I know it isn't a real popular opinion to hold, but everything I see indicates that interstellar distances are pretty close to uncrossable for physical beings like humans. Frankly I think that is the plain answer to the whole Fermi Paradox that people just don't really want to come to grips with. The gulfs between the stars are so wide that nobody crosses them, EVER.
I think that the biggest scientific discoveries coming this century will be about what we can't do. We'll progress significantly in applied sciences such as medicine, but in physics, we'll likely prove the impossibility of many things of which we dream.
Many of us like science fiction stories, but the reality is that they are not dreams of the future - they are merely a modern type of fantasy. We keep dreaming of the stars even when it's impossible. Unless we find a mass relay embedded in Charon.
Unlike Chrome and Internet Explorer on Vista/7/8, Firefox doesn't run a child process in a sandbox to better protect the browser against exploits. Firefox runs entirely as a normal user process, and thus can access anything that regular processes can. An exploit running as an ordinary user can steal your bank account passwords and act as a zombie almost as effectively as an exploit running with root access.
I stay with Firefox only because I dislike tabs. Unlike Chrome, Firefox still has an option to open links in new windows instead of tabs.
"Here! Have this console with this feature! Got it? Ok, yeah, that feature? We're taking that out."
Sony claimed that removing Linux from the older systems was for security, but the PS3 ended up getting hacked to hell anyway. Sony really should have lost that lawsuit over removing a feature from the old models.
With consoles, the best versions are generally the first or second versions, because over time, the company releases systems with fewer and fewer features.
And yet atheists are still the least liked segment of society. We're held in even less esteem than muslims.
That is such BS. Atheism is only the least liked among those categories. Add some other minority categories such as transgender people, burglars, car salesmen, and pedophiles and you'd get lower ratings.
Religion is a virus. A virus is a chunk of rogue program code that tempts a host into executing it, at which point the host is programmed to make copies of the code. Biological viruses have cells as hosts, and DNA or RNA as their program code. Computer viruses have computers as their hosts, and machine code as program code. Similarly, religions have minds as their hosts, with mind programs--ideas--as their program code.
The ultimate irony is that the Abrahamic religions don't believe in evolution, when it is precisely natural selection that led to their existence and dominance.
How do you do anything about this when your district's congressman is completely opposite your views on almost every issue? Especially when you didn't vote for him. Any letter writing would go to the technologically-clueless equivalent of/dev/null.
This is a strange statement to make when the Standard Model is known to be incomplete since it does not factor in gravity. It clearly is not the final theory if any such thing can exist. I guess it may not meet your criteria for 'exotic' but to say physics is done is comically short sighted.
Physics is not done now, but that time seems to be approaching. It's very clear that diminishing returns has already taken its toll on physics - there are very few observable physical phenomena that we cannot currently explain.
Science of the 21st century will be less about discovering what we can do and more about what we can't. We'll find that that there aren't any radical exotic physics left to discover, cementing the fact that Star Trek will never exist no matter how far technology never advances, for there is no way around c. We'll also be doomed to never having a good energy solution.
That said, considerable advance in biomedicine and artificial intelligence will happen. Engineering and reverse engineering of the human body will continue to progress.
The saying that "any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is probably false: technology obeys thermodynamics. We as humans need to discuss what we want to do once science can no longer progress, something I fear will become true for our grandchildren.
The next big trend: "premium" support. Free access to a "community" support forum, where other users -- for free -- may or may not help. Then for bigger problems you can call a 1-900 number, or a 1-800 number to pay up with a credit card per incident. Maybe the Premium box set versions of their games includes one free incident resolution (expires 3 months from purchase, no guarantee they will actually fix the issue).
Isn't this how Microsoft support works for the most part?
Why is it that sometimes code names are better than the name of the final product? "Windows Blue" is a better name than simply "Windows 9". Similarly, "Xenon" was a better name than "Xbox 360".
Nintendo's fond of that, too. "Nitro" versus "DS", "Dolphin" versus "GameCube", "Revolution" versus "Wii".
Let me guess... they've gone further on their way to declare desktop applications as deprecated? With Windows 8, Microsoft has made it clear that it thinks that desktop applications are on their way out, and the only way to go is to make programs for Metro.
Oh, and I'll put this out there: won't run unsigned programs by default, though I suspect that this will be like OS X 10.8 and allow being turned off.
It's a virus - a communicable disease, not a normal mental illness. A virus is a chunk of program code that is so encapsulated that its host is encouraged to execute it, and once it is executed, reprograms the host to make more copies of the virus.
A biological virus's program code is DNA or RNA, and its hosts are cells. A computer virus's program code is machine language, and its hosts are the combination of the machine plus the operator being tricked into executing the virus. A religion's program code is a set of ideas, and its hosts are devices that execute such ideas: human brains.
The biggest irony to me is that the force behind religion is the same one they fight against: evolution. Religions that proselytized, encouraged higher reproduction rates, and programmed humans to fight those attacking the religion were better fit for survival than religions that did not.
