You are suggesting that "Intelligent life" mean things like us. Even leaving aside the major question of quite how intelligent life actually is (spend an hour or 24 watching "fail" vids on Youtube), that might not be true.
Intelligent life in a radically different environment, might be radially different:
Maybe at 100K it is based on reactions we known nothing about, on a time scale so slow we cannot communicate with it, because they consider two bits per decade data rate to be a speeding offence.
Maybe there is life at a density close to that of intergalactic dust, and its all around us. However, the lifeforms are so huge that we are like stomach bacteria to them?
Maybe you should subscribe to my complete science fiction works on Kindle Direct?
Of course there have been no more terrorist attacks in America - the terrorists are all too busy monitoring other people's telecomms to blow people up.
For some really wierd definitions of efficient, perhaps. Supply and demand ensure there is a market that can be manipulated by anyone with the tools to do so (which includes taxes), and quite possibly others too.
Automation makes the owner of the machine richer. The man with no machine is stuffed. It is not just a law of economics, its the truth!
The government has no inherent natural right to take money from anyone.
We in the UK think you are a moron. The Government is the people, and companies exist on our terms. We are quite willing to let them exist, if they make a fair contribution to society. If they don't, well they have no right to incorporation here.
There is a precedent:
King Charles the first said "I am King, God made me King, and I will do what I want.
The people say "You are King cos we let you be king. We can stop you if you won't behave!
The King replied "I am King, God made me King, and I will do what I want.
So the people put an end to him.
You Americans might want to have a word with Robert Johnson on the subject or cross-roads.
There was no BASIC (Or even FORTRAN) when I was 13, and transistors had not left the lab, so I stuck to wiring up valves (and believe me, debugging BCD counters made with valves at the age of 13 is not to be sneezed at - touching 200V HT lines when you sneeze is painful:-}.
I think it is very likely the same percentage of the population that was writing BASIC when you were 13 is doing strange things with js and CSS today, and probably hacking into the router for fun.
However, its not a very big percentage of the population compared to boys playing FPS and girls into My Little Pony, regardless of politixcal correctness.
Was Pokemon written by girls? Were Hanna and Barbera girls? Is Pooh Bear secretly a transexual? Soemtimes people ask too many damn questions!
In Europe, for about 10 years we have had a series of legal restrictions on what diesle engined can emit, called Euro 1, Euro 2, etc.
From Euro 4, these have been met by running the engine very hot, which creates masses of oxides of Nitrogen, and then neutralising the NOx by squirting ammonia into the exhaust pipe. his works fine in a laboratory environment. Unfortunately, a truck can go from buring 20 ccs of fuel per hour to burning 2 litres a second* in two turns of the crank shaft, and there's not a bat's chance in hell of getting the ammonia to match the NOx during the transition. These engines produce very fine particulates that can go strait through the skin - and enter the blood through the lungs very easily. Real life pollution is very bad. Unfortunately, the option of running the engines cooler and filtering out the lumps of carbon mechanically, was ruled out, because the people selling the Ammonia (pig's piss, sold as "Ad-Blue") paid vast bribes to the European comissioners. MAN Diesel demonstrated an engine that could do this but did not put it into production "for commercial reasons".
Manging the supply of, and carrying expensive 5% Ammonia solution around with them is something truck owners and drivers would go a long way to avoid - though whether that goes as far as buying auto-transmission trucks (which is MAN's product) is another question. They are really difficult to reverse into a loading bay with potholes near where the rear axles come to rest (ie most loading bays). We are talking up to FIVE rear axles here.
* Think: reaches bottom of hill in fully loaded 44 ton truck at just over 56MPH (truck speed limit for Europe) and stamps on the throttle pedal of a 16 litre turbo-charged engine as he hits the incline of the upward hill.
It has been standard practice for at least 10,000 years to hold eggs up to the light and look through them to see if they are fertile. To aid this, you hold them over an egg shaped aperture with a light behind it. In the 1960's when I was taught to do it, it was called "candelling" although we used a 60W bulb (for turkey eggs). Candles are not very bright.
