However, I am currently in the market for a PDA for my mother to travel with, for 3 months, to Africa and Europe. She has just bought a nice new Digital camera with a 1GB SD card in it.
Here's why PDAs are important: SIZE AND WEIGHT!
For a 3-month trip, for a 70-year old woman every single gram of weight is important. A laptop is simply out of the question, as she'd throw the thing in the rubbish after 3 weeks, I'm sure.
What she needs is a device with the following attributes:
1) Small 2) Light 3) colour screen of at least half VGA resolution 4) hand writing recognition 5) WiFi 6) Bluetooth 7) At least 2GB of storage 9) Email 10) Web surfing 11) MP3 player 12) Diary/Blog functionality 13) SD card reader 14) Image slideshow 15) Screen orientation flip 16) Fast recharge 17) At least 6 hours battery life 18) Ability to open most "common" file formats: PDF, Word, Excel etc. 19) Voice recorder
Of lesser importance, and able to be performed by a different device are
1) Very small and light, yet full size keyboard 2) Ability to dial-up to the Internet via GSM or Analog cellular connection.
features which are currently not available but would be desirable:
1) Projector, such that the cigarette-packet size object can create a screen of 19" (or larger) size at resolution of at least 1280 mode. 2) Biometric security: finger print enables device after powerup. 3) User swappable battery - or preferably, methanol based fuel-cell.
Currently, I am leaning towards the PalmOne "LifeDrive" with 4GB of disc space, and the iTech Virtual Keyboard, which uses a low power laser to project the KB onto a surface.
I feel that these two devices, along with a bluetooth-enabled GSM cell phone (which she already has), coupled with the WiFi and Bluetooth offer a traveller unparalleled connectivity and productivity at a very low "footprint". When space and weight are considered, the PDA definitely has a niche, but in the future, as fuel-cells allow faster processors, it's only a matter of time til the PDA is a full-featured PC, with USB2.0, firewire, built-in cellphone, projector, and incorporates a VKB - all in a single device.
My only issue with doing that, is that your mirrors must have simply stupendous ability to adjust focal depth.
Nothing special about lasers. Just that if you aleardy have several sitting round on earth, doing not much in between launches, what else can you use them for to amortise the cost of them?
IANAE - so I do not know the engineering side of things. All I'm trying to point out at this juncture, is that Gigawatt-class lasers have a whole new range of applications - ALL of which are very useful, not just to the owners, but to humanity as a whole, and society in general.
This as opposed to the billions of dollars quite literally wasted by the Ballistic Missille Defence system which:
1) Can not possibly work as advertised. 2) Will NEVER perform ANY useful task EVER. 3) Will never be completed.
1) stand still. 2) begin walking. 3) measure speed after single step.
speed = cruising speed.
ipso facto: 1 revolution = cruising speed.
And in fact, it's more like HALF a revolution, because two steps is a full revolution.
Other animals can claim to achieve the same effect for their walking gait, but none can claim the efficiencies of the human gait, in terms of calories expended per kilogram carried per kilometres traveled.
(Only a fully laden 747 is more efficient than a man on a racing bicycle at the very top end of the graph.)
It's this sort of efficiency which enabled us to span the globe in a very short period of time. And when we talk about efficiency, we mean the level of difference which is expressed as "less than the calories contained in a packet of cookies spread over a single year".
Those sorts of differences are the difference between living and dying - and its our fortune that we have been fortunate in this regard.
What I am saying is that for humans, evolution is just about done with us. This because humans are the ultimate expression of Biology (disclaimer: SO FAR!) and it seems unlikely that evolutionary processes can advance the human species much beyond where we are right now.
For sure, we may lose a little toe, or become less hairy, or evolve skin which is less prone to carcinomas... but this is little more than window dressing.
True, evolution does not have a "purpose" except in so far as evolution has always led to increased complexity. When I say "evolution used gravity" - what I mean is that evolution applies not just to biological systems, but to the entire universe, and evolution has "used" different tools as part of the ongoing process of evolution. Gravity has been used, Fusion explosions inside supernovae have been "used", and "survival of the fittest" has been used.
Each paradigm on the evolutionary ladder, gets evolution to the next rung. Evolution doesn't stop at each rung, and rungs of the past don't stop evolving - but evolution's natural course is for increasing complexity. My argument is that humans are about as complex as Biology can make us - and there are already a ton of evolutionary compromises within our body. Some of these are women who can barely run due to the size of the birth canal, and a VERY long childhood - which allows our brains to grow to their maximum size.
