Actually they are thinking about it, but a sequel-in-spirit. Something different, but still similar enough in the right ways to work as a sequel. I guess any story-based CRPG with very good writing (thanks to the Chris), a strong sense of mystery, intrigue, and immersion might qualify as a sequel in spirit. Personally, I would like to see the story of the nameless one continued with 10 more direct sequels. But that's just me.
Does anyone remember all the mayhem that resulted when a large number of online participants begged for an Ultima Underword III. Just writing out those three words together gets my heart beating Some games are so unique and powerful that they should represent their own genre.UW2 and PS:T are both such powerful examples of the way a game should be. They are like templates. We need to come up for better names of these templates.
The game that I would like to make would be PS:T meets UW1/UW2 meets BG2 meets NWC:[mm6/mm7/mm8] meets NWN2 meets Arena meets Oblivion meets world of warcraft meets ARX fatalis meets meets Fallout. OR rather, we get all the designers from all these games to work together at the same time to make a new game; One that they have always wanted to make: their dream game. You could even call the newly formed organization: The Dream Studio.
Really? I'd like to call you on that. Go ahead. Show me that fourth 'dimension'. As David Hume so aptly pointed out, you cannot use mathematics to 'show' anything about the external world. And neither the concept of spacetime nor any geometric analogy for the equivalence principle can be demonstrated empirically. And using the English word 'dimension' to describe the concept of time is not just wrong but wrongheaded. Reimman's 4 dimensional math was originally intended for four spatial dimensions.
Einstein's field equations for general relativity do have at least some empirical data to back them up (i.e. the precession of Mercury), but the theories offered to explain the mathematics are little more than leaps of imagination.
Bots like what? Explain to me how a 'bot' can get ahead in my queue any faster than a non-bot. I have never heard of any such thing on Emule. Of course Edonkey had that old edonkeybot or whatever it was called. I used it. It didn't increase my speeds. Of course there are the 0-upload mods, but those won't let you queue-jump. The reason Emule is slow is because Total Upload Bandwidth == Total Download Bandwidth in any network and most people in the network upload at no more than 16Kbps. Bittorrent rewards upload bandwidth with download bandwidth. So it is much faster.
You can get a pretty good video card right now for $300. You don't have to stay bleeding edge to compete with consoles. And most people already have their computer hardware. All they usually need is (maybe) a new video card to play a new game. You can easily get away with waiting 2-3 years between video card purchases. So it's not really so different from consoles in that respect.
It's a mute point anyway. Console games and PC games are different. People usually like one or the other. I happen not to like console games. They are not written for people like me. Also when is a console going to dump the whole idea of relying on 1960s (NTSC/PAL) technology for the all important display screen? I am seriously waiting for it. Just a measly VGA or DVI port. Is that really asking so much? And don't even mention HDTV. If you can afford one of those puppies you can afford a new bleeding edge video card at least once a year without breaking a sweat.
Who cares what it was 'aimed at'. The law is the law. IADNAL but if the lawmakers had wanted to limit the law to such businesses they could have. This law is more far reaching than that. In addition to being a very slippery slope. This must have been an expensive law to purchase. I am guessing that Lexmark and possibly others felt that it was in their interest to make a few well placed charitable donations.
Actually I think they would probably go for the maximum number of times that you could have refilled it. In the case of laser toner this would be limited by the drum to no more than 3-5 times, but in case of ink refill kits I suppose it could be 50 or even 100 times. That could be alot of money. Like the RIAA, Lexmark would probably say that refilling their cartridge is indistinguishable from robbing them at gunpoint.
The score is Gigantic Corporations: 1 Everyone Else: 0
Nice post. Wish I had mod points. The problem is we all know non-techies who are clueless about anything with a dial or button. They will not understand any of this. Nor will they try to until they are actually prevented from doing something they want to do. Once they have already purchased their expensive blue-ray player, it will be too late. This is different from divx. The point is way too subtle and technical for the average person to care about. If most people cared, the DMCA would never have passed.
