Unfortunatly, even the best video games have no where near the intensity of a real life experience. They aren't immersive or realistic enough by a long, long margin and you can't use half your senses.
So even an experience in video game terms would be "boring" : say you best someone sparring in a karate tournament : is FAR more intense and rewarding than watching your virtual character take down the dragon.
Pretty much any form of attack that would destroy a significant part of new york outright would kill the population as well (a nuclear bomb). Who in their right mind would want to move into a rebuilt reproduction of a city where everyone had persished? Not to mention the rubble would still be radioactive.
For that reason, its doubtful whether the world trade center really will be rebuilt right back as it was, and even if it is; if anyone will tenant the place.
"That's a boatload of data storage. I'll never run out"
Rest assured, by the time you can hold one of these disks in its vaccuum sealed case, you'll be thinking about buying a second one because the one you have just isn't big enough.
WELL, I was thinking about an AI that was ONLY a 1000 or so times smarter than we are. Maybe a million. Not some all knowing, omnipotent cosmos spanning intelligence who answers every question with 42.
Yeah, yeah, a sphere is better. Doh. Was just thinking that all the memory and processing elements needed to be in close proximity. Course, it would be even faster if the computer could reconfigure itself on the fly to accelerate calculations (sort of how our brains can build new connections between neurons when needed).
I know for a fact that Powerstrip will allow you to set the video card to custom, nonstandard resolutions. Try than and a standard Radeon 8500 (you can get them at pricewatch for $109, a stock 8500 at 275/275). Excellent 3d performance and tons of features.
However, I'm not entirely certain that the DVI output is compatable. In all likelihood it is.
Why a comm interface at all? That would just slow things down. An ideal computer would be one single cube (rather than chip, to signify its 3 dimensional). Memory and processing elements would all be part of the same mass of interconnects.
Due to manufacturing reasons, a large computer would need to be a cluster of these cubes, and of course you'd need some dedicated to storage of information that doesn't change often.
Since a serious supercomputer (probably running an artificial intelligence) would need to be VERY large physically, you'd use fiber to interconnect all the individual nodes.
Finally, since performance is king the computing elements would have to be cooled with liquid helium, to maintain their stability against the tremendous heat being produced by all the calculations occuring (well, not the calculations...the interactions required : specifically, in throwing information away since computing is an irreversible process)
No, I don't think most private individuals would own these...instead, you'd access them by a fiber connection to your house and would receive a timeslice of the cpu power for whatever you are running. With fiber, obviously the latency would be negligible.
This isn't actually very useful : what we want is atomic scale logic gates, not data storage. In fact I'd venture to say that this technology is NOT what we will be using in the future for extremely dense memory. Why? Because its 2 dimensional and requires an independent readout head (that is MECHANICAL).
Making it work anywhere but a vacuum may be impossible. (though that is not a real problem : making a disk drive that has an internal vacuum is quite feasible)
A solution that is thousands, even millions of times faster would be a system that reads itself : i.e. a 3 dimensional array of logic gates to form a molecular version of ram. In addition, you could cram far more bits per gram of material used for the media. (I can't say per square inch because that would be misleading)
In addition, storage capacity is not what our computers need more of : its performance (especially in accessing all those gigs of storage).
The only reason that we techies even think that FTL travel would be "cool" is that any imaginable spacecraft, traveling at perhaps 1/4 or even 1/2 lifespeed, would take a number of human lifetimes to go anywhere. But relative to the lifetime of the universe, 60,000 years or so to get to the other side of the galaxy is nothing. Just a quick hop to the Quick-E-Mart. And human lifespan is just an evolutionary adaption (to kill off people who have already breeded) : if we ever can build and fuel an interstellar spacecraft its exceedingly unlikely that human lifespans will still be a limitation.
Seriously : the biochemical tricks needed to stop the aging process will be in our hands (and bodies) LONG before far more fundamental problems, mostly related to the intense radiation caused by hitting blue shifted particles at a substantial fraction of lightspeed and radiation from the antimatter engine are solved.
