As far as I'm aware (although admittedly I'm only a casual observer) we still haven't found the entire trail from non-life to us. Considering that, at any given point in time, conditions over most of the planet are grossly similar (water, oxygen, sun et al), it seems very likely to me that life did start at several places at once, and that the way to achieve life in similar circumstances is also very likely to be nearly indistinguishable and probably even sufficiently compatible to end up banging each other when they finally evolved sexual reproduction.
I will be very surprised if one day we manage to do a full trace of earthbound life's family tree, and we end up with only one ancestor/place of origin.
> Presumably if storage capacity where unlimited we'd be seeing calls to log the position of every atom in the world!
Well... If you're also going to store the direction of each atom's magnetic field, your unlimited storage capacity isn't going to be sufficient. We need to fund research into off-universe storage.
Meta-evolution, then - it evolves the process of evolving into it's most optimal state, or at least with a strong preference for the rate that can be sustained for the longest time by the most entities.
Probably. And soon after, they'll be launching a 'very special service for our most valued customers', offering 'faster loading times, full functionality even when the network breaks down, and unlimited use time (without support) even after the shelf-life of the product ends so you will never lose access to valueable data again'.
For how many years have 'visionaries' been flip-flopping between thin client and fat client architecture now ?
Yes, but by the time you know to hit the kill switch, the saw will have already taken a good bite out of your hand. Even if this thing has a killswitch, hitting it won't stop the bullets it's already fired at you.
Especially when there's an idiot saying 'that's just a glitch, it'll right itself in a moment'.
Experience working for a major webportal taught me that sales, and more moderately marketing, still consider pageviews to be at least as important as revenue.
Bandwidth is relatively cheap for those who buy it in bulk. Salesdroids get to sell more ads to their clients based on how much imprints the ads are likely to get over a given period.
> And if they don't know what an MP3 is, they won't see (or hear, in that case) the spam at all
Unfortunately, Windows users have had years of conditioning to click on anything that pops up without thinking. I fear this may well extend to anything attached to a mail they receive.
From time to time, when I send a mail to one of my non-geek friends, I get a swift mail back complaining they cant' open the attachment, even though I never actually said anything about having sent them one. The attachment they can't open is the GPG signature, which shows up in most webmails and some crappy mail clients.
> Because some illiterate asstunnel said so a few hundred years ago?
No, because a lot of illiterate asstunnels (wtf ?) are still saying so today.
> If You're going to quote God, quote the Torah, the Bible, The Koran, The Mahabharata, the Tripitaka, or any other holy text.
Ooo, I never encountered a literalist who thinks all of the fairy-tales are true. I suggest you actually read them yourself (or just pick any two), and note the marked differences in them. If they're all god's word, well, let's just say I'm not ready to put my faith in a schizo.
Yes, someone actually reacted to your trolling. Don't expect it to happen again.
My point is that, even if they often fail to accurately envision the means (and the longer before, the more inaccurate), those people still managed to see a time where those things would become possible, even if described in a manner consistent with the technological and other limits of their time.
Also note that Asimov never provided much details about exactly *what* psychohistory was (or, rather, will be) - merely that it was some advanced combination of psychology, history and statistics.
It may not always (or even often) be their explicit intention, but that's not going to stop the more learned writers from making predictions about possible future paths for technology which may turn out to be remarkably accurate. Have a look at Arthur C. Clarke's writings about the spage age in the late first half of the previous century.
> You are, of course, presuming that Asimov was doing more than writing good FICTION.
Around 1865, some silly person thought he was a decent writer, and penned down 'De la terre à la lune'. Crazy, really. They should forbid that kind of thing.
No, nothing quite so dramatic. I just hope that they'll start seeing that broadly-worded laws can be a danger to themselves as well, and go back to more accurately-worded ones. The hope that they'll just leave the lawmaking to those elected to do so is vain:-)
They do learn, though, in the same diffuse way a beehive learns that a once-bountiful field of flowers no longer contains food. Just look at how they learned that accurate, narrow-applied laws were too easily circumvented by technicalities, so they started pushing broadly-worded laws, that their lawyer drones could easily use for a variety of lawsuits.
When they do go back to narrow and sharp laws, though, they'll at some point realise that those can be avoided with technicalities, and once more push for broad laws, which by then they'll have forgotten are useless as well. It's another one of those annoying circle of corporate life things.
Apart from seeming a gratuitous ploy to use the word 'decisecond', I stopped reading the preview as soon as author claims that faster loading times equal reduced bandwidth costs. In my book the page is still as big, and with the very possible exception of a few packet resends the total data transmitted doesn't change when the page is downloaded faster. Or did I miss the announcement where relativity's speed/mass relation now also applies (inversely) to download speed and volume ?
Slashdot Mirror
It eliminates people with a tendency to pass out after a car accident from the gene pool. That's evolution at work for you.
As far as I'm aware (although admittedly I'm only a casual observer) we still haven't found the entire trail from non-life to us. Considering that, at any given point in time, conditions over most of the planet are grossly similar (water, oxygen, sun et al), it seems very likely to me that life did start at several places at once, and that the way to achieve life in similar circumstances is also very likely to be nearly indistinguishable and probably even sufficiently compatible to end up banging each other when they finally evolved sexual reproduction.
I will be very surprised if one day we manage to do a full trace of earthbound life's family tree, and we end up with only one ancestor/place of origin.
The planet-crippling virus Homo Sapiens is also thought to have originated there, btw.