You might want to check out this article written a few years ago by Steven Den Beste (a former Qualcomm engineer) on some of the differences between GSM and CDMA. GSM is just a form of TDMA. It actually looks like our track record is pretty good. Except for the part about old fashioned GSM dominating the US market now as well. Seems like another case of VHS winning over Betamax. But I think GSM will have to switch to some form of CDMA eventually anyway.
IMO these standards are red herrings anyway. What we need is for cell phones to drop back into the Mhz range again so that they can penetrate building walls. These microwave frequencies are not so good for that. It takes too much power to do it. People don't just use cellphones in their cars anymore.
And 60 Ghz is ridiculous. It will be bouncing off solid objects like a radar gun. You may as well use a modulated laser beam. It will take huge amounts of power to penetrate even the thinnest building walls.
Are you implying that "beautiful people" have good looking children?
No. Although I wouldn't necessarily shy from such an assumption on a statistical basis. We are talking about cloning here. So we are talking about the equivalent of an identical twin of a one particular human judged to have certain characteristics. If you choose a very beautiful person who also happens to have a very high IQ you will end up with an identical twin of such a person. That would be seriously stacking the deck. Although why a person would want to do that is another question. Especially since they would look down on us as the pathetic, inferior, scum that we would be.
And in most cases a super high IQ on someone with supermodel looks would be wasted. They would almost never use it anyway. The power of being beautiful and the instant gratification it can bring could never compete with the satisfying but very delayed gratification that comes from intellectual pursuits. But it would be worth a try anyway. Nothing is as miraculous as a beautiful person who just ignores their beauty and spends all their time learning, studying, and researching. This is rare because it goes strongly against human nature.
Brilliant, well that answers all questions, I guess we can go home now.
Luckily we have a creature called 'god' that does the same. So we can go home anyway. The unknown is so scary. It's like when you're a kid and mommy loses you in a city crowd. It's nice to know that you don't have to face the immensity of the universe and all its mysteries with nothing more than the scientific method. It's just so comforting to 'know' that nothing is really unknown since god knows. So you just have to ask him. Or whatever. But then you would never understand his answer anyway. So just forget all the questions. Just take his orders instead. His real answer to any queries is STFU and obey me or else. I bet he'd love to prove to all the nonbelievers that he's one bad motherfucker, but the truth is he's too much of a pansy to even exist let alone kick a bunch of unbeliever arse.
Both ID and creation gives a theory that does offer the origin of species,
ID/creationism is of no explanatory value to anyone. It is no better than explaining the existence of rain with a rain god or the existence of the sun with a sun god. It may make you feel better (emotions, not facts, are what religions are all about) but it offers no insight whatsoever into the 'mystery'.
Frankly I prefer the more intellectually honest religionists. They are still irrational, but at least they admit it and bask in the virtue of truly blind faith. No doubt one day you will realize that there is no rational basis for the belief in any supernatural entity regardless of how many other irrational people believe in it and that you believe it because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy in various ways. It's still intellectual hedonism (believing in the truth of something merely to make you feel good), but at least it retains some semblance of intellectual dignity.
Archeologiest dig and find rocks and artifacts that SUPPORT creation.
Nothing can 'support' the existence of an impossible being. Your silly magic-fairy-man-deity cannot exist. You have no evidence that it does (and please don't tell me about your 'experience'). In fact it is inherently unprovable per se even by your own definition. When religious folks, especially Christians (some of the most glaringly irrational ones) make even the most feeble attempt at reason or logic it just makes the rest of us laugh. Give it up. Don't worry. We won't burn you at the stake as your ancestors did to us. Only religion can justify such things. You have nothing to fear from us. We may laugh at you though. And wonder why a sense of belonging and being protected by an all-powerful imaginary being (like your daddy) is more important to you then your own rationality.
a level of complexity that could only have been created by a higher being.