In fact, it may not be possible for intelligent life to reach the stars in human form at all. A spacecraft capable of carrying humans, even if they were somhow made dormant (i.e. hibernation) would require FAR more mass than one with a payload of some sort of distributed computing hardware.
Essentially, the intelligence being carried would be distributed across a big matrix of molecular computers. All important information and processes would be duplicated hundreds of times (with peta bytes of molecular memory this would be no big deal) so that the radiation would not interfere with function.
Ideally, the system would be self repairing.
As for sending human personalties : one of the quirks of quantum information storage is that one cannot copy information without destroying the original. So it would not really be a copy of yourself that was being sent : it would be you, for all practical purposes (because to "upload" your personality would in all circumstances require destroying the original).
Pure water is a poor conductor of ELECTRICITY (for water to conduct, there has to be ions in it to carry the charge...and water does not make them very easily, while other minerals do. Completely pure water is a good insulator of charge). Dissolved solutes have little effect on its conduction of HEAT. Just thought I'd set the record straight.
What are these people smoking? First of all, real computer hacking is not "magical". It isn't like in the movies. Generally speaking, nearly all hacks take advantage of either a known bug in a networking program, or laziness. Computer hacking is not about smashing down a steel vault door...its about walking in the back door that someone left unlocked and cracked open.
Generally, the easiest way to do it is to get someone's password by either conning someone into giving it to you; sending someone a trojan email with a keystroke logger embedded in it (best and easiest way); or installing a hardware logger (if you have physical access).
OBVIOUSLY, if a computer system cannot be accessed it can't be hacked! What important financial or military computer has ACTUALLY been hacked?
Most of the court cases are stupid. They involve someone downloading software that others have written to take advantage of known software bugs (a script kiddie) and using it to mess around. Sure, a major site might go offline for a few hours....but the world of computing has so many "natural" technical glitches that's hardly a problem.
Viruses only affect major companies because the employees there are stupid and lazy. They continue to use Outlook, they don't filter executables out of incoming mail, and they don't update their software.
Oh sure, some scipt kiddies have broken into DoD "classified email" servers, but how does that warrant a life in prison?
Unlike the movies, most real machinery and IMPORTANT computer systems are generally not upgradable without pulling chips or at least gaining access with tools to the serial port.
Is there anything illegal about a content provider (someone who works his ass off to make content that others might enjoy) saying "ok, you have two choices". "I can leave my new movie in my underwear drawer where noone can see it, or I can sell it to you under the condition that you will only be able to view it with devices that cannot easily copy the movie". Is there anything ammoral with this?
The BIG content providers who make this stuff want to protect their investment. Why shouldn't they try? Some of you have suggested that the whole process is futile ; people will always be able to hack it. The latter may be true, but if the recording companies can make it hard enough (with only allowing DRM devices to play their content, ect) they can make it so that the customer who is "on the fence" between warezing and buying it (i.e. someone who could do either) makes the right choice because warezing it is tedious.
Thus, for the goal that the content providers want : to gain more sales from people who might otherwise pirate; DRM and other techniques may actually work! Now, for the people who cannot or will not buy the content : yeah, they'll warez it...but the anti-piracy measures can make it tougher. By breaking up the big P2P networks, it becomes slightly harder to pirate music. By copy protecting cds, it becomes less convenient for the average customer to burn his friend a copy. Macrovision has stopped many casual copiers.
I'm saying that while us/. pros may be able to blow past just about any protection scheme the content providers devise, we might not buy the content anyway. But for the average joe who's been working all day and just wants to see a movie : he is probably going to get the legitimate copy to avoid all the technical headaches piracy can involve.
While making music may be an art that people do just to enjoy it, making a major movie is anything but. Yes, there are fun parts...but remember, only a few people out of the hundreds that make the movie get to express their creativity. The others have to obey orders "Build this set, clean this trailer, hold this camera like I want it, say these lines but don't call attention to yourself...ect". While movies can be fun, its a lot of work especially for the people who add in all the extras that separate a big budget production from an Indie film. Those people have to be paid, or they are likely to tell the director to go shove it. So if noone paid for movies, films of the quality we currently experience would not be made.