In that humans are at the cusp of creating new entities using technology, it's logical to assume that the torch of evolution is about to be passed to the next paradigm of increasing complexity: hardware.
Because hardware can be modified at will, and in increasingly shorter time spans (Google : "The Singularity" where the rate of change of technology becomes impossibel for a human to keep up with), the "generations" required for previous evolutionary improvements drop to time frames where the rate of change rapidly becomes too fast for (unassisted) humans to follow.
The "childhood" of an AI is going to be measured in seconds and minutes, rather than years - and the next generation of hardware will come 24 months later.
Once humans are removed from the entire process (which is a surety if humans survive to the 22nd century) then evolution will have "done with us".
Evolution has performed some amazing experiments: when it got its "hands" on DNA, it promptly experimented with the limits of the new paradigm: (See Diplodocus, and other sauropods) until it settled on the best form for our environment: humans.
This isn't to say that super intelligent theropods could not be reading/. right now if things had gone slightly differently on earth: evolution doesn't care - and humans are the luckiest creatures ever: we have won the lottery of life, and are conveniently at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
No, I can't believe any alien race would be silly enough to telegraph their actions in such a way. The energy bill dopesn't make sense.
Of course, in any interstellar conflict, the advantage is always going to be on the side which has more energy and better tech.
Frankly, if aliens are anything like us (and of course, they might be!)... well, we wouldn't attack a planet until we were 100% sure we'd take very few losses, and our victory would be overwhelming. We're lazy, and scared, so we don't tend to fight in situations where we are not sure of the outcome.
If bug-eyed aliens try to attack our solar system, the only chance we'd have is if their tech is only slightly more advanced than our own. Otherwise we'd be facing simply stunning energy weapons which would be measured in the PetaWatt range or greater. Maybe advanced aliens can cause the sun to send out Coronal Mass Ejections such that the earth gets toasted. We would not have any defence against that.
What I'm saying is that having the ABILITY to pour hundreds of gigawatts of infra-red laser light into the space around earth makes us a different proposition to a civilisation which can NOT. Hell, who knows, maybe the interplanetary definition of "civilised" is "able to protect one's planet from NEOs"?
I mean, we're talking about "Type I" civilisations here - and we are still a "Type 0". We couldn't face a Type I opponent.
Holding big guns simply says "Hey, we aren't sheep. Please don't mess with us."
Yep, I'm sure the destructive power of a gigwatt focused on an area say 1.5 metres across (With a starting beam of 1.0 metres in diameter) is liable to just "blow shit up" rather than melt it. It's the air trapped inside what you are heating which does the damage I'm sure.
However, the "surgical" part is relative: a lot less damaging than dropping a Daisy Cutter, or a MOAB bomb on something. But the real advantage of this kind of orbital assault is that they never see it coming, nothing can stop it (although clouds may reduce its efficiency), you can't protect against it for long (even mirrors will break down rapidly under such a pounding), and there's probably no limit to the amount of time the energy can be focused on a single spot. Eventually, enough energy would be expended to literally create a magma lake around your target.
Not if we detect it first, and turn the lasers on it, focusing say, 100 launchers directly at the thing. That'd be enough to deflect all but the very largest asteroid...
Diverting space rocks for combat seems like a poor use of energy, and a method which lets your target see it coming a LONG time before it hits.
In this regard, it's probably most effective as a terror/worry weapon, than as a device to pound a planet's surface.
The BMDS (Ballistic Missile Defence System) is fulfilling all its objectives perfectly: namely, providing pork in the states where the system is made and "tested".
There's certainly no question that the BDMS can never work as sold to the American people: you just can't hit missiles with other missiles in any reliable way. Not unless the target sends signals to say "shoot me".
Well, I'm all for megawatt class lasers - as this means the technology is about 1/1000th of the way towards using lasers for something useful: Beamed Laser Launching of hardware into space.
Liek Myrabo of http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ has been developing beamed power launch technology for some years now. In my correspondence with him, he has estimated that a 1-ton payload can be launched into low earth orbit using a 1-Gigawatt class pulsed laser cannon.
This ground-based launcher is the ultimate tool, and if you build a ring of them around your country, you can be pretty well assured of having utter domination of not just the sky above you, but the skies above everywhere. The first to deploy the network wins the game!
There is almost no end of uses for this array of gigawatt laser cannons:
1) Beamed Laser launcher, with total cost to orbit of just cents per kilo.
2) Inbound missile melter, extraordinaire.
3) Extreme Bug-eyed alien tamer. Unfriendly invaders might think twice before tangling with a species capable of focusing better than 100 Gigawatts of energy at inbound bogies.
