Regarding the army simile, let me take it further; a child must reach out and learn new skills because as you so well put it, later on it no longer has the possibility, even ability to. The child's mind has lost the ability to learn because it was not cultivated.
Is the human race not just a child itself?
The dinosaurs seem to be saying to me "I was around for a hundred million years at the very least, but where am I now?"
So before our race closes it's mind on space and goes the way of the dinosaur, let's see how long we can keep growing.
Maybe if we all just realized that we're doing this for ALL of us; it's the only just reason to do it.
I figure we could convert at least 80% of defense spending, at least that much of its technology. So the spending has to be maintained, but with emphasis on research towards furthering our capabilities in space.
Concurrently, economic growth will occur in many countries, who'll no longer have to rebuild all their infrastructures after being bombed every few decades. It will spur better economic conditions for all.
Survival of our species should be the prime reason for manned space exploration. We MUST spread our seeds far and wide. Keeping all our eggs (literally) in the same basket is asking to follow in the path of dinosaurs.
Without the exhiliration of epiphanies or insights where would we be?
We wouldn't be for long: we'd devolve down to the level of termites.
The human race MUST advance through insights, taken from whatever medium is there to transmit it. It's a basic human freedom.
Manufacturing a drug that seeks to make the mind duller - let's face it: It's an anti-euphoriant; will likely strip us of other forms of euphoria as well. Who wants that?
I'm shocked that governments are even permitting trials like this to take place when they haven't even done real studies on marijuana.
It's a form of fatalism for a society to start believing that it can only survive by suppressing what makes it HUMAN.
> the unverise was created simply for our existence.
I haven't read the research you're referring to (if you have a link, please post it), but it almost sounds like the anthropic principle; ie. the universe is like it is because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_prin ciple
I'd recommend you read Neil Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line.
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.ht ml
Not because it argues against any point you or I have made, but because he's got a really cool section at the end of it where he talks about the start-up parameters for a universe, and the different outcomes depending on the initial ratios chosen. Fascinating stuff.
If you're a hacker, you'll probably really dig the rest of the piece too, if not, simply skip to the end.
>Even if there was life on another planet, I find it very doubtful that they would have communications that we could detect on earth.
I have to agree with you on that: Clouds of inter-stellar gas have been detected that contain massive amounts of organic molecules throughout the galaxy. As Carl Sagan said "The stuff of life seems plentiful in the universe"
But even if the universe is brimming over with lifeforms, maybe we ARE utterly alone in our status as technology-mastering sentient lifeforms...
To get back to your divine creator comment, if we ARE alone like that, then what does it mean? It really DOES boggle my mind...
I mean, if it turns out that we're run-of-the-mill , and we certainly seem to be; ordinary star, ordinary quadrant of space, ordinary galaxy, ordinary distribution of matter, etc...
Then I'd expect that there are lots of other aliens civilizations. No surprise, really.
But if we're all alone in all that vastness, the only thing I can ask is
I think there's a point you're missing here: Lots of other species of life have varying levels of intelligence, but what seems to set US apart is that we have TECHNOLOGY.
All the other life-forms have either evolved physical characteristics to survive change or have gone extinct.
We've done neither. We don't evolve physically it would seem, rather we control our surroundings and environment through our technology.
We can live in the arctic, not because we evolved fur or thick layers of fat, but because we made tools (clothes) that permit us NOT to have to change/evolve in the Darwinian sense.
It's been proven that other animals have language. It stands to reason that if you have a language, you must possess intelligence... If you have something to say and the means to say it and have it understood, then there definitely has to be a framework of intelligence in there.
Would your argument be 'sentience' then? Until we learn the whale, dolphin or ape language to the point of being able to formulate questions dealing with the sense of self or existence, it's impossible to know if those species ever consider their place in the universe, so I reserve judgement on whether or not WE are the only sentient life 'round here until then.
Non of what I've said negates a divine plan, you know... But what use are we if we are completely alone out here?
Is God trying to tell us "Go forth, be fruitful and multiply [throughout the cosmos]" ?
On the other hand, if there is alien intelligence, then the meaning of existence may be something else, which I can't put my finger on right now.;-)
What if we finally detect messages from alien civilizations and all they say are things like
- Enlarge Your Penis - Make $$$$ At Home - A Letter from Npambara Ngamba: My Dear Friend, I am trying to move a large quantity of money out of my country...
OK, but if there is volcanic outgassing, we'd be seeing other trace gasses along with ammonia, I expect. Are those present too?