Lets just say that the laser would have to charge for a VERY long time if only solar panels powered it. (assuming you want to convert the garbage into gas)
First off, any kind of collector device deployed in space is totally impractical. For one thing, the mass of the device could easily end up being equivalent or even greater than any debris collected. That is, you'd need as much or more propellant and material to grab the micrometeorites and garbage in the collection robot as the mass of the stuff being collected. This means you'd have to spend as much money on boosters as we spent putting junk in orbit over the past 40 years. That's a lot of money...
Why launch anything into orbit at all? A far better solution would be to build a powerful enough ground based laser system to convert the garbage into vapor. It would be cheaper, as you would not have to spend vast sums of money trying to minimize failures (if the laser on the ground breaks, you get out tools and fix it. If the orbital robot breaks you just blew a lot of money). To detect the rapidly moving orbital debris you would need an extremely high resolution radar...at least one of the X band things being build in Alaska.
The laser would be an array of linear accelerators in parallel (or cyclotrons) that would accelerate electrons that would release the energy in the beam. (A free electron laser) Such lasers are inherently very efficient, and the system would only use electric power that could be obtained off an ordinary power grid (a LOT of electric power...you'd need some sort of temporary storage perhaps giant rotating drums or something)
And the best part? A multi-megawatt laser array, capable of hitting extremely small fast moving targets with enough power to vaporize them...
Certainly the Pentagon could think of a use for one of those.
Say, missile defense?
Such a system would be FAR more reliable than a rocket booster interceptor that has THOUSANDS of possible points of failure. If the wrong part fails, the booster fails. With a parallel array of lasers if one fails its no big deal. In addition, given enough power it would be able to vaporize all the incoming targets, decoys and bits of insulation and all.
Has anyone ever wondered if; assuming further developements in computing; none of this will matter?
Its entirely possible that an artificial intelligence running on molecular scale hardware could have a thinking speed millions or billions of times faster than a human being. A network of these could in one year do more thinking than all human beings in all history. They would create as much or more new knowledge and information in that time period.
Essentially, all achievements humans have ever made would be as important as the mating habits of dinosaurs. While its difficult to say whether these AIs would have any interest in our history, the information would hardly be relevant.
I do not find this possibility frightening. I have no doubt that the AIs we create will require teaching much like a small child. They will learn everything we pass on to them. Essentially, while humans might eventually become extinct, most of our knowledge and culture would be passed on to some extent. It would be no different than generation changes with biological children.
YOU won't live on forever, but your descendents might. Some of what you pass on to your children might last a very long time. That is one of the few legacies we leave behind in this life. In a similar manner, we would leave similar knowledge to artificialy intelligent descendents. They would quickly grow beyond us, much as biological children might become taller and more educated than their parents, but such is the nature of change.
a little reality check :
How are they going to power the thing?
Just use a souped up alternator and the engine make a good generator
I don't think so. Most high powered lasers use a chemical reaction to produce the excitation directly. Current lasers powered by using electricty to indirectly power the laser are VERY inefficient. The output on this baby is supposed to be 2 KW...it might suck 20 or more kilowatts easily, far more than a vehicle can produce. In addition, note the article mentions trouble with cooling. That is because the reaction occuring inside the laser produces much heat as well as light.
Is that it may not be 50 years before we can culture some cells from your body and make you a brand new immune system (by causing the cells in the culture to believe they are actually immune system stem cells rather than skin tissue or whatnot and start producing the appropriate cell line contained in their genetics).
Since that's the biggest, most immediate effect of severe radiation poisoning, well, there went that problem.
As for treating the hundreds of tumers that might pop up, there are lots of possible treatments for this as well. Perhaps we can program your new immune system to destroy all tissue in areas designated somehow, essentially attacking tumors without surgery or side effects.
In truth it should hopefully take less than half a century, but we all know how technological progress always seems to occur at half the rate we want it to.