For the moment I'll ignore the fact that such a thing is inherently impossible to prove. What do you mean by a 'higher' being? Do you just mean smarter? With more advanced technology or better physical abilities? What's with all the vagueness? If you want to argue that the human race was 'seeded' by extraterrestrials, millions of years more advanced, who saw it as sort of an ant farm project, then just say so. Would that be an acceptable explanation? Or do you (as I suspect) just want to rationalize your belief in a fairy tale magical being who will protect you and give you eternal life?
This is the basis for ID. We determine when something is too complex to occur naturally.
Define 'naturally'. Nothing that actually exists is too complex to occur naturally. In any case the idea of your magic-man with a white beard proves nothing except your own stupidity and desire to belong. Even if that impossible creature's existence could explain away everything you don't understand in the entire universe, you would still have to explain him. And, even with an infinite number of gods creating gods creating gods, there is just no way to do it. SETI is looking for signals that indicate intelligent life, not a supernatural creator-god. Are you trying to say that what you call a 'god' is just some kind of alien life?
The most recent attempts that come to mind for government rule based on athiesm are the Third Reich and the government of China. Not really the kind of governments I'm keen to live under.
Neither are based on atheism. They are just not based on a recognized religion. Not at all the same thing. The blind faith of followers of the third reich could certainly be interpreted as 'religious'. By the way, you forgot the United States. It was not founded on religion either. You know, the whole seperation of church and state thing? Religious ideas are responsible for most of the bloodshed in human history. Atheism is responsible for none of it. Since it's just the lack of a particular type of (irrational) belief, this should not be too surprising.
That arument fails because cancer tends to strike late in life, after you have had kids, who have your cancer prone genes...
It fails because it is similar to a Lamarckian argument. AFAWK evolution just doesn't work that way. You would need to first have a human with some bizarre genetic mutation that protected against cosmic ray cell damage induced cancer. If we had such people we could just send them instead and be done with it. And pay them to reproduce with each other to start a whole spacefaring 'race'. Unfortunately real evolution tends to be slow and kind of random. Beneficial random mutations don't happen very often.
I have found pound animals to be a mixed bag. Some have personalities way better than any purebred I have ever had. Others have problems. It's high risk but high reward. They certainly have the potential to make better pets than any purebred. Inbreeding for physical characteristics has its price.
[Note: I am actually hoping for a low ID contest. I definitely need to get a life and get out of this basement.]
And who jumped all over you every time you arrived home. Every time as if it were the first without losing any enthusiasm. And need I even mention humping your leg (do female dogs do that too)? Not sure about tail chasing though. I can't quite picture that. In any case, you are right. It would truly be great. As far as cat-women, that is a bit more questionable. Especially if she had a long furry tail. Although Nastassia Kinski was pretty hot in that movie. And so was Annah (though Fall-From-Grace had a higher charisma).
Now do you see the possibilities? I would clone my ex-girlfriend in a heartbeat if I had the tech. The only question would be how to get a cheek swab. I wonder if a fresh hair strand would work. Wish I had thought of that back when I was still dating her. Any future girlfriends (that I like enough) will definitely get their cheeks swabbed and their cells frozen...
Also consider that cells of beautiful people could be worth many thousands of dollars. Why bother with your own genetics when you can buy a son/daughter with perfect genetics. Good looking and smart as proven by the adult human. Human cloning would be incredible tech. I hope I will live to see it and that it will not be outlawed.
Anyone who thinks we should just risk the 10%, please volunteer your children (or yourselves) now.
Did you think the government would be drafting people? Obviously we are talking volunteers. What do you care if someone else is willing to die? For some of us, life is just not so great down here on earth. Ten percent? I am guessing hundreds of thousands of other Americans would be willing to accept a 100% chance of death in order to actually be one of the first humans to set foot on another planet. I am guessing that you are very young. Probably a teenager. Life is stretched out before you with all kinds of wonderful possibilities. For us older folks it's not like that.