4) Surgical Strike weapon par excellence. Reflected back to earth via large space-based mirrors allows you to wave the thing in a decreasing spiral which will turn your neighbours house to molten slag, but barely singe your fence.
5) Galaxies' brightest Search and Rescue spotlight: defocused in orbit, and reflected to earth to illuminate areas currently under search and rescue operations.
6) Illuminate work sites on the moon during the long luna night. Defocused to make a nice night light back on earth.
7) Interplanetary messaging system: embed knowledge into the beam, and send it to likely looking planets. Long term payoff - unknown.
8) Asteroid deflection device: light pressure alone is enough to deflect an inbound near earth object. Just 2cm/s velocity change is enough to deflect most inbounds.
9) Interstallar probe launcher: lightsail driven robot craft accelerated to a decent %age of light speed in fairly short order.
I'm sure there are other uses too - but these would seem to be the obvious ones.
I'm sorry, but ANY list of "good extensions" which doesn't include EASYGESTURES is simply some nerd's favourites - and not an ACTUAL list of good extensions.
EASYGESTURES is the greatest aid to navigating the web since the invention of the hyperlink. There simply is no substitute for opening multiple tabs in the background: it improves the speed and amount of information available to you, in a way which does not cause any waiting.
Every single person I have taught to use Easygestures (and this includes 8-year olds to an 88-year old!) admits that it is "the best thing anyone ever taught me about the Internet".
I'm all gung-ho for my early cyborg action (I already have several implants in my body - mostly to fix broken parts though unfortunately) but ideally, one would bypass the limitations of biology in favour of hardware.
I'd like to have an eagle body, a dolphin body and a human/android body. Of course, they'd be indistinguishable from the originals except for toughness, and ability.
Yep - there's no such think as a missing link. There might have been in the past, but morphological properties allow us to make the connections without having to see all the transitional forms in between. As parent noted: Ambulocetus was predicted by evolution, and then it was found pretty much oin the form predicted, with the bony structures of the inner ear as predicted, in the geological strata at the date predicted - so there's nothing new about evolution proving its own efficacy.
It might be exciting for scientists to actually discover a predicted fossil (well, of course it is!) but us mere mortals don't need to see it to know the truth: we have seen mud skippers on mud flats. We have seen an eel a kilometre from water in the middle of a field, wriggling to the next waterway. We've learned that Inter-tidal zone animals are extremely tough, and can survive long periods of exposure to the extremely hard environment of "air".
So this isn't exactly surprising.
What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture". I am very interested in seeing this thing - so where the bloody hell is it?
I bother to fuck because it is enjoyable, not just because it is a biological imperative. I assume your "why fucking bother" is an oblique and cunning allusion to evolutionary processes, rather than the frustrated ravings of a complete idiot and an utter fool.
In answer to your question though:
1) Natural Selection has already run its course, that's why.
2) Because humans have an inate desire to improve themselves by any means possible, that's why.
Evolution has used many tools over the last 14 or so billion years to advance itself. It used gravity to collapse gas clouds into suns, and supernova feces, similarly, into planets, then it used other laws of physics and chemistry to create planets like Earth. Survival of the fittest was evolution's tool during the emergence of creatures on Earth, and to create homo sapiens sapiens.
Natural Selection is much reduced now - and so is survival of the fittest to a large degree. (Although those genuinely unable to survive are auto-aborted early in a pregnancy - an effect of survival of the fittest.)
From natural selection and survival of the fittest, evolution is now turning its attention to Un-natural selection (or "technoselection" if you will), whereby humans are improved via the use of technology. Ultimately, this may lead to several different species of humans, and a far wider definition of "human".
Ultimately of course, biology is a dead-end for evolution, and it seems likely to me that humans as we are now, are pretty much as far as biology can go. (It doesn't seem credible to think that bio-engineering could add infra-red ability to the human eye, add 100 petabytes of fault-free storage to the brain, create bones which will knit in an hour, harden bone until it's like metal, allow RF signals to be intercepted by the brain, or allow back-ups to be created should the worst occur.)
The limits of biology are well known, and it's obvious to me, that unless we find a way to move humanity from biology into hardware, that evolution will leave humanity behind, and we'll be destined to the fate suffered by other evolutionary dead ends.
If we don't pick up the mantle, I believe our self-aware creations will, and either way, this will lead to the pace of evolution kicking up yet another notch.
Each stage of evolution, and each paradigm of evolution has taken roughly half as long to achieve its goals as the preceding paradigm. The paradigm of technology removes almost all constraints from the rate of change in technology, and hence evolution can increase its pace at a rate more suited to the paradigm.