In addition, the vast majority (95%+) of the radioactive isotopes contained in the waste have half lives of decades or less. The stuff cools down a LOT in the first century or so. Besides, coal and other mineral miners bring geiger counters along....assuming the civilization 10,000 years from now has the equipment to dig deep enough to reach the waste, they are going to have the equipment and hopefully the common sense to make sure they haven't hit a uranium deposit.
If they have the boring machines you need to chew through solid rock, then they should be able to recognize and deal with any problems they encounter.
Obviously, if our descendents are somehow dumber than this, or have less technology than we have today...I think they deserve to get irradiated for their stupidity. After all, what's the point in raising the next generation if farther down the line our descendents do something stupid or just get dumber? Seriously people, I don't think we should worry about our descendents accidentally stumbling upon the dump and poisoning themselves. If they are that dumb, they deserve their fate....for not advancing in 5000 years.
Looking at a nearby star system means your field of view SO narrow its like the odds of that gnat in your laboratory flying RIGHT into the business end of your electron microscope (though actually these scopes usually have sealed specimen chambers)
It isn't likely...even though the satellite can be "seen" somewhere in the sky where the telecope is looking, the optics are focused so that rays of light from anywhere but the objective simply do not come into play.
The misconception here is that space is cubic, and even the region in earth orbit where most satellites are places has a volume exceeding that of the earth. It is HUGE. This makes the odds of collision, given that we have "only" placed a few thousand objects up there, ever, very remote.
Granted, airliners occasionally crash into each other, too, and people do win the lottery...
HOW good is your fantasy? I'm just a reader, but I've noticed a couple common trends that tend to ruin books:
1. "Word rot" or "Procrastination writing". As a reader, I want to hear about the plot : what's happening next. NOT what inn the heroes are staying in, or other trivial inconsequencial details. *cough* Jordan *cough*. Not that these details don't belong to create a plot important scene (an important scene is one with action or decisions being made...not simple dialogue) but otherwise, skip em.
Also, many writers tend to procrastinate. They save the action til the very end....little happens in the book til the last few pages. I think the good guys and bad guys should be fighting the whole book, not the good guys sneaking around til the very end where WHAM they kick the evil dude's ass.
2. Insulting my intellgence. As a reader, I don't need to be reminded 50 times what happened earlier in the book or what happened in the last book. A quick "recap" is ok, but I don't want half the book to be spent rehashing the PREVIOUS book in a series.
Oh, and flavorless bad guys suck. I want the villian to be someone I can understand, maybe even identify with, not someone the author tries to make ludicrously stupid and evil. And having 10,000 to 1 odds in favor of the bad guy (yet the good guys still win) does not make a very interesting battle scene, as it just seems lame to most readers. Everyone knows the good guys have some lame trick up their sleeve, and that the bad guy is unable to react or counter their "brilliant" tactic.
A line from the upcoming movie :
Neo : "Whoa....check out all those flashes"
Morpheus : "Concentrate on the task at hand; they are merely glitches in the Matrix caused by our presense in this place"
Lets keep in mind that if such a crisis were to actually occur, a LOT more (of the remaining) resources would be devoted to finding technological solutions. Heck, that's how it works now : the only reason we don't use solar power, ect is not due to inflexibility, its that for the power providers burning coal is still cheaper for THEM (although they don't have to pay the true costs of increased lung cancer, ect).
Keep in mind that using simple fission power with fuel recycling we could easily produce enough energy, even if it were necessary to use vastly expensive machines like desalination plants and other devices to get all our water, for thousands of years. This is with known uranium deposits and 30 year old technology.
The energy is THERE, it just isn't needed yet.
Looking farther down the road. Developement of a true artificial intelligence would likely make all of the following issues moot. While its tough to say what exactly would happen, I don't think resource shortages will be on anyone's minds. After all, exponentially reproducing machines would likely be able to utilize all manner of resources currently unavailable to humans.
Unfortunatly, the adaptive nature of these nanobots would mean that they would tend to solve the "problem" of the hindrance of these laws by routing around them.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunatly, even the best video games have no where near the intensity of a real life experience. They aren't immersive or realistic enough by a long, long margin and you can't use half your senses. So even an experience in video game terms would be "boring" : say you best someone sparring in a karate tournament : is FAR more intense and rewarding than watching your virtual character take down the dragon.
