...transmitting with unlicensed transmitters in regulated frequency bands is already illegal. In Canada, CRTC uses various methods of ELINT to track down such folks and I'm sure FCC does the same in the States.
Is having every Tom, Dick and Harry transmitting on whatever band they feel like at whatever power they feel like a good idea? Hell no. That's why it is illegal, and if you do so and they catch you, the results are pretty ugly. If it kills someone, I'm not sure you might not get charged with some sort of related Felony.
One other poster said: Just as Open Source is driving copyright owners and licensing contract lawyers nuts, so too is Software Defined Radio. It basically brings all modulation techniques back within easy reach of the average Joe radio listener. No more of this nonsense of saying that demodulating police MDT transmissions is illegal.
What use will demodulating a data signal do? I guess if everything is sent en-clair in ASCII text without a lot of heavy archaic or proprietary protocol overheads, you could get a lot out of old style MDTs. Most modern police mobile computers (palmtops, laptops, etc.) integrate at least rudimentary encryption (some limitations are placed by the public data network used as a VPN in many cases - low BW channels make long keys and multi-transaction authentications a very bad thing...).
I worked on systems for a Canadian federal police agency and they integrated encryption to prevent some geek with a scanner and a PC from harvesting police transactions. It's true the basic crypto probably wouldn't stand up to rigoous long-term attack, but it would at least deter casual busybodies and peeping Toms. Stopping dedicated hackers with time/capability/intent is a much uglier proposition, as we all know.
The legislation going in place now is stupid because it is relatively unenforceable (re decoding encodings/modulations like FM). But, OTOH, it is just one more play in the Gov't playbooks if someone gives them an opportunity by getting caught doing something dumb.
I really hate unenforceable laws - they're a waste of taxpayers money. Kinda like the rules about your dog defecating in your back yard, where the Bylaw officer is not a Peace officer and has no right to enter your property.... unenforceable. And therefore retarded.
But then, if the gov't (especially as it pertains to computers/comms) wasn't bought by lobbyists and run by the techno-clueless (for the most part), the world would be a very different place methinks.
Contrary to the parent poster's rather foolish statements, physical security people who help assess (perform threat/risk assessments) and implement solutions in physical security can be quite sharp and quite technically savvy.
For example, in evaluating a server room for the RCMP, I saw a physical security guy assess things like smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, construction of the ceiling, construction of the floor and walls, construction of the doorjamb and the locks used, etc. And he had to know his stuff as well as knowing what the pertinent standards for good practice (and in the case of government, for government standards for physical security). His prior job involved some assessments of some CSIS facilities (managing construction of same or something like that IIRC).
It is a very different skillset, but it makes total sense to combine expertise in both into one entity if organizational security is a requirement (and when is it not?). Ideally, in such a group, people will be cross-trained and particular experts in network/computer and site/physical/emission security will be retained. In practice, some poor sysadmins may get stuck trying to ensure physical security as well - depends on who is implementing the rationalization.
I recall reading a security text which devoted about twenty pages to encryption, network security, etc. and about 200 pages to other organizational security processes (including audits, risk assessments, emergency response plans, etc). If it costs me $100,000 to hack your network electronically or $5K to payoff a janitor, which do you think the bad guys will target?
That's gut-busting! Should have been wrapped in the tags.
Seriously, what do you do if your mirror falls off the windshield (glue goes)? Does the car explode? No. A proper car can rely on properly aimed side mirrors and the human neck to give a pretty good indication of what is going on on the road. If LCDs or HUDs were so problematic, they wouldn't be in use by the military now.
And I for one would like to banish the darn rear view mirror from its location in my Mustang. I find it actually occasionally blocks my vision somewhat out of the FRONT window. If I could drop in a HUD system (see through) or an LCD in the center of the dash above the radio, that'd be even better without restricting front visibility!