This is the start of something wonderful. The Auditory nerves have already been hacked, and we are well down the path towards providing 1,024 channels of sound to persons who have lost their hearing due to ear damage, or malformed ear hardware.
Hacking the Optic Nerve is the Next Big Thing because humans get 90% of all sensory input via the optic nerve. Once you've cracked that you're 90% of the way towards very, very advanced cyborgs, with the 'net being ubiquitously available, and displaying as a HUD-type device over our normal vision, or as a 6 foot screen when the eyes are closed.
Simultaneous to these developments, we are already taking steps towards being able to offer ages people perfect memories again, by the introduction of the artificial hippocampus. (To my knowledge there are no people, as yet, with this device, but it works in Rats)
Having the ability to crack the "memory code" of our brains with a better hippocampus, and allowing our brains to use external storage ("wet-wiring"?), coupled with optic and auditory nerve implants is going to allow humans to improve themselves mentally beyond the limits which evolution, chemistry and brain size have created.
I can't wait for my implants!
I hope they won't run windows Brain-Edition though.
Didn't Qurio claim to be the world's first "running" robot?
I always thought Qurio was great: push him over and no matter what orientation he ends up in, he can get back to his feet again. I think it's not too far away that after they get up off the ground, they come over and slap you for pushing them over...
As to the whole walking thing - it's a fascinating topic I think:
1) walking is a controlled fall, the only thing preventing you from going face-first into the pavement is that next foot fall.
2) Maximum cruising speed is attained in a single revolution. No other animal or engine can claim the same (AFAIK).
Actually, that isn't really true. The annual shuttle costs vary very little, regardless of how many times it/they fly per year. If only one flight happens, then, simplistically, you say that a shuttle flight costs 8 Billion or so. If 5 fly, then it's 1.6 billion per flight. Those numbers are WAY too high for any kind of program which makes any sense, but since when has the shuttle made any sense?
Actually flying the shuttle adds very little cost to the overall shuttle budget. The vast majority of costs are tied up on the ground, and don't depend on the thing actually making orbit. This is the real tragedy for NASA, because while the shuttle isn't flying, they're still paying the same annual rate as when it IS flying.
You are an idiot. Of course you can ask for your money back if a mechanic mucks up trying to fix your car. The analogy you draw is perfect, because it highlights the EXACT reason why you can't get your money back from a doctor. Here's why.
1) EVERY car of the same model is IDENTICAL and they ALL come with the SAME WORKSHOP MANUAL.
So, what fixes a broken bulb in a headlight in one car, will fix the exact same issue in a car of the same model and year. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
2) EVERY person is DIFFERENT and we do NOT come with a "Workshop Manual".
What might repair Person A's eyesight problem doesn't work for Person B at all, and for Person C it actually makes things worse! What Doctor's can *usually* says is that Treatment X will help Y% of people, do nothing for Z% of people, and hurt S% of people. See?
This is the exact reason it takes an awful lot longer to become a doctor, than it does to become a mechanic. All a mechanic has to do is learn some basic principles, be able to read a workshop manual and follow instructions. It aint like that for a Doctor. At University you "learn" the "workshop manual" for the majority of people. Unfortunately, even this "generic" manual COMES WITH ENTIRE PAGES WHICH ARE COMPLETELY BLANK!
I have many physician friends, and to a man (and to a woman) they all wish the same thing: that every person born, comes with their own, customised owners manual, and workshop manual. If they did, being a doctor wouldn't be much harder than being a mechanic. The only difference would be cleaner working conditions, and nicer finger nails.
Given the failure of the NZ Labour government to make a single decent decision in Wellington, in the last 6 years, I consider it exceedingly unlikely that ICANN can do any better there.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA
However, I am currently in the market for a PDA for my mother to travel with, for 3 months, to Africa and Europe. She has just bought a nice new Digital camera with a 1GB SD card in it.
Here's why PDAs are important: SIZE AND WEIGHT!
For a 3-month trip, for a 70-year old woman every single gram of weight is important. A laptop is simply out of the question, as she'd throw the thing in the rubbish after 3 weeks, I'm sure.
What she needs is a device with the following attributes:
1) Small
2) Light
3) colour screen of at least half VGA resolution
4) hand writing recognition
5) WiFi
6) Bluetooth
7) At least 2GB of storage
9) Email
10) Web surfing
11) MP3 player
12) Diary/Blog functionality
13) SD card reader
14) Image slideshow
15) Screen orientation flip
16) Fast recharge
17) At least 6 hours battery life
18) Ability to open most "common" file formats: PDF, Word, Excel etc.