Pretty much any form of attack that would destroy a significant part of new york outright would kill the population as well (a nuclear bomb). Who in their right mind would want to move into a rebuilt reproduction of a city where everyone had persished? Not to mention the rubble would still be radioactive.
For that reason, its doubtful whether the world trade center really will be rebuilt right back as it was, and even if it is; if anyone will tenant the place.
Since "at the time of the first wedding" implies that the first premartial sex act occurred DURING the cermony...
I can just picture it : the first caveman "marriage". "You may now fuck the bride". Ook ook!
I think ole Carmack may have taken the concept of "rocket jumping" a little too far....
"That's a boatload of data storage. I'll never run out" Rest assured, by the time you can hold one of these disks in its vaccuum sealed case, you'll be thinking about buying a second one because the one you have just isn't big enough.
WELL, I was thinking about an AI that was ONLY a 1000 or so times smarter than we are. Maybe a million. Not some all knowing, omnipotent cosmos spanning intelligence who answers every question with 42. Yeah, yeah, a sphere is better. Doh. Was just thinking that all the memory and processing elements needed to be in close proximity. Course, it would be even faster if the computer could reconfigure itself on the fly to accelerate calculations (sort of how our brains can build new connections between neurons when needed).
I have an idea. POWERSTRIP!
I know for a fact that Powerstrip will allow you to set the video card to custom, nonstandard resolutions. Try than and a standard Radeon 8500 (you can get them at pricewatch for $109, a stock 8500 at 275/275). Excellent 3d performance and tons of features.
However, I'm not entirely certain that the DVI output is compatable. In all likelihood it is.
Why a comm interface at all? That would just slow things down. An ideal computer would be one single cube (rather than chip, to signify its 3 dimensional). Memory and processing elements would all be part of the same mass of interconnects. Due to manufacturing reasons, a large computer would need to be a cluster of these cubes, and of course you'd need some dedicated to storage of information that doesn't change often. Since a serious supercomputer (probably running an artificial intelligence) would need to be VERY large physically, you'd use fiber to interconnect all the individual nodes. Finally, since performance is king the computing elements would have to be cooled with liquid helium, to maintain their stability against the tremendous heat being produced by all the calculations occuring (well, not the calculations...the interactions required : specifically, in throwing information away since computing is an irreversible process) No, I don't think most private individuals would own these...instead, you'd access them by a fiber connection to your house and would receive a timeslice of the cpu power for whatever you are running. With fiber, obviously the latency would be negligible.
This isn't actually very useful : what we want is atomic scale logic gates, not data storage. In fact I'd venture to say that this technology is NOT what we will be using in the future for extremely dense memory. Why? Because its 2 dimensional and requires an independent readout head (that is MECHANICAL). Making it work anywhere but a vacuum may be impossible. (though that is not a real problem : making a disk drive that has an internal vacuum is quite feasible) A solution that is thousands, even millions of times faster would be a system that reads itself : i.e. a 3 dimensional array of logic gates to form a molecular version of ram. In addition, you could cram far more bits per gram of material used for the media. (I can't say per square inch because that would be misleading) In addition, storage capacity is not what our computers need more of : its performance (especially in accessing all those gigs of storage).
The only reason that we techies even think that FTL travel would be "cool" is that any imaginable spacecraft, traveling at perhaps 1/4 or even 1/2 lifespeed, would take a number of human lifetimes to go anywhere. But relative to the lifetime of the universe, 60,000 years or so to get to the other side of the galaxy is nothing. Just a quick hop to the Quick-E-Mart. And human lifespan is just an evolutionary adaption (to kill off people who have already breeded) : if we ever can build and fuel an interstellar spacecraft its exceedingly unlikely that human lifespans will still be a limitation.
Seriously : the biochemical tricks needed to stop the aging process will be in our hands (and bodies) LONG before far more fundamental problems, mostly related to the intense radiation caused by hitting blue shifted particles at a substantial fraction of lightspeed and radiation from the antimatter engine are solved.