And I'll have to be sure to check my backup cranial-rotation system before I head out next time... want to make sure it is ready in case I need it!:)
I work as a computer consultant dude on large scale projects in public sector, defense, policing, and telco/dotcomm stuff. Pretty darn fun. I have money so I can pretty much do most of what I want now. Seems to me the things I'm a bit short for:
Spending time with friends (but I'd need to be able to "hire" them so they too had the free time and some have families so even then I wouldn't get full time presence)
Travel - lots yet to see and visit and only finite money and more finite time while working
Read - can't keep up with the great books of the past few thousand years... so more time would be nice
Ponder - sit on my ass in a hammock, on a white sandy beach, in 27C, thinking or just plain being - something modern life makes tough as any amount of unalloted time seems like a "waste" - whereas in fact time to ponder would probably lead to wonderful discoveries about the self, friends, the world at large, or just the insides of the eyelids as one fell asleep... but that's the risk of just being...:)
Do something relatively meaningful for others - already do charity organizing/work, just like to do more
And, of course, I'd like to hang out with wonderful women (met lots, many more yet to meet, and more appearing every day!) and carouse.
I started using IRC waaay back. Then gravitated into MUDs, good old Compuserve games, and various NGs and Forums. And I'm a frequent participant on several mailing lists.
That said, I have to say you seem to have a very jaundiced perspective when you say you've yet to meet people who are fit, eat right, talk right, and have charisma about them who play EQ or MUDs.
I have quite a few friends who play EQ or DAoC(even to the point of disappearing for an entire weekend to play). Many of them are highly paid programmers, sales support engineers, application designers, etc. People who work in close-knit real-world teams all the time. Many of them also play ultimate frisbee, softball, soccer, etc. - team sports. And a fair few have webs of social contacts that boggle my mind, and I have so many friends I can't keep up with them all.
Now, I've met some of the people you seem to think all EQers or MUDers represent... there are some. But then I've met plenty of maladjusted or poorly socialized people outside of the game world, so I have no reason to suspect a huge correlation.
Your assumption seems to be that these people are developing on-line friends INSTEAD of off-line ones. My experience has been that off-line friends get sucked into common on-lne activities and that the intersection of the on-line and off-line friend sets is high.
The Internet has allowed me to meet people in Australia, Sweden, UK, Tasmania, NZ, Spain, Germany, etc. A lot of them have offered me a place to stay when travelling. I've purposefully travelled to the US to meet many of my on-line buddies (after knowing them for a few years on-line) and real-world friendships I expect to endure have formed. Some have even blossomed into annual pilgrimages. None of that could have happened before the Internet very easily. And these aren't unhappy, poorly socialized, unfit, or immature folks - quite the contrary.
Then again, this may reflect the character of the populations of the lists I hang out on, the forums I frequent, etc. So maybe it is just a case of needing to expand your horizons?
Good point. Especially when even for cars, one would have to ask: At what RPM is the horsepower obtained? And what's the torque curve look like? And what's the curb weight of the car? etc.
Raw statistics are meaningless without an understanding of the entire context. Further, they actually enter the category of outright misleading.
And for the record, a moderately good car with a great driver is far more impressive than a great car with a useless driver...:)
Evolution is not an intelligent process, nor is it fast. It takes many many generations to have impact. Also, and advantage must significantly (I think it requires about 50% enhancement) enhance the survivability/efficiency of an organism to have much change of being adopted. Many useful mutations (but not _vital_) die out unadopted.
I don't think we'll be "evolving" in any physical or mental sense to deal with asteroids. Maybe socially and technologically. But I think we're further ahead worrying about other problems for now. Asteroids just don't rate, given the other current crises. I'll throw the dice (yes for all of us!) given the recently quoted odds. Meanwhile, I'll spend my money trying to fix the immediate and serious concerns.
Large (unnecessarily so in most cases) pages are the bane of anyone still on dial up, which (since most web designers seem to have forgotten it) is MOST OF THE PEOPLE ON THE NET. Using lightweight pages is a major plus in my eyes.
Nope, yo'uve framed the wrong question. Your way of framing it makes it sound like "spend the money or don't". The true question is "on what do we spend our finite budget?".
Let me draw another analogy:
Your house might be blown up by terrorists or knocked over by an earthquake. Either could be an ELE (in scale) for your family. So how much of your personal budget do you devote to addressing these threats directly?
Or do you do things like buy insurance, invest in an ambulance service which has many other benefits, and do things like send the kids to school, feed your family, buy a car, etc.? And do you get smoke detectors to help protect against fire (a much more common threat)?
It isn't that we couldn't face an ELE from space. it is that we can't solve the problem for a reasonable amount of money and we have other more immediate claims on that money that are more likely to kill small or large numbers of us with a higher probability. Some of them might even kill all of us with a probability higher than 0.00001. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest some of the environmental devastation has about a P of 1.0 of destroying us.