> Presumably if storage capacity where unlimited we'd be seeing calls to log the position of every atom in the world!
Well... If you're also going to store the direction of each atom's magnetic field, your unlimited storage capacity isn't going to be sufficient. We need to fund research into off-universe storage.
> Human beings are sufficiently capable of anthropomorphizing... or empathizing... to treat even obviously non-humanoid things as human.
Yes. Now if only they would learn to treat other humans as human, as well.
Meta-evolution, then - it evolves the process of evolving into it's most optimal state, or at least with a strong preference for the rate that can be sustained for the longest time by the most entities.
Probably. And soon after, they'll be launching a 'very special service for our most valued customers', offering 'faster loading times, full functionality even when the network breaks down, and unlimited use time (without support) even after the shelf-life of the product ends so you will never lose access to valueable data again'.
For how many years have 'visionaries' been flip-flopping between thin client and fat client architecture now ?
You can have it bigger, quieter and lower-power. Pick any two.
Can't $random_unix_vendor patent 'small kernel footprint, other stuff in loadable modules and various chainable tools' and sue ?
Yes, but by the time you know to hit the kill switch, the saw will have already taken a good bite out of your hand. Even if this thing has a killswitch, hitting it won't stop the bullets it's already fired at you.
Especially when there's an idiot saying 'that's just a glitch, it'll right itself in a moment'.
Experience working for a major webportal taught me that sales, and more moderately marketing, still consider pageviews to be at least as important as revenue.
Bandwidth is relatively cheap for those who buy it in bulk. Salesdroids get to sell more ads to their clients based on how much imprints the ads are likely to get over a given period.
> And if they don't know what an MP3 is, they won't see (or hear, in that case) the spam at all
Unfortunately, Windows users have had years of conditioning to click on anything that pops up without thinking. I fear this may well extend to anything attached to a mail they receive.
From time to time, when I send a mail to one of my non-geek friends, I get a swift mail back complaining they cant' open the attachment, even though I never actually said anything about having sent them one. The attachment they can't open is the GPG signature, which shows up in most webmails and some crappy mail clients.
> 150,000 dpi is a lot!
You can't really make a decent comparison without knowing at how much DPI reality runs.
> Because some illiterate asstunnel said so a few hundred years ago?
No, because a lot of illiterate asstunnels (wtf ?) are still saying so today.
> If You're going to quote God, quote the Torah, the Bible, The Koran, The Mahabharata, the Tripitaka, or any other holy text.
Ooo, I never encountered a literalist who thinks all of the fairy-tales are true. I suggest you actually read them yourself (or just pick any two), and note the marked differences in them. If they're all god's word, well, let's just say I'm not ready to put my faith in a schizo.
Yes, someone actually reacted to your trolling. Don't expect it to happen again.
My point is that, even if they often fail to accurately envision the means (and the longer before, the more inaccurate), those people still managed to see a time where those things would become possible, even if described in a manner consistent with the technological and other limits of their time.
Also note that Asimov never provided much details about exactly *what* psychohistory was (or, rather, will be) - merely that it was some advanced combination of psychology, history and statistics.
It may not always (or even often) be their explicit intention, but that's not going to stop the more learned writers from making predictions about possible future paths for technology which may turn out to be remarkably accurate. Have a look at Arthur C. Clarke's writings about the spage age in the late first half of the previous century.
I fully agree - if I ever find one, I'll mail it to ya :-)
> Would be awesome to have some heat/cold sensors to be able to somehow "detect" if something is too hot or cold!
You already have those, they're called 'fingertips'.
> You are, of course, presuming that Asimov was doing more than writing good FICTION.
Around 1865, some silly person thought he was a decent writer, and penned down 'De la terre à la lune'. Crazy, really. They should forbid that kind of thing.
> So what, "that will teach them a lesson"?
:-)
No, nothing quite so dramatic. I just hope that they'll start seeing that broadly-worded laws can be a danger to themselves as well, and go back to more accurately-worded ones. The hope that they'll just leave the lawmaking to those elected to do so is vain
They do learn, though, in the same diffuse way a beehive learns that a once-bountiful field of flowers no longer contains food. Just look at how they learned that accurate, narrow-applied laws were too easily circumvented by technicalities, so they started pushing broadly-worded laws, that their lawyer drones could easily use for a variety of lawsuits.
When they do go back to narrow and sharp laws, though, they'll at some point realise that those can be avoided with technicalities, and once more push for broad laws, which by then they'll have forgotten are useless as well. It's another one of those annoying circle of corporate life things.
So what you're saying is that Al Gore managed to get Ra involved in the fight against global warming ?
> Vista just doesn't get any breaks on this site
No need, really - it comes pre-broken.
> RICO has become overly broad in its application
Well, it's not a bad thing that the Evil Industries learned that too-broad laws can be used against them as much as against us. DMCA, anyone ?
> Granted, there are rather dramatic global state changes that occur with different states of consciousness,
Hmm... Falling asleep on the keyboard might be rather... unflattering from now on.
Clippy as a Revenant ? Dear Gods, NO! I do *not* want to see clippy with a rocketlauncher on each shoulder.
Apart from seeming a gratuitous ploy to use the word 'decisecond', I stopped reading the preview as soon as author claims that faster loading times equal reduced bandwidth costs. In my book the page is still as big, and with the very possible exception of a few packet resends the total data transmitted doesn't change when the page is downloaded faster. Or did I miss the announcement where relativity's speed/mass relation now also applies (inversely) to download speed and volume ?