I undertand that the key feature here is to collect multiple, random, scattered rays, and then use "simultaneous equations" to create a 3-D image with a computer instead of a human brain. Most people here (/.) have been pissing on "with a computer" patents for a good ten years.
It is normally impassible due to time constraints to do a restore check after every backup.
I thnn you mean "impossible",
You dont need to check restore after every backup, but you most certainly need to do it quarterly, after every OS upgrade, and probably any time hardware is modded/reconfigured, or tampered with.
DO NOT USE PROPRIETRY BACKUP SOFTWARE FOR ARCHIVE - EVER! When you want the data back, the company will be dead and buried, and any documentation of the tape format will not relate to the version you were using. I used to work for a company that made popular tape backup software (it was very fast). For 8 months the restore function was seriously defective and not a single customer reported it. (OK, it was in the days of QIC02).
If the data has any long term value, use tar. Tar from RSX11 days is still readable on FreeBSD - I have tried it. Not using Unix? It is safe to assume you don't need the data anyway!
So GCHQ, the NSA, and a few random third world hackers have replicated your data. That does not mean you can get it when you need it (at a reasonable price). I have no doubt you can get insurance, but that is not the same as actually having the data.
Chances are it will work, but I wouldn't be surprised if it failed.
That is why we keep three copies of the data on each of the three tapes. I too have read tapes over 30 years old. I have not read floppies and CDs that were less than 3 yearsl old, and no longer own an ST506 interface or even a pre-PCI motherboard (well perhaps I do. but I cant find it).
But Ford will crush Chrysler, BMW and Mercedes "real soon now". Just as communism is about to defeat capitalism. We only need one motor manufacturer - I hope its not Lada!
Several Prime Ministers have been spied upon as potential Soviet agents - so the answer you are looking for is YES
They are spies - they spy on everyone if they did not spy on everyone, how would they know who to spy on? Should you trust them? If you dont know how to think for yourself, then the answer does not matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there intelligent life in Texas?
Intelligent life in a radically different environment, might be radially different:
Maybe at 100K it is based on reactions we known nothing about, on a time scale so slow we cannot communicate with it, because they consider two bits per decade data rate to be a speeding offence.
Maybe there is life at a density close to that of intergalactic dust, and its all around us. However, the lifeforms are so huge that we are like stomach bacteria to them?
Maybe you should subscribe to my complete science fiction works on Kindle Direct?
Or, then again, maybe not!
Of course there have been no more terrorist attacks in America - the terrorists are all too busy monitoring other people's telecomms to blow people up.
Please replace one of the present /. editors with this guy IMMEDIATELY
For some really wierd definitions of efficient, perhaps. Supply and demand ensure there is a market that can be manipulated by anyone with the tools to do so (which includes taxes), and quite possibly others too.
Automation makes the owner of the machine richer. The man with no machine is stuffed. It is not just a law of economics, its the truth!
We in the UK think you are a moron. The Government is the people, and companies exist on our terms. We are quite willing to let them exist, if they make a fair contribution to society. If they don't, well they have no right to incorporation here.
There is a precedent:
King Charles the first said "I am King, God made me King, and I will do what I want.
The people say "You are King cos we let you be king. We can stop you if you won't behave!
The King replied "I am King, God made me King, and I will do what I want.
So the people put an end to him.
You Americans might want to have a word with Robert Johnson on the subject or cross-roads.
A "fact" available from a tobacco industry spokesman near you!
I think it is very likely the same percentage of the population that was writing BASIC when you were 13 is doing strange things with js and CSS today, and probably hacking into the router for fun.
However, its not a very big percentage of the population compared to boys playing FPS and girls into My Little Pony, regardless of politixcal correctness.
Was Pokemon written by girls? Were Hanna and Barbera girls? Is Pooh Bear secretly a transexual? Soemtimes people ask too many damn questions!
Don't mention the lawn!