So how do you prioritize? I think this "threat" (which is played up by the media and hollywood and the space science community, all of which have a vested interest) is real, but a diminishingly small one. Environmental destruction is a real, present, and almost gauranteed way to wipe ourselves out. (In fairness, it also has its partisans!).
So it is a question of where to allocate limited resources. I think this is NOT the place.
There are plenty of alternative extinction theories for dinosaurs. And note that not every type of dinosaur died out, otherwise we wouldn't have birds, etc.
I don't have "no interest in space". I just see worrying about (by analogy) whether some madman is going to nukebomb my city when I'm currently being beaten up by a streetgang, injected with tainted needles, and robbed by pickpockets as a real lack of perspective.
I say again: Finite budget, finite time. Pick your fights. I choose to address those that are approachable and more immediate.
Okay, I'll give you that one. Star wars I sort of half support just because it means funneling some money into space (which is probably a good plan for the long term), even if it is for hairbrained purposes.
But you are right, there are far better places (in terms of efficacy) to spend the money than the "missile shield" (when I can drive a suitcase bomb into a city). But the other methods might not be as good of employers for skilled US high tech defense workers... *grin*
OTOH, might not star wars II (the new NMD scheme) help form a basis or at least contribute knowledge to this whole "stop the asteroids" area?
If P(being destroyed this year) = 0.00001, (assuming we believe the figures, since a lot of them are based on guestimates, suppositions and theories), I still feel fairly safe putting off addressing the problem for another century.
Add to this the fact that what would have destroyed a civilization (had there been one!) in the last fewhundred years doesn't necessarily correspond to something that would destroy today's world.
Still, I agree there is some threat. I just don't think we can (reliably) put hard numbers on probability nor can we cost-effectively handle the threat at present. Hence we should just not worry aobut it. Keep it in mind, but don't attack it until technology makes the cost a little more reasonable.
The probability of an asteroid wiping out the human race is miniscule. The probability of an asteroid killing large numbers of people is not.
Without being harsh, because I do see what you're saying, I'd point out the low information content here.
What is "miniscule" in a probabilistic sense? Care to define it? Or give me a reference to a work that does?
Also, what is a "large number of people"?
Without some sort of quantification, and dare I suggest some sort of backup for your thesis that the probability is NOT miniscule, this just comes off as ranting or fearmongering.
If, OTOH, you can show me some serious statistical data, I'm willing to be open minded.
If I lived in Tunguska I'd probably be dead. But if I lived in the Chinese cliff face that collapsed (forget the date) from an Earthquake killing tens or hundreds of thousands, I'd be pretty un-glib too. So does that make the Earthquake a big thing to throw money at?
No wait! There's diseases! Oh... but I'm throwing money at the water contamination issue.... which I took away from the amphibian extinction problem... which previously was filched from monies alloted to starvation.... Etc.
And you are right that we couldn't do a hell of a lot about it.
Sure, and if you have X resources, and Y problems, and your species can be (slowly or quickly) killed off by any of them, the trick is to get 1) a bit of luck and 2) a brain when you allocate your X resources to the Y problems.
Yes, an ELE from space is a risk. It is a low probability, high potential impact risk.
OTOH, aids, a global pandemic, global ecological collapse, shortages of fresh water, energy crises, etc. are all immediate, known dangers with immediate known impacts that are not low probability, they are *happening*.
So, you're the President and Congress with a finite budget. Where do YOU allocate resources?
I concur that there is "some probability" (though I disagree with another reply who suggests the probability is not miniscule... I believe it is and since there is no hard data on these events nor is miniscule a terribly meaningful hard classification, it is utterly pointless to use that classification) that something will occur as a consequence of some random bit of interstellar flotsam or jetsam slamming into the planet.
On the other hand, what consequences? The worst that we are aware of was an ice age that screwed the dinos. (possibly)
And it seems our unevolved ancestors survived. If we can't survive the same (as a species, I don't mean as individuals), then we sure haven't evolved in the right direction.
The second worst I can think of is Tunguska. Did the world stop when that happened? Did even the nation state it occured in collapse? No and No. Would it suck to see Ottawa, Toronto (well maybe not so much), Washington, Chicago, or Paris blown off the map? Yes, yes it would. But would it bring the world to an end? Probably not. Would it kill off mankind? Probably not.