I say screw the round trip stuff. Choose from a pool of thousands of smart (IQ tests), physically fit (more competitions) candidates and send them on a one way trip with enough new tech to allow them to live for a few years until the radiation kills them or the scrubbers and heaters finally die. Whichever comes first. Their sacrifice will not be in vain. We will learn a tremendous amount about living off planet.
It would be nice if we could have at least some light shielding though. Probably a combination of magnetics and a water shield. The biggest problem I would have would not be death, but having to drink recycled urine. Nasty. Even if it tasted like lemonade. And not being able to take showers. Enough time in a room full of guys who haven't showered for months and I'd be praying for the sweet release of death.
You have obviously never used DAT. It has better sound than most CDs. And is great for portable use since it doesn't skip. But without random access tracks and 40x+ data transfers it is rather impractical for general use. It is not the quality of the tape medium per se that is the problem.
Nice. But the government troops were fighting with muskets and maybe cannons. It was relatively easy to fight them back with muskets. Today the anti-government forces would at best have small arms like rifles with laser sights and maybe some light kevlar body armor for protection. Except for the lasers and body armor, the government has advanced like half a century past that stuff. It's like the current US military fighting against WWII Germans and Japanese. It would be a massacre, not a battle.
How do you fight against stealth bombers that drop giant laser guided (shock and awe) mushroom cloud bombs in the middle of the night. Or fighter jets with missiles and advanced military helicopters with machine guns and missiles, tanks that can do 30-40 mph, cruise missiles, robotic planes (and god knows what else), military uniforms and helmets with real body armor. The list goes on and on. We'd be lucky to have access to grenades. So the only chance would be to win a large portion of the military over to our cause. But considering the kind of flag waving jarheads that usually join the military I think chances of that would be fat/slim. They are like American cops. They will carry out their orders no matter what.
And of course it's not just the US. Any of the well armed first world countries today would be nearly impossible to overthrow by the civilian population. Only other (first world) governments have any chance at all.
Sadly, we're at the point where not even a new American Revolution could take care of the problem. Our military's so advanced that if the general public were to turn out to fight it, the American war machine would be able to keep the American people at bay. So much for the "Right to bear arms".
This is so true. An interesting byproduct of having such an advanced military. How long before half the soldiers will be armor plated robots with rotary machine guns who cannot be killed and can easily be repaired if damaged by small arms fire. Once a military power becomes so powerful. So advanced. So well armed. It becomes a danger to its own people. Regardless of any so called 'checks and balances' within the government. Governments always fall to tyranny. It is only a matter of time.
And who do you think the Corporate Media Machine would get behind? The rest of America would believe that we truly were terrorists. They would be cheering for the US government. We would be considered evil. We would not be regarded as martyrs to a great cause. Just a bunch of criminals who should be executed for treason. Middle America especially would have this belief.
I sincerely believe that the character of the average American has fundamentally changed in the past couple of centuries. We are now some of the most easily led people in the world. Brainwashed to believe almost anything our government or our corporate media tells us: to believe just about anything.
I agree -- but it isn't leading me to stop. Rather I'm getting to the point where I'm going to go and kick some ass.
Say that again when you're in your thirties. In college I used to call into radio talk shows and argue my libertarian views. I also argued my athiest views with fundamentalist Christians. It all seemed so important to me at the time. Philosophy. Truth. The way things should be. Now it makes me yawn just thinking about it. God. Who cares? Theres nothing you can do about it. If someone really does want to start a revolution and actually overthrow the US government I'd be the first in line. And I'd be quite willing to give my life. Would you be willing to die? But no one has come knocking with secretly distributed pamphlets or anything. Unless you resort to violence on a massive scale (like Osama) there is nothing meaningful that one person can do except maybe run for office himself. Another realistic plan might be something like the Free State Project except with guns to defend against the inevitable US military. We'd probably all die. Every last one of us. But it would be worth it. At least for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually they are thinking about it, but a sequel-in-spirit. Something different, but still similar enough in the right ways to work as a sequel. I guess any story-based CRPG with very good writing (thanks to the Chris), a strong sense of mystery, intrigue, and immersion might qualify as a sequel in spirit. Personally, I would like to see the story of the nameless one continued with 10 more direct sequels. But that's just me.