In fact, it may not be possible for intelligent life to reach the stars in human form at all. A spacecraft capable of carrying humans, even if they were somhow made dormant (i.e. hibernation) would require FAR more mass than one with a payload of some sort of distributed computing hardware.
Essentially, the intelligence being carried would be distributed across a big matrix of molecular computers. All important information and processes would be duplicated hundreds of times (with peta bytes of molecular memory this would be no big deal) so that the radiation would not interfere with function.
Ideally, the system would be self repairing.
As for sending human personalties : one of the quirks of quantum information storage is that one cannot copy information without destroying the original. So it would not really be a copy of yourself that was being sent : it would be you, for all practical purposes (because to "upload" your personality would in all circumstances require destroying the original).
Pure water is a poor conductor of ELECTRICITY (for water to conduct, there has to be ions in it to carry the charge...and water does not make them very easily, while other minerals do. Completely pure water is a good insulator of charge). Dissolved solutes have little effect on its conduction of HEAT. Just thought I'd set the record straight.
What are these people smoking? First of all, real computer hacking is not "magical". It isn't like in the movies. Generally speaking, nearly all hacks take advantage of either a known bug in a networking program, or laziness. Computer hacking is not about smashing down a steel vault door...its about walking in the back door that someone left unlocked and cracked open.
Generally, the easiest way to do it is to get someone's password by either conning someone into giving it to you; sending someone a trojan email with a keystroke logger embedded in it (best and easiest way); or installing a hardware logger (if you have physical access).
OBVIOUSLY, if a computer system cannot be accessed it can't be hacked! What important financial or military computer has ACTUALLY been hacked?
Most of the court cases are stupid. They involve someone downloading software that others have written to take advantage of known software bugs (a script kiddie) and using it to mess around. Sure, a major site might go offline for a few hours....but the world of computing has so many "natural" technical glitches that's hardly a problem.
Viruses only affect major companies because the employees there are stupid and lazy. They continue to use Outlook, they don't filter executables out of incoming mail, and they don't update their software.
Oh sure, some scipt kiddies have broken into DoD "classified email" servers, but how does that warrant a life in prison?
Unlike the movies, most real machinery and IMPORTANT computer systems are generally not upgradable without pulling chips or at least gaining access with tools to the serial port.
I did use it, but several times I accidentally hit the wrong button.
Is there anything illegal about a content provider (someone who works his ass off to make content that others might enjoy) saying "ok, you have two choices". "I can leave my new movie in my underwear drawer where noone can see it, or I can sell it to you under the condition that you will only be able to view it with devices that cannot easily copy the movie". Is there anything ammoral with this?
The BIG content providers who make this stuff want to protect their investment. Why shouldn't they try? Some of you have suggested that the whole process is futile ; people will always be able to hack it. The latter may be true, but if the recording companies can make it hard enough (with only allowing DRM devices to play their content, ect) they can make it so that the customer who is "on the fence" between warezing and buying it (i.e. someone who could do either) makes the right choice because warezing it is tedious.
Thus, for the goal that the content providers want : to gain more sales from people who might otherwise pirate; DRM and other techniques may actually work! Now, for the people who cannot or will not buy the content : yeah, they'll warez it...but the anti-piracy measures can make it tougher. By breaking up the big P2P networks, it becomes slightly harder to pirate music. By copy protecting cds, it becomes less convenient for the average customer to burn his friend a copy. Macrovision has stopped many casual copiers.
I'm saying that while us /. pros may be able to blow past just about any protection scheme the content providers devise, we might not buy the content anyway. But for the average joe who's been working all day and just wants to see a movie : he is probably going to get the legitimate copy to avoid all the technical headaches piracy can involve.
While making music may be an art that people do just to enjoy it, making a major movie is anything but. Yes, there are fun parts...but remember, only a few people out of the hundreds that make the movie get to express their creativity. The others have to obey orders "Build this set, clean this trailer, hold this camera like I want it, say these lines but don't call attention to yourself...ect". While movies can be fun, its a lot of work especially for the people who add in all the extras that separate a big budget production from an Indie film. Those people have to be paid, or they are likely to tell the director to go shove it. So if noone paid for movies, films of the quality we currently experience would not be made.