Would there be consequences? Hard to see how extensive. Tunguska didn't cause a war. And anyplace that got smoked by a rock would get a huge rescue effort from the rest of the globe. Not much consolation if you live there, but still helpful in rebuilding and saving those that could be saved around the edges.
Then, step a step further out and say: What can we do to stop it? If something the size of Texas comes for us, I doubt we can shoot it down, or that it would do that much good. If something smaller comes, odds go up. But we are not even accurately tracking all this debris!
And once you pass a certain low-end threshold, it isn't worth addressing - it'll either burn up or the hole it will punch into the planet isn't large enough to (globally) be concerned about.
OTOH, what will it cost us to address rocks the size of Texas? Answer: a big damn checkbook and very damn deep pockets. We're staggering even trying to get a not-so-useful, scaled-back, quickly-probably-obsolescent space station up and that's an effort (of a sort) of the international community!.
OTOH, we've got a war on drugs, a war on terrorism, the refief of Africa, peacekeeping and peacemaking all over the globe, a global aids crisis, the funding of new biotech that could save many many lives, etc.
All of things can make valid claims on our time and effort. Should we spend the money where we're pretty sure it can be immediately beneficial and life saving, or throw it at something we're a long way from being able to handle? We've laboured in ignorance for thousands of years, another hundred probably won't matter a lot. And maybe by then, with other tech advancements, the cost of attacking the problem will drop.
I'm not entirely saying there is no risk. I'm saying the cost of addressing it EFFECTUALLY is very high. That same money can far more beneficially be expended dealing with other terrestrial crises. At some point down the road, the problem will be more cost effective to deal with, and hopefully a few more key crises will have been put to rest on Earth allowing us to focus more of our attention on these external potential problems.
Of course, a rock could drop on me tonight. If so, unless it was the size of Texas, most of the universe would just keep on ticking. And I wouldn't be around to care.
Then again, once you hit karma cap, what's the point in living anymore? *grin*
5. Have some good pilots aboard and plenty of small VTOL ships (some armed)
6. Don't store large amounts of radioactive waste... or you might get a free trip to the far side of the galaxy....
... to reach this point, when we understand our odds were so crappy. Oddly, we managed to live through a lot of these events before, and have survived a few thousands of years of recorded history without a problem.
Something tells me that the people pushing this fear either have an interest in investments in related science or in (gasp) selling newspapers or advertising space!
If we get hit by a big rock, we'll dust ourselves off. If there is an ELE, we'll have a challenge. Maybe the best thing for the human race, all things considered. At least it could give us a unified rallying point....
Everyone will ask about bandwidth, incoming lines, etc. (All the network capacity and capability stuff). Here's something a little more off the beaten track:
What technologies help to support the Google server farm? What kind of automated monitoring and trouble reporting tools are in use? Are they home brew, open-source, or COTS with some customization (scripts, etc)? And if you had to point to one area of network management and say "we could use some improvement or some better tools", what would that area be?
BTW - Google Rocks! I never use anything else anymore!
That overlooks one key point
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Version Fatigue
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· Score: 2
Yes, there are those programmer/designers who feel that they need to create. Creation is something that attracts many of us to programming.
OTOH, why do they reinvent the wheel? Two good reasons: (well, good being a judgement!)
They weren't happy with the old way, nor were the end-users. (Of course, the end-users won't be happy with the new way, nor with the fact things changed even though they hated the old way!)
The task of fixing the mess that was the original UI/process for doing "x" is far larger and more problem-prone than rewriting the thing from scratch.
You can't exactly set this problem solidly on the engineers shoulders. Management, investors, PHBs, and customers have driven things as much as engineering efforts have.
Didn't they already outlaw fast-forward? Oh, now wait, that's only the next generation of PVRs. And possibly DVDs. Oh, and of course, this is just about the time that some larger companies are terminating their investment in VHS.
Someone who has a schmuck about "fair use" and "public domain" and "the Internet" needs to get put in public office and make some *intelligent* law surrounding this stuff to stop this kind of stupid crap once and for permanent.
If I was doing Paris-Dakar, I'd prefer the Hummer (stock) to the Ferrari. The first time the Ferrari hit a stone, it'd have a flat. The first time it hit a 12" drop, it'd smash a strut. The first time it hit 24" of water, it'd die.