I'm not absolutely sure about the chemical composition; but should there be increased dust that can be identified as coming from the interior, along with other elements like sulphur? I know sulphur may also be present in the case of life, but there must be some compounds which exclude one or the other possibilities.
If ammonia is alone, then it would confirm the life hypothesis, I expect.
On a side note, if there IS life over there, it may be the biggest news and the greatest gift to mankind ever: It might serve to finally get nations and peoples to realize that provincialization is stupid, and we're all in this together.
Good lord, I've never prayed God and asked him to grant me a wish, but in this case, I do.
If a company like Microsoft loses money because people don't like their product, it's an easy out to be blaming P2P networks again, isn't it?
Software has traditionally ALWAYS been easy to copy.
And we know the movie and recording industry just reported massive profits...
So P2P must not be the reason for the reported losses.
Businesses are typically completely LEGIT, because they CAN'T mess with something like piracy. And home users are usually a smaller market than business.
So why are those numbers falling? And which company, exactly?
Refers to the analogy of getting in bed (doing business) with a behemoth, and seems to be saying MS AND China are both so big, it's hard to tell which one would crush the other.
I just read some sad news on slashdot - Troll Orthogonal was found dead at his computer this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to troll culture. Truly a slashdot icon.
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like a true star-child.
Regarding the army simile, let me take it further; a child must reach out and learn new skills because as you so well put it, later on it no longer has the possibility, even ability to. The child's mind has lost the ability to learn because it was not cultivated.
Is the human race not just a child itself?
The dinosaurs seem to be saying to me "I was around for a hundred million years at the very least, but where am I now?"
So before our race closes it's mind on space and goes the way of the dinosaur, let's see how long we can keep growing.
Maybe if we all just realized that we're doing this for ALL of us; it's the only just reason to do it.
I figure we could convert at least 80% of defense spending, at least that much of its technology. So the spending has to be maintained, but with emphasis on research towards furthering our capabilities in space.
Concurrently, economic growth will occur in many countries, who'll no longer have to rebuild all their infrastructures after being bombed every few decades. It will spur better economic conditions for all.
Survival of our species should be the prime reason for manned space exploration.
We MUST spread our seeds far and wide.
Keeping all our eggs (literally) in the same basket is asking to follow in the path of dinosaurs.
The reason MS doesn't patch security holes is because they can launch DDOS attacks on competitors that refuse to be bought out, like Google...
Without the exhiliration of epiphanies or insights where would we be?
We wouldn't be for long: we'd devolve down to the level of termites.
The human race MUST advance through insights, taken from whatever medium is there to transmit it. It's a basic human freedom.
Manufacturing a drug that seeks to make the mind duller - let's face it: It's an anti-euphoriant; will likely strip us of other forms of euphoria as well. Who wants that?
I'm shocked that governments are even permitting trials like this to take place when they haven't even done real studies on marijuana.
It's a form of fatalism for a society to start believing that it can only survive by suppressing what makes it HUMAN.
> the unverise was created simply for our existence.
I haven't read the research you're referring to (if you have a link, please post it), but it almost sounds like the anthropic principle; ie. the universe is like it is because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_prin ciple
I'd recommend you read Neil Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line.
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.ht ml
Not because it argues against any point you or I have made, but because he's got a really cool section at the end of it where he talks about the start-up parameters for a universe, and the different outcomes depending on the initial ratios chosen. Fascinating stuff.
If you're a hacker, you'll probably really dig the rest of the piece too, if not, simply skip to the end.
And we can trust the Germans.
Surely no one from Germany could be evil. Right?
>Even if there was life on another planet, I find it very doubtful that they would have communications that we could detect on earth.
I have to agree with you on that:
Clouds of inter-stellar gas have been detected that contain massive amounts of organic molecules throughout the galaxy. As Carl Sagan said "The stuff of life seems plentiful in the universe"
But even if the universe is brimming over with lifeforms, maybe we ARE utterly alone in our status as technology-mastering sentient lifeforms...
To get back to your divine creator comment, if we ARE alone like that, then what does it mean? It really DOES boggle my mind...
I mean, if it turns out that we're run-of-the-mill , and we certainly seem to be; ordinary star, ordinary quadrant of space, ordinary galaxy, ordinary distribution of matter, etc...
Then I'd expect that there are lots of other aliens civilizations. No surprise, really.
But if we're all alone in all that vastness, the only thing I can ask is
WHY?
I think there's a point you're missing here:
;-)
Lots of other species of life have varying levels of intelligence, but what seems to set US apart is that we have TECHNOLOGY.