Lets just say that the laser would have to charge for a VERY long time if only solar panels powered it. (assuming you want to convert the garbage into gas)
First off, any kind of collector device deployed in space is totally impractical. For one thing, the mass of the device could easily end up being equivalent or even greater than any debris collected. That is, you'd need as much or more propellant and material to grab the micrometeorites and garbage in the collection robot as the mass of the stuff being collected. This means you'd have to spend as much money on boosters as we spent putting junk in orbit over the past 40 years. That's a lot of money...
Why launch anything into orbit at all? A far better solution would be to build a powerful enough ground based laser system to convert the garbage into vapor. It would be cheaper, as you would not have to spend vast sums of money trying to minimize failures (if the laser on the ground breaks, you get out tools and fix it. If the orbital robot breaks you just blew a lot of money). To detect the rapidly moving orbital debris you would need an extremely high resolution radar...at least one of the X band things being build in Alaska.
The laser would be an array of linear accelerators in parallel (or cyclotrons) that would accelerate electrons that would release the energy in the beam. (A free electron laser) Such lasers are inherently very efficient, and the system would only use electric power that could be obtained off an ordinary power grid (a LOT of electric power...you'd need some sort of temporary storage perhaps giant rotating drums or something)
And the best part? A multi-megawatt laser array, capable of hitting extremely small fast moving targets with enough power to vaporize them...
Certainly the Pentagon could think of a use for one of those.
Say, missile defense?
Such a system would be FAR more reliable than a rocket booster interceptor that has THOUSANDS of possible points of failure. If the wrong part fails, the booster fails. With a parallel array of lasers if one fails its no big deal. In addition, given enough power it would be able to vaporize all the incoming targets, decoys and bits of insulation and all.
Has anyone ever wondered if; assuming further developements in computing; none of this will matter? Its entirely possible that an artificial intelligence running on molecular scale hardware could have a thinking speed millions or billions of times faster than a human being. A network of these could in one year do more thinking than all human beings in all history. They would create as much or more new knowledge and information in that time period. Essentially, all achievements humans have ever made would be as important as the mating habits of dinosaurs. While its difficult to say whether these AIs would have any interest in our history, the information would hardly be relevant. I do not find this possibility frightening. I have no doubt that the AIs we create will require teaching much like a small child. They will learn everything we pass on to them. Essentially, while humans might eventually become extinct, most of our knowledge and culture would be passed on to some extent. It would be no different than generation changes with biological children. YOU won't live on forever, but your descendents might. Some of what you pass on to your children might last a very long time. That is one of the few legacies we leave behind in this life. In a similar manner, we would leave similar knowledge to artificialy intelligent descendents. They would quickly grow beyond us, much as biological children might become taller and more educated than their parents, but such is the nature of change.
a little reality check : How are they going to power the thing? Just use a souped up alternator and the engine make a good generator I don't think so. Most high powered lasers use a chemical reaction to produce the excitation directly. Current lasers powered by using electricty to indirectly power the laser are VERY inefficient. The output on this baby is supposed to be 2 KW...it might suck 20 or more kilowatts easily, far more than a vehicle can produce. In addition, note the article mentions trouble with cooling. That is because the reaction occuring inside the laser produces much heat as well as light.
Is that it may not be 50 years before we can culture some cells from your body and make you a brand new immune system (by causing the cells in the culture to believe they are actually immune system stem cells rather than skin tissue or whatnot and start producing the appropriate cell line contained in their genetics).
Since that's the biggest, most immediate effect of severe radiation poisoning, well, there went that problem.
As for treating the hundreds of tumers that might pop up, there are lots of possible treatments for this as well. Perhaps we can program your new immune system to destroy all tissue in areas designated somehow, essentially attacking tumors without surgery or side effects.
In truth it should hopefully take less than half a century, but we all know how technological progress always seems to occur at half the rate we want it to.