Then ask yourself, over the race, which had the higher average speed? I think the Hummer would have a clear victory.
Depends on the race you are trying to run (or task you are trying to perform). If I wanted to take a landmine explosion or to engage a hostile target with fire, I'd consider the Hummer a much better platform. If I wanted to convince hot-but-shallow women to sleep with me, the Hummer might not be a bad choice, but it's noisy and rough riding. The Ferrari would probably be a better choice.
Slashdot Mirror
.... and the next logical question is....
"What is behind DOOR NUMBER TWO?!?!?"
Okay, that was bad, but it needed said.
...transmitting with unlicensed transmitters in regulated frequency bands is already illegal. In Canada, CRTC uses various methods of ELINT to track down such folks and I'm sure FCC does the same in the States.
Is having every Tom, Dick and Harry transmitting on whatever band they feel like at whatever power they feel like a good idea? Hell no. That's why it is illegal, and if you do so and they catch you, the results are pretty ugly. If it kills someone, I'm not sure you might not get charged with some sort of related Felony.
One other poster said:
Just as Open Source is driving copyright owners and licensing contract lawyers nuts, so too is Software Defined Radio. It basically brings all modulation techniques back within easy reach of the average Joe radio listener. No more of this nonsense of saying that demodulating police MDT transmissions is illegal.
What use will demodulating a data signal do? I guess if everything is sent en-clair in ASCII text without a lot of heavy archaic or proprietary protocol overheads, you could get a lot out of old style MDTs. Most modern police mobile computers (palmtops, laptops, etc.) integrate at least rudimentary encryption (some limitations are placed by the public data network used as a VPN in many cases - low BW channels make long keys and multi-transaction authentications a very bad thing...).
I worked on systems for a Canadian federal police agency and they integrated encryption to prevent some geek with a scanner and a PC from harvesting police transactions. It's true the basic crypto probably wouldn't stand up to rigoous long-term attack, but it would at least deter casual busybodies and peeping Toms. Stopping dedicated hackers with time/capability/intent is a much uglier proposition, as we all know.
The legislation going in place now is stupid because it is relatively unenforceable (re decoding encodings/modulations like FM). But, OTOH, it is just one more play in the Gov't playbooks if someone gives them an opportunity by getting caught doing something dumb.
I really hate unenforceable laws - they're a waste of taxpayers money. Kinda like the rules about your dog defecating in your back yard, where the Bylaw officer is not a Peace officer and has no right to enter your property.... unenforceable. And therefore retarded.
But then, if the gov't (especially as it pertains to computers/comms) wasn't bought by lobbyists and run by the techno-clueless (for the most part), the world would be a very different place methinks.
Contrary to the parent poster's rather foolish statements, physical security people who help assess (perform threat/risk assessments) and implement solutions in physical security can be quite sharp and quite technically savvy.
For example, in evaluating a server room for the RCMP, I saw a physical security guy assess things like smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, construction of the ceiling, construction of the floor and walls, construction of the doorjamb and the locks used, etc. And he had to know his stuff as well as knowing what the pertinent standards for good practice (and in the case of government, for government standards for physical security). His prior job involved some assessments of some CSIS facilities (managing construction of same or something like that IIRC).
It is a very different skillset, but it makes total sense to combine expertise in both into one entity if organizational security is a requirement (and when is it not?). Ideally, in such a group, people will be cross-trained and particular experts in network/computer and site/physical/emission security will be retained. In practice, some poor sysadmins may get stuck trying to ensure physical security as well - depends on who is implementing the rationalization.
I recall reading a security text which devoted about twenty pages to encryption, network security, etc. and about 200 pages to other organizational security processes (including audits, risk assessments, emergency response plans, etc). If it costs me $100,000 to hack your network electronically or $5K to payoff a janitor, which do you think the bad guys will target?
That's gut-busting! Should have been wrapped in the tags.
:)
Seriously, what do you do if your mirror falls off the windshield (glue goes)? Does the car explode? No. A proper car can rely on properly aimed side mirrors and the human neck to give a pretty good indication of what is going on on the road. If LCDs or HUDs were so problematic, they wouldn't be in use by the military now.