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, from the Principia Mathematica: "But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions." - Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
I'm strongly atheist, yet I cannot dismiss the possibility that one or more gods created the Universe. It's not contradictory to science at all to say that it is possible for the entire set of physical laws to have been created by gods.
However, there is no evidence that any such God, should she exist, has ever influenced the Universe since its creation. From that follows the notion that any gods are outside our Universe, and therefore are irrelevant to our lives. Thus, a matter for philosophy rather than science.
Seriously? A patch to block root users from running kernel images? This is like how it works in Windows: applications not running as root aren't allowed to unsigned kernel code. What's the point of making root not root?
Is he going to disable the 50 other ways in which root programs could take over the kernel, too?
What if in fact there is no way at all to exceed c? It could mean that the only way to really explore the galaxy would be with generation ships or with machines. It would be a quite depressing discovery, for it would place limits on our imagination. "Science fiction" would pass into the category of "fantasy".
The only other possibility that would work is travel that is faster-than-light from your own perspective, but not from others' - time dilation. You could make a trip to another galaxy in a single lifetime, but it would be millions of years to everyone else.
I think that some of the biggest scientific discoveries to come will not be of possibilities, but of limitations. Not what we can do in the future, but what we can't. Humankind is going to have to live with this.
It seems as though we are rapidly approaching the day in which diseases have evolved to be resistant to any molecule we can come up with that doesn't also kill the host.
I wish that there were a way to tell your bank that all electronic access is to be essentially read-only. I would like to make my bank login only allow viewing account balances and transferring money among that bank's accounts, and not even allowing seeing a full account number. For anything else, I can go into a physical branch.
Such a scheme would reduce attacks to someone annoying me by emptying my checking account into my savings account, causing overdrafts. A lot better than someone stealing my money.
Using a bank to store your money really ought to be more secure than putting cash under your mattress. It kind of sucks that it's gotten to this.
Slashdot Mirror
If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.
That tax revolt was against the previous regime (the British Empire), not the current government (United States of America).
But the Tea Party was most certainly in the history of the United States.
I know it isn't a real popular opinion to hold, but everything I see indicates that interstellar distances are pretty close to uncrossable for physical beings like humans. Frankly I think that is the plain answer to the whole Fermi Paradox that people just don't really want to come to grips with. The gulfs between the stars are so wide that nobody crosses them, EVER.
I think that the biggest scientific discoveries coming this century will be about what we can't do. We'll progress significantly in applied sciences such as medicine, but in physics, we'll likely prove the impossibility of many things of which we dream.
Many of us like science fiction stories, but the reality is that they are not dreams of the future - they are merely a modern type of fantasy. We keep dreaming of the stars even when it's impossible. Unless we find a mass relay embedded in Charon.
There is a lot wrong with EA, but saying they're the worst company is fundamentally bullshit.
I liked Mass Effect 3, except the ending. They have issues, but like, the worst company? Monsanto and Blackwater/Xe/Academi are far, far worse.
Even in video games, EA isn't the worst: look how bad Sega's Colonial Marines was, or the crap Sony has pulled with the PS3.
Unlike Chrome and Internet Explorer on Vista/7/8, Firefox doesn't run a child process in a sandbox to better protect the browser against exploits. Firefox runs entirely as a normal user process, and thus can access anything that regular processes can. An exploit running as an ordinary user can steal your bank account passwords and act as a zombie almost as effectively as an exploit running with root access.
I stay with Firefox only because I dislike tabs. Unlike Chrome, Firefox still has an option to open links in new windows instead of tabs.
"Here! Have this console with this feature! Got it? Ok, yeah, that feature? We're taking that out."
Sony claimed that removing Linux from the older systems was for security, but the PS3 ended up getting hacked to hell anyway. Sony really should have lost that lawsuit over removing a feature from the old models.
With consoles, the best versions are generally the first or second versions, because over time, the company releases systems with fewer and fewer features.
And yet atheists are still the least liked segment of society. We're held in even less esteem than muslims.
That is such BS. Atheism is only the least liked among those categories. Add some other minority categories such as transgender people, burglars, car salesmen, and pedophiles and you'd get lower ratings.
I have always considered religion a disease...
Religion is a virus. A virus is a chunk of rogue program code that tempts a host into executing it, at which point the host is programmed to make copies of the code. Biological viruses have cells as hosts, and DNA or RNA as their program code. Computer viruses have computers as their hosts, and machine code as program code. Similarly, religions have minds as their hosts, with mind programs--ideas--as their program code.
The ultimate irony is that the Abrahamic religions don't believe in evolution, when it is precisely natural selection that led to their existence and dominance.
The song from the Moon is in the top 10 best NES songs on many lists. They need to make sure that they don't break it.
Capcom ruled NES music. The "SupraDarky" best video game music list has it at #40 - out of all systems' songs.
I hope Capcom is having IntiCreates make it.
How do you do anything about this when your district's congressman is completely opposite your views on almost every issue? Especially when you didn't vote for him. Any letter writing would go to the technologically-clueless equivalent of /dev/null.
A patent troll losing their case in Marshall, Texas?