All the other life-forms have either evolved physical characteristics to survive change or have gone extinct.
We've done neither.
We don't evolve physically it would seem, rather we control our surroundings and environment through our technology.
We can live in the arctic, not because we evolved fur or thick layers of fat, but because we made tools (clothes) that permit us NOT to have to change/evolve in the Darwinian sense.
It's been proven that other animals have language. It stands to reason that if you have a language, you must possess intelligence... If you have something to say and the means to say it and have it understood, then there definitely has to be a framework of intelligence in there.
Would your argument be 'sentience' then?
Until we learn the whale, dolphin or ape language to the point of being able to formulate questions dealing with the sense of self or existence, it's impossible to know if those species ever consider their place in the universe, so I reserve judgement on whether or not WE are the only sentient life 'round here until then.
Non of what I've said negates a divine plan, you know... But what use are we if we are completely alone out here?
Is God trying to tell us "Go forth, be fruitful and multiply [throughout the cosmos]" ?
On the other hand, if there is alien intelligence, then the meaning of existence may be something else, which I can't put my finger on right now.
What if we finally detect messages from alien civilizations and all they say are things like
- Enlarge Your Penis
- Make $$$$ At Home
- A Letter from Npambara Ngamba: My Dear Friend, I am trying to move a large quantity of money out of my country...
>Really it is good advice less is *much* better than more.
Of course:
Less is not More, More is More!
- Miss Piggy
>>Of course, if non-THC hemp were widespread in use, then people could grow the THC-variety in the open without notice...
You're right. We can't tolerate that! It could encourage others! Next thing you know, people would be brewing their own beer or making their own wine!
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Volcanism Vol"can*ism, n.
Volcanic power or action; volcanicity.
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Vulcanism Vul"can*ism, n.
Volcanism.
I hope that clears things up.
Quite right, but I think the issue here is -
IS there ANY volcanism on Mars?
OK, but if there is volcanic outgassing, we'd be seeing other trace gasses along with ammonia, I expect. Are those present too?
I'm not absolutely sure about the chemical composition; but should there be increased dust that can be identified as coming from the interior, along with other elements like sulphur? I know sulphur may also be present in the case of life, but there must be some compounds which exclude one or the other possibilities.
If ammonia is alone, then it would confirm the life hypothesis, I expect.
On a side note, if there IS life over there, it may be the biggest news and the greatest gift to mankind ever: It might serve to finally get nations and peoples to realize that provincialization is stupid, and we're all in this together.
Good lord, I've never prayed God and asked him to grant me a wish, but in this case, I do.
Good hypothesis,
But do we have any proof of -current- volcanism on mars?
Granted Olympus Mons is the remains of the biggest volcano EVER, but it's extinct, and there is barely any seismic activity on Mars...
If I had points...
Mostly Microsoft?
If a company like Microsoft loses money because people don't like their product, it's an easy out to be blaming P2P networks again, isn't it?
Software has traditionally ALWAYS been easy to copy.
And we know the movie and recording industry just reported massive profits...
So P2P must not be the reason for the reported losses.
Businesses are typically completely LEGIT, because they CAN'T mess with something like piracy. And home users are usually a smaller market than business.
So why are those numbers falling? And which company, exactly?
No, I heard the following version would be called Kremation, not Kemetery.
Actually, I HAVE adandoned Windows.
I only run it at work, and even there, I'm porting our software away from MFC and other MS lock-ins towards tools like MINGW.
Ultimately, cross-compilers will produce the Windows binaries.
The binaries are tested on machines running Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2K and WinXP.
So to answer your claim of idiocy, AC, yes, we do test on native Win32, but I don't see why that would force ME to run Windows.
Whoa, sorry you got blasted with "dumbass" comments.
What I meant was that I used to use Windows at home and at work for everything.
Now, I run Linux at home and do everything with it but my job requires me to develop software for Windows.
Does it run under Linux?
Nope, this is NOT a troll; the earlier versions of Microsoft Developer Studio didn't run under Linux, at least nut under Wine.
Since I've abandoned Windows, but must still develop software for it, I am really curious to know if this WILL run under Linux/Wine.
Refers to the analogy of getting in bed (doing business) with a behemoth, and seems to be saying MS AND China are both so big, it's hard to tell which one would crush the other.
Because no terrorist will ever be stupid enough to use such a service.
Only we're not too sure who the elephant is here.
I just read some sad news on slashdot - Troll Orthogonal was found dead at his computer this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to troll culture. Truly a slashdot icon.
;-)