Does anyone remember all the mayhem that resulted when a large number of online participants begged for an Ultima Underword III. Just writing out those three words together gets my heart beating Some games are so unique and powerful that they should represent their own genre.UW2 and PS:T are both such powerful examples of the way a game should be. They are like templates. We need to come up for better names of these templates.
The game that I would like to make would be PS:T meets UW1/UW2 meets BG2 meets NWC:[mm6/mm7/mm8] meets NWN2 meets Arena meets Oblivion meets world of warcraft meets ARX fatalis meets meets Fallout. OR rather, we get all the designers from all these games to work together at the same time to make a new game; One that they have always wanted to make: their dream game. You could even call the newly formed organization: The Dream Studio.
Really? I'd like to call you on that. Go ahead. Show me that fourth 'dimension'. As David Hume so aptly pointed out, you cannot use mathematics to 'show' anything about the external world. And neither the concept of spacetime nor any geometric analogy for the equivalence principle can be demonstrated empirically. And using the English word 'dimension' to describe the concept of time is not just wrong but wrongheaded. Reimman's 4 dimensional math was originally intended for four spatial dimensions.
Einstein's field equations for general relativity do have at least some empirical data to back them up (i.e. the precession of Mercury), but the theories offered to explain the mathematics are little more than leaps of imagination.
Bots like what? Explain to me how a 'bot' can get ahead in my queue any faster than a non-bot. I have never heard of any such thing on Emule. Of course Edonkey had that old edonkeybot or whatever it was called. I used it. It didn't increase my speeds. Of course there are the 0-upload mods, but those won't let you queue-jump. The reason Emule is slow is because Total Upload Bandwidth == Total Download Bandwidth in any network and most people in the network upload at no more than 16Kbps. Bittorrent rewards upload bandwidth with download bandwidth. So it is much faster.
You can get a pretty good video card right now for $300. You don't have to stay bleeding edge to compete with consoles. And most people already have their computer hardware. All they usually need is (maybe) a new video card to play a new game. You can easily get away with waiting 2-3 years between video card purchases. So it's not really so different from consoles in that respect.
It's a mute point anyway. Console games and PC games are different. People usually like one or the other. I happen not to like console games. They are not written for people like me. Also when is a console going to dump the whole idea of relying on 1960s (NTSC/PAL) technology for the all important display screen? I am seriously waiting for it. Just a measly VGA or DVI port. Is that really asking so much? And don't even mention HDTV. If you can afford one of those puppies you can afford a new bleeding edge video card at least once a year without breaking a sweat.
Who cares what it was 'aimed at'. The law is the law. IADNAL but if the lawmakers had wanted to limit the law to such businesses they could have. This law is more far reaching than that. In addition to being a very slippery slope. This must have been an expensive law to purchase. I am guessing that Lexmark and possibly others felt that it was in their interest to make a few well placed charitable donations.
Actually I think they would probably go for the maximum number of times that you could have refilled it. In the case of laser toner this would be limited by the drum to no more than 3-5 times, but in case of ink refill kits I suppose it could be 50 or even 100 times. That could be alot of money. Like the RIAA, Lexmark would probably say that refilling their cartridge is indistinguishable from robbing them at gunpoint.
The score is
Gigantic Corporations: 1
Everyone Else: 0
Nice post. Wish I had mod points. The problem is we all know non-techies who are clueless about anything with a dial or button. They will not understand any of this. Nor will they try to until they are actually prevented from doing something they want to do. Once they have already purchased their expensive blue-ray player, it will be too late. This is different from divx. The point is way too subtle and technical for the average person to care about. If most people cared, the DMCA would never have passed.