From Euro 4, these have been met by running the engine very hot, which creates masses of oxides of Nitrogen, and then neutralising the NOx by squirting ammonia into the exhaust pipe. his works fine in a laboratory environment. Unfortunately, a truck can go from buring 20 ccs of fuel per hour to burning 2 litres a second* in two turns of the crank shaft, and there's not a bat's chance in hell of getting the ammonia to match the NOx during the transition. These engines produce very fine particulates that can go strait through the skin - and enter the blood through the lungs very easily. Real life pollution is very bad. Unfortunately, the option of running the engines cooler and filtering out the lumps of carbon mechanically, was ruled out, because the people selling the Ammonia (pig's piss, sold as "Ad-Blue") paid vast bribes to the European comissioners. MAN Diesel demonstrated an engine that could do this but did not put it into production "for commercial reasons".
Manging the supply of, and carrying expensive 5% Ammonia solution around with them is something truck owners and drivers would go a long way to avoid - though whether that goes as far as buying auto-transmission trucks (which is MAN's product) is another question. They are really difficult to reverse into a loading bay with potholes near where the rear axles come to rest (ie most loading bays). We are talking up to FIVE rear axles here.
* Think: reaches bottom of hill in fully loaded 44 ton truck at just over 56MPH (truck speed limit for Europe) and stamps on the throttle pedal of a 16 litre turbo-charged engine as he hits the incline of the upward hill.
It has been standard practice for at least 10,000 years to hold eggs up to the light and look through them to see if they are fertile. To aid this, you hold them over an egg shaped aperture with a light behind it. In the 1960's when I was taught to do it, it was called "candelling" although we used a 60W bulb (for turkey eggs). Candles are not very bright.
I undertand that the key feature here is to collect multiple, random, scattered rays, and then use "simultaneous equations" to create a 3-D image with a computer instead of a human brain. Most people here (/.) have been pissing on "with a computer" patents for a good ten years.
Only if it is completely Unity-Free and WIfi survives a re-boot, even if with static IPs.
Actually, there are real people still alive who remember it.
If they had been cheaper, I would have been using Unix three years earlier!
Never under-estimate the disaster of a station wagon full of LTO6 tapes hurtling down the Grand Canyon! (I said that).
(Or major Glacier down time, just when you need it).
I thnn you mean "impossible",
You dont need to check restore after every backup, but you most certainly need to do it quarterly, after every OS upgrade, and probably any time hardware is modded/reconfigured, or tampered with.
DO NOT USE PROPRIETRY BACKUP SOFTWARE FOR ARCHIVE - EVER! When you want the data back, the company will be dead and buried, and any documentation of the tape format will not relate to the version you were using. I used to work for a company that made popular tape backup software (it was very fast). For 8 months the restore function was seriously defective and not a single customer reported it. (OK, it was in the days of QIC02).
If the data has any long term value, use tar. Tar from RSX11 days is still readable on FreeBSD - I have tried it. Not using Unix? It is safe to assume you don't need the data anyway!
So GCHQ, the NSA, and a few random third world hackers have replicated your data. That does not mean you can get it when you need it (at a reasonable price). I have no doubt you can get insurance, but that is not the same as actually having the data.
That is why we keep three copies of the data on each of the three tapes. I too have read tapes over 30 years old. I have not read floppies and CDs that were less than 3 yearsl old, and no longer own an ST506 interface or even a pre-PCI motherboard (well perhaps I do. but I cant find it).
I am backing LTO.
In a real emergency, you need Facebook, not 911.
Think of the drone strikes! Tin foil is not enough. You need real tin hats.
Put that light out!
You missed the bit about "Nuke from high orbit, just to be sure!"
But Ford will crush Chrysler, BMW and Mercedes "real soon now". Just as communism is about to defeat capitalism. We only need one motor manufacturer - I hope its not Lada!
The word you are looking for is a PC!
In those days, we did not wet our knickers and give up our privacy (much), and carried on regardless with a stiff upper lip.
I don't know what went wrong, but this is just as small part of it. personally, I blame cheap hard disks.
FTFY
Several Prime Ministers have been spied upon as potential Soviet agents - so the answer you are looking for is YES
They are spies - they spy on everyone if they did not spy on everyone, how would they know who to spy on? Should you trust them? If you dont know how to think for yourself, then the answer does not matter.
Its the "Windows is running" bit.