In addition, the vast majority (95%+) of the radioactive isotopes contained in the waste have half lives of decades or less. The stuff cools down a LOT in the first century or so. Besides, coal and other mineral miners bring geiger counters along....assuming the civilization 10,000 years from now has the equipment to dig deep enough to reach the waste, they are going to have the equipment and hopefully the common sense to make sure they haven't hit a uranium deposit.
If they have the boring machines you need to chew through solid rock, then they should be able to recognize and deal with any problems they encounter.
Obviously, if our descendents are somehow dumber than this, or have less technology than we have today...I think they deserve to get irradiated for their stupidity. After all, what's the point in raising the next generation if farther down the line our descendents do something stupid or just get dumber? Seriously people, I don't think we should worry about our descendents accidentally stumbling upon the dump and poisoning themselves. If they are that dumb, they deserve their fate....for not advancing in 5000 years.
Looking at a nearby star system means your field of view SO narrow its like the odds of that gnat in your laboratory flying RIGHT into the business end of your electron microscope (though actually these scopes usually have sealed specimen chambers) It isn't likely...even though the satellite can be "seen" somewhere in the sky where the telecope is looking, the optics are focused so that rays of light from anywhere but the objective simply do not come into play.
The misconception here is that space is cubic, and even the region in earth orbit where most satellites are places has a volume exceeding that of the earth. It is HUGE. This makes the odds of collision, given that we have "only" placed a few thousand objects up there, ever, very remote. Granted, airliners occasionally crash into each other, too, and people do win the lottery...
HOW good is your fantasy? I'm just a reader, but I've noticed a couple common trends that tend to ruin books :
1. "Word rot" or "Procrastination writing". As a reader, I want to hear about the plot : what's happening next. NOT what inn the heroes are staying in, or other trivial inconsequencial details. *cough* Jordan *cough*. Not that these details don't belong to create a plot important scene (an important scene is one with action or decisions being made...not simple dialogue) but otherwise, skip em.
Also, many writers tend to procrastinate. They save the action til the very end....little happens in the book til the last few pages. I think the good guys and bad guys should be fighting the whole book, not the good guys sneaking around til the very end where WHAM they kick the evil dude's ass.
2. Insulting my intellgence. As a reader, I don't need to be reminded 50 times what happened earlier in the book or what happened in the last book. A quick "recap" is ok, but I don't want half the book to be spent rehashing the PREVIOUS book in a series.
Oh, and flavorless bad guys suck. I want the villian to be someone I can understand, maybe even identify with, not someone the author tries to make ludicrously stupid and evil. And having 10,000 to 1 odds in favor of the bad guy (yet the good guys still win) does not make a very interesting battle scene, as it just seems lame to most readers. Everyone knows the good guys have some lame trick up their sleeve, and that the bad guy is unable to react or counter their "brilliant" tactic.
A line from the upcoming movie : Neo : "Whoa....check out all those flashes" Morpheus : "Concentrate on the task at hand; they are merely glitches in the Matrix caused by our presense in this place"
Lets keep in mind that if such a crisis were to actually occur, a LOT more (of the remaining) resources would be devoted to finding technological solutions. Heck, that's how it works now : the only reason we don't use solar power, ect is not due to inflexibility, its that for the power providers burning coal is still cheaper for THEM (although they don't have to pay the true costs of increased lung cancer, ect).
Keep in mind that using simple fission power with fuel recycling we could easily produce enough energy, even if it were necessary to use vastly expensive machines like desalination plants and other devices to get all our water, for thousands of years. This is with known uranium deposits and 30 year old technology.
The energy is THERE, it just isn't needed yet.
Looking farther down the road. Developement of a true artificial intelligence would likely make all of the following issues moot. While its tough to say what exactly would happen, I don't think resource shortages will be on anyone's minds. After all, exponentially reproducing machines would likely be able to utilize all manner of resources currently unavailable to humans.
Unfortunatly, the adaptive nature of these nanobots would mean that they would tend to solve the "problem" of the hindrance of these laws by routing around them.