You might want to check out this article written a few years ago by Steven Den Beste (a former Qualcomm engineer) on some of the differences between GSM and CDMA. GSM is just a form of TDMA. It actually looks like our track record is pretty good. Except for the part about old fashioned GSM dominating the US market now as well. Seems like another case of VHS winning over Betamax. But I think GSM will have to switch to some form of CDMA eventually anyway.
IMO these standards are red herrings anyway. What we need is for cell phones to drop back into the Mhz range again so that they can penetrate building walls. These microwave frequencies are not so good for that. It takes too much power to do it. People don't just use cellphones in their cars anymore.
And 60 Ghz is ridiculous. It will be bouncing off solid objects like a radar gun. You may as well use a modulated laser beam. It will take huge amounts of power to penetrate even the thinnest building walls.
Are you implying that "beautiful people" have good looking children?
No. Although I wouldn't necessarily shy from such an assumption on a statistical basis. We are talking about cloning here. So we are talking about the equivalent of an identical twin of a one particular human judged to have certain characteristics. If you choose a very beautiful person who also happens to have a very high IQ you will end up with an identical twin of such a person. That would be seriously stacking the deck. Although why a person would want to do that is another question. Especially since they would look down on us as the pathetic, inferior, scum that we would be.
And in most cases a super high IQ on someone with supermodel looks would be wasted. They would almost never use it anyway. The power of being beautiful and the instant gratification it can bring could never compete with the satisfying but very delayed gratification that comes from intellectual pursuits. But it would be worth a try anyway. Nothing is as miraculous as a beautiful person who just ignores their beauty and spends all their time learning, studying, and researching. This is rare because it goes strongly against human nature.
Brilliant, well that answers all questions, I guess we can go home now.
Luckily we have a creature called 'god' that does the same. So we can go home anyway. The unknown is so scary. It's like when you're a kid and mommy loses you in a city crowd. It's nice to know that you don't have to face the immensity of the universe and all its mysteries with nothing more than the scientific method. It's just so comforting to 'know' that nothing is really unknown since god knows. So you just have to ask him. Or whatever. But then you would never understand his answer anyway. So just forget all the questions. Just take his orders instead. His real answer to any queries is STFU and obey me or else. I bet he'd love to prove to all the nonbelievers that he's one bad motherfucker, but the truth is he's too much of a pansy to even exist let alone kick a bunch of unbeliever arse.
Both ID and creation gives a theory that does offer the origin of species,
ID/creationism is of no explanatory value to anyone. It is no better than explaining the existence of rain with a rain god or the existence of the sun with a sun god. It may make you feel better (emotions, not facts, are what religions are all about) but it offers no insight whatsoever into the 'mystery'.
Frankly I prefer the more intellectually honest religionists. They are still irrational, but at least they admit it and bask in the virtue of truly blind faith. No doubt one day you will realize that there is no rational basis for the belief in any supernatural entity regardless of how many other irrational people believe in it and that you believe it because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy in various ways. It's still intellectual hedonism (believing in the truth of something merely to make you feel good), but at least it retains some semblance of intellectual dignity.
Archeologiest dig and find rocks and artifacts that SUPPORT creation.
Nothing can 'support' the existence of an impossible being. Your silly magic-fairy-man-deity cannot exist. You have no evidence that it does (and please don't tell me about your 'experience'). In fact it is inherently unprovable per se even by your own definition. When religious folks, especially Christians (some of the most glaringly irrational ones) make even the most feeble attempt at reason or logic it just makes the rest of us laugh. Give it up. Don't worry. We won't burn you at the stake as your ancestors did to us. Only religion can justify such things. You have nothing to fear from us. We may laugh at you though. And wonder why a sense of belonging and being protected by an all-powerful imaginary being (like your daddy) is more important to you then your own rationality.
a level of complexity that could only have been created by a higher being.