This ROM has the pie factory level, but it has the NES title screen. How's that work? TFA says the 2010 ROM, but what's that from?
If the daughter finds them OK, what's wrong with it? Maybe she likes "girly" things.
This is a strange statement to make when the Standard Model is known to be incomplete since it does not factor in gravity. It clearly is not the final theory if any such thing can exist. I guess it may not meet your criteria for 'exotic' but to say physics is done is comically short sighted.
Physics is not done now, but that time seems to be approaching. It's very clear that diminishing returns has already taken its toll on physics - there are very few observable physical phenomena that we cannot currently explain.
Science of the 21st century will be less about discovering what we can do and more about what we can't. We'll find that that there aren't any radical exotic physics left to discover, cementing the fact that Star Trek will never exist no matter how far technology never advances, for there is no way around c. We'll also be doomed to never having a good energy solution.
That said, considerable advance in biomedicine and artificial intelligence will happen. Engineering and reverse engineering of the human body will continue to progress.
The saying that "any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is probably false: technology obeys thermodynamics. We as humans need to discuss what we want to do once science can no longer progress, something I fear will become true for our grandchildren.
The next big trend: "premium" support. Free access to a "community" support forum, where other users -- for free -- may or may not help. Then for bigger problems you can call a 1-900 number, or a 1-800 number to pay up with a credit card per incident. Maybe the Premium box set versions of their games includes one free incident resolution (expires 3 months from purchase, no guarantee they will actually fix the issue).
Isn't this how Microsoft support works for the most part?
Why is it that sometimes code names are better than the name of the final product? "Windows Blue" is a better name than simply "Windows 9". Similarly, "Xenon" was a better name than "Xbox 360".
Nintendo's fond of that, too. "Nitro" versus "DS", "Dolphin" versus "GameCube", "Revolution" versus "Wii".
Let me guess... they've gone further on their way to declare desktop applications as deprecated? With Windows 8, Microsoft has made it clear that it thinks that desktop applications are on their way out, and the only way to go is to make programs for Metro.
Oh, and I'll put this out there: won't run unsigned programs by default, though I suspect that this will be like OS X 10.8 and allow being turned off.
All part of boiling the frog.
In the US, he'd probably get 10 years in Club Fed. Mike Tyson went upstate for only 3 years for rape, so we know the priorities of our justice system.
We'll be getting results from the Pluto probe about the time this thing comes back up.
Cool. We'll need the LHC to analyze the mass relay under Charon's ice...
it's a mental illness
It's a virus - a communicable disease, not a normal mental illness. A virus is a chunk of program code that is so encapsulated that its host is encouraged to execute it, and once it is executed, reprograms the host to make more copies of the virus.
A biological virus's program code is DNA or RNA, and its hosts are cells. A computer virus's program code is machine language, and its hosts are the combination of the machine plus the operator being tricked into executing the virus. A religion's program code is a set of ideas, and its hosts are devices that execute such ideas: human brains.
The biggest irony to me is that the force behind religion is the same one they fight against: evolution. Religions that proselytized, encouraged higher reproduction rates, and programmed humans to fight those attacking the religion were better fit for survival than religions that did not.
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, from the Principia Mathematica:
"But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions."
- Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
I'm strongly atheist, yet I cannot dismiss the possibility that one or more gods created the Universe. It's not contradictory to science at all to say that it is possible for the entire set of physical laws to have been created by gods.
However, there is no evidence that any such God, should she exist, has ever influenced the Universe since its creation. From that follows the notion that any gods are outside our Universe, and therefore are irrelevant to our lives. Thus, a matter for philosophy rather than science.
Seriously? A patch to block root users from running kernel images? This is like how it works in Windows: applications not running as root aren't allowed to unsigned kernel code. What's the point of making root not root?
Is he going to disable the 50 other ways in which root programs could take over the kernel, too?
What if in fact there is no way at all to exceed c? It could mean that the only way to really explore the galaxy would be with generation ships or with machines. It would be a quite depressing discovery, for it would place limits on our imagination. "Science fiction" would pass into the category of "fantasy".
The only other possibility that would work is travel that is faster-than-light from your own perspective, but not from others' - time dilation. You could make a trip to another galaxy in a single lifetime, but it would be millions of years to everyone else.
I think that some of the biggest scientific discoveries to come will not be of possibilities, but of limitations. Not what we can do in the future, but what we can't. Humankind is going to have to live with this.
It seems as though we are rapidly approaching the day in which diseases have evolved to be resistant to any molecule we can come up with that doesn't also kill the host.
I wish that there were a way to tell your bank that all electronic access is to be essentially read-only. I would like to make my bank login only allow viewing account balances and transferring money among that bank's accounts, and not even allowing seeing a full account number. For anything else, I can go into a physical branch.
Such a scheme would reduce attacks to someone annoying me by emptying my checking account into my savings account, causing overdrafts. A lot better than someone stealing my money.
Using a bank to store your money really ought to be more secure than putting cash under your mattress. It kind of sucks that it's gotten to this.