And I for one would like to banish the darn rear view mirror from its location in my Mustang. I find it actually occasionally blocks my vision somewhat out of the FRONT window. If I could drop in a HUD system (see through) or an LCD in the center of the dash above the radio, that'd be even better without restricting front visibility!
And I'll have to be sure to check my backup cranial-rotation system before I head out next time... want to make sure it is ready in case I need it!
And, of course, I'd like to hang out with wonderful women (met lots, many more yet to meet, and more appearing every day!) and carouse.
I started using IRC waaay back. Then gravitated into MUDs, good old Compuserve games, and various NGs and Forums. And I'm a frequent participant on several mailing lists.
That said, I have to say you seem to have a very jaundiced perspective when you say you've yet to meet people who are fit, eat right, talk right, and have charisma about them who play EQ or MUDs.
I have quite a few friends who play EQ or DAoC(even to the point of disappearing for an entire weekend to play). Many of them are highly paid programmers, sales support engineers, application designers, etc. People who work in close-knit real-world teams all the time. Many of them also play ultimate frisbee, softball, soccer, etc. - team sports. And a fair few have webs of social contacts that boggle my mind, and I have so many friends I can't keep up with them all.
Now, I've met some of the people you seem to think all EQers or MUDers represent... there are some. But then I've met plenty of maladjusted or poorly socialized people outside of the game world, so I have no reason to suspect a huge correlation.
Your assumption seems to be that these people are developing on-line friends INSTEAD of off-line ones. My experience has been that off-line friends get sucked into common on-lne activities and that the intersection of the on-line and off-line friend sets is high.
The Internet has allowed me to meet people in Australia, Sweden, UK, Tasmania, NZ, Spain, Germany, etc. A lot of them have offered me a place to stay when travelling. I've purposefully travelled to the US to meet many of my on-line buddies (after knowing them for a few years on-line) and real-world friendships I expect to endure have formed. Some have even blossomed into annual pilgrimages. None of that could have happened before the Internet very easily. And these aren't unhappy, poorly socialized, unfit, or immature folks - quite the contrary.
Then again, this may reflect the character of the populations of the lists I hang out on, the forums I frequent, etc. So maybe it is just a case of needing to expand your horizons?
Good point. Especially when even for cars, one would have to ask: At what RPM is the horsepower obtained? And what's the torque curve look like? And what's the curb weight of the car? etc.
:)
Raw statistics are meaningless without an understanding of the entire context. Further, they actually enter the category of outright misleading.
And for the record, a moderately good car with a great driver is far more impressive than a great car with a useless driver...
Evolution is not an intelligent process, nor is it fast. It takes many many generations to have impact. Also, and advantage must significantly (I think it requires about 50% enhancement) enhance the survivability/efficiency of an organism to have much change of being adopted. Many useful mutations (but not _vital_) die out unadopted.
I don't think we'll be "evolving" in any physical or mental sense to deal with asteroids. Maybe socially and technologically. But I think we're further ahead worrying about other problems for now. Asteroids just don't rate, given the other current crises. I'll throw the dice (yes for all of us!) given the recently quoted odds. Meanwhile, I'll spend my money trying to fix the immediate and serious concerns.
Large (unnecessarily so in most cases) pages are the bane of anyone still on dial up, which (since most web designers seem to have forgotten it) is MOST OF THE PEOPLE ON THE NET. Using lightweight pages is a major plus in my eyes.
Nope, yo'uve framed the wrong question. Your way of framing it makes it sound like "spend the money or don't". The true question is "on what do we spend our finite budget?".
Let me draw another analogy:
Your house might be blown up by terrorists or knocked over by an earthquake. Either could be an ELE (in scale) for your family. So how much of your personal budget do you devote to addressing these threats directly?
Or do you do things like buy insurance, invest in an ambulance service which has many other benefits, and do things like send the kids to school, feed your family, buy a car, etc.? And do you get smoke detectors to help protect against fire (a much more common threat)?
It isn't that we couldn't face an ELE from space. it is that we can't solve the problem for a reasonable amount of money and we have other more immediate claims on that money that are more likely to kill small or large numbers of us with a higher probability. Some of them might even kill all of us with a probability higher than 0.00001. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest some of the environmental devastation has about a P of 1.0 of destroying us.
So how do you prioritize? I think this "threat" (which is played up by the media and hollywood and the space science community, all of which have a vested interest) is real, but a diminishingly small one. Environmental destruction is a real, present, and almost gauranteed way to wipe ourselves out. (In fairness, it also has its partisans!).