For the moment I'll ignore the fact that such a thing is inherently impossible to prove. What do you mean by a 'higher' being? Do you just mean smarter? With more advanced technology or better physical abilities? What's with all the vagueness? If you want to argue that the human race was 'seeded' by extraterrestrials, millions of years more advanced, who saw it as sort of an ant farm project, then just say so. Would that be an acceptable explanation? Or do you (as I suspect) just want to rationalize your belief in a fairy tale magical being who will protect you and give you eternal life?
This is the basis for ID. We determine when something is too complex to occur naturally.
Define 'naturally'. Nothing that actually exists is too complex to occur naturally. In any case the idea of your magic-man with a white beard proves nothing except your own stupidity and desire to belong. Even if that impossible creature's existence could explain away everything you don't understand in the entire universe, you would still have to explain him. And, even with an infinite number of gods creating gods creating gods, there is just no way to do it. SETI is looking for signals that indicate intelligent life, not a supernatural creator-god. Are you trying to say that what you call a 'god' is just some kind of alien life?
The most recent attempts that come to mind for government rule based on athiesm are the Third Reich and the government of China. Not really the kind of governments I'm keen to live under.
Neither are based on atheism. They are just not based on a recognized religion. Not at all the same thing. The blind faith of followers of the third reich could certainly be interpreted as 'religious'. By the way, you forgot the United States. It was not founded on religion either. You know, the whole seperation of church and state thing? Religious ideas are responsible for most of the bloodshed in human history. Atheism is responsible for none of it. Since it's just the lack of a particular type of (irrational) belief, this should not be too surprising.
That arument fails because cancer tends to strike late in life, after you have had kids, who have your cancer prone genes...
It fails because it is similar to a Lamarckian argument. AFAWK evolution just doesn't work that way. You would need to first have a human with some bizarre genetic mutation that protected against cosmic ray cell damage induced cancer. If we had such people we could just send them instead and be done with it. And pay them to reproduce with each other to start a whole spacefaring 'race'. Unfortunately real evolution tends to be slow and kind of random. Beneficial random mutations don't happen very often.
I have found pound animals to be a mixed bag. Some have personalities way better than any purebred I have ever had. Others have problems. It's high risk but high reward. They certainly have the potential to make better pets than any purebred. Inbreeding for physical characteristics has its price.
[Note: I am actually hoping for a low ID contest. I definitely need to get a life and get out of this basement.]
And who jumped all over you every time you arrived home. Every time as if it were the first without losing any enthusiasm. And need I even mention humping your leg (do female dogs do that too)? Not sure about tail chasing though. I can't quite picture that. In any case, you are right. It would truly be great. As far as cat-women, that is a bit more questionable. Especially if she had a long furry tail. Although Nastassia Kinski was pretty hot in that movie. And so was Annah (though Fall-From-Grace had a higher charisma).
Unless the person was a good-looking female.
Now do you see the possibilities? I would clone my ex-girlfriend in a heartbeat if I had the tech. The only question would be how to get a cheek swab. I wonder if a fresh hair strand would work. Wish I had thought of that back when I was still dating her. Any future girlfriends (that I like enough) will definitely get their cheeks swabbed and their cells frozen...
Also consider that cells of beautiful people could be worth many thousands of dollars. Why bother with your own genetics when you can buy a son/daughter with perfect genetics. Good looking and smart as proven by the adult human. Human cloning would be incredible tech. I hope I will live to see it and that it will not be outlawed.
Anyone who thinks we should just risk the 10%, please volunteer your children (or yourselves) now.
Did you think the government would be drafting people? Obviously we are talking volunteers. What do you care if someone else is willing to die? For some of us, life is just not so great down here on earth. Ten percent? I am guessing hundreds of thousands of other Americans would be willing to accept a 100% chance of death in order to actually be one of the first humans to set foot on another planet. I am guessing that you are very young. Probably a teenager. Life is stretched out before you with all kinds of wonderful possibilities. For us older folks it's not like that.
