorithm categorized you into. "Local" and "global" tabs are OK, but altering timeline - definitely NO. As long as this AI does not truly understand what articles are about and just categorizes news by tensors in words space - they will be unacceptable editors.
Rest in peace Mr Hawking.
On one side the propaganda machine is quite alive online, on the other side the provided links do support your claim - pax.
Nope, Henry Ford incorporated in 1903 and made a profit in 1903. Tesla has been around for 15 years and still making no profit.
Surely you know you are lying by telling only half the truth, right? I mean, if you knew he started in 1899 and nearly went bankrupt with a low-quality, over-priced car, and then re-incoroprated in 1903, you also know that he didn't start shipping the Model-T until 1908. Before that he was selling a custom, low-volume, high-end roadster, the model 999. You might have heard, Tesla also started out selling a low-volume, high-end roadster.
Interesting, good to know.
But I will give you this, Musk is a thin-skinned narcissistic ayn-randian asshole, but at least he's not a god damn nazi.
And what make you think so? I heard interviews with him, and he seems quite a humble person, extremely humble comparing to some other CEOs.
If God ever gets copyright rights, I foresee a LOT of prior art patent lawsuits.
Kind of aside from the major topic, hearing about patenting genes and the dinosaurs' fossils being sold on auctions and all the law, which is focused more on accumulating money than expanding knowledge (which for me - the knowledge and people - are the true value of civilization) it came to me, a purely theoretical thought: what if some alien aristocrat bought the whole solar system like 5bln years ago (a gas cloud then). So he comes and claims his property and says, OK I see you're sentient beings, I will not be harsh and I will compromise, lets agree that I own the Earth but the law of the land you created applies (a side note: in the US anything found on your property belongs to the owner and in some states the owner has the right to kill any trespassers without a warning).
So as the old proverb says: beware of what you wish for, because it might come true (my addition) and you might be on the other side.
According to Oxford dictionary, a billion is now a thousand million in both British and real English.
Indeed UK used to have so called 'long scale' but now sticks with short.
More on names of large numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Another link with some historical details: https://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/u...
To me the long scale seems more logical 'ards' as thousands (10^3) and 'lions' as millions (10^6), but unification is more important in this case, and we all know which one will win.