So it is a question of where to allocate limited resources. I think this is NOT the place.
Been done. (See Montgomery Burns and his sun blocker!).
There are plenty of alternative extinction theories for dinosaurs. And note that not every type of dinosaur died out, otherwise we wouldn't have birds, etc.
I don't have "no interest in space". I just see worrying about (by analogy) whether some madman is going to nukebomb my city when I'm currently being beaten up by a streetgang, injected with tainted needles, and robbed by pickpockets as a real lack of perspective.
I say again: Finite budget, finite time. Pick your fights. I choose to address those that are approachable and more immediate.
Okay, I'll give you that one. Star wars I sort of half support just because it means funneling some money into space (which is probably a good plan for the long term), even if it is for hairbrained purposes.
But you are right, there are far better places (in terms of efficacy) to spend the money than the "missile shield" (when I can drive a suitcase bomb into a city). But the other methods might not be as good of employers for skilled US high tech defense workers... *grin*
OTOH, might not star wars II (the new NMD scheme) help form a basis or at least contribute knowledge to this whole "stop the asteroids" area?
If P(being destroyed this year) = 0.00001, (assuming we believe the figures, since a lot of them are based on guestimates, suppositions and theories), I still feel fairly safe putting off addressing the problem for another century.
Add to this the fact that what would have destroyed a civilization (had there been one!) in the last fewhundred years doesn't necessarily correspond to something that would destroy today's world.
Still, I agree there is some threat. I just don't think we can (reliably) put hard numbers on probability nor can we cost-effectively handle the threat at present. Hence we should just not worry aobut it. Keep it in mind, but don't attack it until technology makes the cost a little more reasonable.
The probability of an asteroid wiping out the human race is miniscule. The probability of an asteroid killing large numbers of people is not.
Without being harsh, because I do see what you're saying, I'd point out the low information content here.
What is "miniscule" in a probabilistic sense? Care to define it? Or give me a reference to a work that does?
Also, what is a "large number of people"?
Without some sort of quantification, and dare I suggest some sort of backup for your thesis that the probability is NOT miniscule, this just comes off as ranting or fearmongering.
If, OTOH, you can show me some serious statistical data, I'm willing to be open minded.
If I lived in Tunguska I'd probably be dead. But if I lived in the Chinese cliff face that collapsed (forget the date) from an Earthquake killing tens or hundreds of thousands, I'd be pretty un-glib too. So does that make the Earthquake a big thing to throw money at?
No wait! There's diseases! Oh... but I'm throwing money at the water contamination issue.... which I took away from the amphibian extinction problem... which previously was filched from monies alloted to starvation.... Etc.
And you are right that we couldn't do a hell of a lot about it.
Sure, and if you have X resources, and Y problems, and your species can be (slowly or quickly) killed off by any of them, the trick is to get 1) a bit of luck and 2) a brain when you allocate your X resources to the Y problems.
Yes, an ELE from space is a risk. It is a low probability, high potential impact risk.
OTOH, aids, a global pandemic, global ecological collapse, shortages of fresh water, energy crises, etc. are all immediate, known dangers with immediate known impacts that are not low probability, they are *happening*.
So, you're the President and Congress with a finite budget. Where do YOU allocate resources?
I concur that there is "some probability" (though I disagree with another reply who suggests the probability is not miniscule... I believe it is and since there is no hard data on these events nor is miniscule a terribly meaningful hard classification, it is utterly pointless to use that classification) that something will occur as a consequence of some random bit of interstellar flotsam or jetsam slamming into the planet.
On the other hand, what consequences? The worst that we are aware of was an ice age that screwed the dinos. (possibly)
And it seems our unevolved ancestors survived. If we can't survive the same (as a species, I don't mean as individuals), then we sure haven't evolved in the right direction.
The second worst I can think of is Tunguska. Did the world stop when that happened? Did even the nation state it occured in collapse? No and No. Would it suck to see Ottawa, Toronto (well maybe not so much), Washington, Chicago, or Paris blown off the map? Yes, yes it would. But would it bring the world to an end? Probably not. Would it kill off mankind? Probably not.