I say screw the round trip stuff. Choose from a pool of thousands of smart (IQ tests), physically fit (more competitions) candidates and send them on a one way trip with enough new tech to allow them to live for a few years until the radiation kills them or the scrubbers and heaters finally die. Whichever comes first. Their sacrifice will not be in vain. We will learn a tremendous amount about living off planet.
It would be nice if we could have at least some light shielding though. Probably a combination of magnetics and a water shield. The biggest problem I would have would not be death, but having to drink recycled urine. Nasty. Even if it tasted like lemonade. And not being able to take showers. Enough time in a room full of guys who haven't showered for months and I'd be praying for the sweet release of death.
You have obviously never used DAT. It has better sound than most CDs. And is great for portable use since it doesn't skip. But without random access tracks and 40x+ data transfers it is rather impractical for general use. It is not the quality of the tape medium per se that is the problem.
Nice. But the government troops were fighting with muskets and maybe cannons. It was relatively easy to fight them back with muskets. Today the anti-government forces would at best have small arms like rifles with laser sights and maybe some light kevlar body armor for protection. Except for the lasers and body armor, the government has advanced like half a century past that stuff. It's like the current US military fighting against WWII Germans and Japanese. It would be a massacre, not a battle.
How do you fight against stealth bombers that drop giant laser guided (shock and awe) mushroom cloud bombs in the middle of the night. Or fighter jets with missiles and advanced military helicopters with machine guns and missiles, tanks that can do 30-40 mph, cruise missiles, robotic planes (and god knows what else), military uniforms and helmets with real body armor. The list goes on and on. We'd be lucky to have access to grenades. So the only chance would be to win a large portion of the military over to our cause. But considering the kind of flag waving jarheads that usually join the military I think chances of that would be fat/slim. They are like American cops. They will carry out their orders no matter what.
And of course it's not just the US. Any of the well armed first world countries today would be nearly impossible to overthrow by the civilian population. Only other (first world) governments have any chance at all.
Sadly, we're at the point where not even a new American Revolution could take care of the problem. Our military's so advanced that if the general public were to turn out to fight it, the American war machine would be able to keep the American people at bay. So much for the "Right to bear arms".
This is so true. An interesting byproduct of having such an advanced military. How long before half the soldiers will be armor plated robots with rotary machine guns who cannot be killed and can easily be repaired if damaged by small arms fire. Once a military power becomes so powerful. So advanced. So well armed. It becomes a danger to its own people. Regardless of any so called 'checks and balances' within the government. Governments always fall to tyranny. It is only a matter of time.
And who do you think the Corporate Media Machine would get behind? The rest of America would believe that we truly were terrorists. They would be cheering for the US government. We would be considered evil. We would not be regarded as martyrs to a great cause. Just a bunch of criminals who should be executed for treason. Middle America especially would have this belief.
I sincerely believe that the character of the average American has fundamentally changed in the past couple of centuries. We are now some of the most easily led people in the world. Brainwashed to believe almost anything our government or our corporate media tells us: to believe just about anything.
I agree -- but it isn't leading me to stop. Rather I'm getting to the point where I'm going to go and kick some ass.
Say that again when you're in your thirties. In college I used to call into radio talk shows and argue my libertarian views. I also argued my athiest views with fundamentalist Christians. It all seemed so important to me at the time. Philosophy. Truth. The way things should be. Now it makes me yawn just thinking about it. God. Who cares? Theres nothing you can do about it. If someone really does want to start a revolution and actually overthrow the US government I'd be the first in line. And I'd be quite willing to give my life. Would you be willing to die? But no one has come knocking with secretly distributed pamphlets or anything. Unless you resort to violence on a massive scale (like Osama) there is nothing meaningful that one person can do except maybe run for office himself. Another realistic plan might be something like the Free State Project except with guns to defend against the inevitable US military. We'd probably all die. Every last one of us. But it would be worth it. At least for me.
Democracy is so overrated anyway. I think you should just have the Queen decide everything. Think about it. Could you do worse?