Would there be consequences? Hard to see how extensive. Tunguska didn't cause a war. And anyplace that got smoked by a rock would get a huge rescue effort from the rest of the globe. Not much consolation if you live there, but still helpful in rebuilding and saving those that could be saved around the edges.
Then, step a step further out and say: What can we do to stop it? If something the size of Texas comes for us, I doubt we can shoot it down, or that it would do that much good. If something smaller comes, odds go up. But we are not even accurately tracking all this debris!
And once you pass a certain low-end threshold, it isn't worth addressing - it'll either burn up or the hole it will punch into the planet isn't large enough to (globally) be concerned about.
OTOH, what will it cost us to address rocks the size of Texas? Answer: a big damn checkbook and very damn deep pockets. We're staggering even trying to get a not-so-useful, scaled-back, quickly-probably-obsolescent space station up and that's an effort (of a sort) of the international community!.
OTOH, we've got a war on drugs, a war on terrorism, the refief of Africa, peacekeeping and peacemaking all over the globe, a global aids crisis, the funding of new biotech that could save many many lives, etc.
All of things can make valid claims on our time and effort. Should we spend the money where we're pretty sure it can be immediately beneficial and life saving, or throw it at something we're a long way from being able to handle? We've laboured in ignorance for thousands of years, another hundred probably won't matter a lot. And maybe by then, with other tech advancements, the cost of attacking the problem will drop.
I'm not entirely saying there is no risk. I'm saying the cost of addressing it EFFECTUALLY is very high. That same money can far more beneficially be expended dealing with other terrestrial crises. At some point down the road, the problem will be more cost effective to deal with, and hopefully a few more key crises will have been put to rest on Earth allowing us to focus more of our attention on these external potential problems.
Of course, a rock could drop on me tonight. If so, unless it was the size of Texas, most of the universe would just keep on ticking. And I wouldn't be around to care.
Then again, once you hit karma cap, what's the point in living anymore? *grin*
The kids these days....
5. Have some good pilots aboard and plenty of small VTOL ships (some armed)
6. Don't store large amounts of radioactive waste... or you might get a free trip to the far side of the galaxy....
... to reach this point, when we understand our odds were so crappy. Oddly, we managed to live through a lot of these events before, and have survived a few thousands of years of recorded history without a problem.
Something tells me that the people pushing this fear either have an interest in investments in related science or in (gasp) selling newspapers or advertising space!
If we get hit by a big rock, we'll dust ourselves off. If there is an ELE, we'll have a challenge. Maybe the best thing for the human race, all things considered. At least it could give us a unified rallying point....
Everyone will ask about bandwidth, incoming lines, etc. (All the network capacity and capability stuff). Here's something a little more off the beaten track:
What technologies help to support the Google server farm? What kind of automated monitoring and trouble reporting tools are in use? Are they home brew, open-source, or COTS with some customization (scripts, etc)? And if you had to point to one area of network management and say "we could use some improvement or some better tools", what would that area be?
BTW - Google Rocks! I never use anything else anymore!
OTOH, why do they reinvent the wheel? Two good reasons: (well, good being a judgement!)
You can't exactly set this problem solidly on the engineers shoulders. Management, investors, PHBs, and customers have driven things as much as engineering efforts have.
Didn't they already outlaw fast-forward? Oh, now wait, that's only the next generation of PVRs. And possibly DVDs. Oh, and of course, this is just about the time that some larger companies are terminating their investment in VHS.
Someone who has a schmuck about "fair use" and "public domain" and "the Internet" needs to get put in public office and make some *intelligent* law surrounding this stuff to stop this kind of stupid crap once and for permanent.
I guess NPR must not like donations eh?
You have a point. A really good point. I can't argue with that logic.
If I was doing Paris-Dakar, I'd prefer the Hummer (stock) to the Ferrari. The first time the Ferrari hit a stone, it'd have a flat. The first time it hit a 12" drop, it'd smash a strut. The first time it hit 24" of water, it'd die.
Then ask yourself, over the race, which had the higher average speed? I think the Hummer would have a clear victory.
Depends on the race you are trying to run (or task you are trying to perform). If I wanted to take a landmine explosion or to engage a hostile target with fire, I'd consider the Hummer a much better platform. If I wanted to convince hot-but-shallow women to sleep with me, the Hummer might not be a bad choice, but it's noisy and rough riding. The Ferrari would probably be a better choice.
So, what race are you running?