19) Voice recorder
Of lesser importance, and able to be performed by a different device are
1) Very small and light, yet full size keyboard
2) Ability to dial-up to the Internet via GSM or Analog cellular connection.
features which are currently not available but would be desirable:
1) Projector, such that the cigarette-packet size object can create a screen of 19" (or larger) size at resolution of at least 1280 mode.
2) Biometric security: finger print enables device after powerup.
3) User swappable battery - or preferably, methanol based fuel-cell.
Currently, I am leaning towards the PalmOne "LifeDrive" with 4GB of disc space, and the iTech Virtual Keyboard, which uses a low power laser to project the KB onto a surface.
I feel that these two devices, along with a bluetooth-enabled GSM cell phone (which she already has), coupled with the WiFi and Bluetooth offer a traveller unparalleled connectivity and productivity at a very low "footprint". When space and weight are considered, the PDA definitely has a niche, but in the future, as fuel-cells allow faster processors, it's only a matter of time til the PDA is a full-featured PC, with USB2.0, firewire, built-in cellphone, projector, and incorporates a VKB - all in a single device.
Can I order mine now please?
Strange, the typo almost makes some kind of sense.
I think you mean "losing".
"Loosing" must be some weird way of "letting things out" - like: "Let loose the dogs of war"
Yes, that's fine.
But, how do I get the top off the freaking bottle??
SURE! Why Not?
My only issue with doing that, is that your mirrors must have simply stupendous ability to adjust focal depth.
Nothing special about lasers. Just that if you aleardy have several sitting round on earth, doing not much in between launches, what else can you use them for to amortise the cost of them?
IANAE - so I do not know the engineering side of things. All I'm trying to point out at this juncture, is that Gigawatt-class lasers have a whole new range of applications - ALL of which are very useful, not just to the owners, but to humanity as a whole, and society in general.
This as opposed to the billions of dollars quite literally wasted by the Ballistic Missille Defence system which:
1) Can not possibly work as advertised.
2) Will NEVER perform ANY useful task EVER.
3) Will never be completed.
Not running: walking.
1) stand still.
2) begin walking.
3) measure speed after single step.
speed = cruising speed.
ipso facto: 1 revolution = cruising speed.
And in fact, it's more like HALF a revolution, because two steps is a full revolution.
Other animals can claim to achieve the same effect for their walking gait, but none can claim the efficiencies of the human gait, in terms of calories expended per kilogram carried per kilometres traveled.
(Only a fully laden 747 is more efficient than a man on a racing bicycle at the very top end of the graph.)
It's this sort of efficiency which enabled us to span the globe in a very short period of time. And when we talk about efficiency, we mean the level of difference which is expressed as "less than the calories contained in a packet of cookies spread over a single year".
Those sorts of differences are the difference between living and dying - and its our fortune that we have been fortunate in this regard.
Short post... sorry.
/. right now if things had gone slightly differently on earth: evolution doesn't care - and humans are the luckiest creatures ever: we have won the lottery of life, and are conveniently at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
No, I understand evolutionary theory pretty well.
What I am saying is that for humans, evolution is just about done with us. This because humans are the ultimate expression of Biology (disclaimer: SO FAR!) and it seems unlikely that evolutionary processes can advance the human species much beyond where we are right now.
For sure, we may lose a little toe, or become less hairy, or evolve skin which is less prone to carcinomas... but this is little more than window dressing.
True, evolution does not have a "purpose" except in so far as evolution has always led to increased complexity. When I say "evolution used gravity" - what I mean is that evolution applies not just to biological systems, but to the entire universe, and evolution has "used" different tools as part of the ongoing process of evolution. Gravity has been used, Fusion explosions inside supernovae have been "used", and "survival of the fittest" has been used.
Each paradigm on the evolutionary ladder, gets evolution to the next rung. Evolution doesn't stop at each rung, and rungs of the past don't stop evolving - but evolution's natural course is for increasing complexity. My argument is that humans are about as complex as Biology can make us - and there are already a ton of evolutionary compromises within our body. Some of these are women who can barely run due to the size of the birth canal, and a VERY long childhood - which allows our brains to grow to their maximum size.
In that humans are at the cusp of creating new entities using technology, it's logical to assume that the torch of evolution is about to be passed to the next paradigm of increasing complexity: hardware.
Because hardware can be modified at will, and in increasingly shorter time spans (Google : "The Singularity" where the rate of change of technology becomes impossibel for a human to keep up with), the "generations" required for previous evolutionary improvements drop to time frames where the rate of change rapidly becomes too fast for (unassisted) humans to follow.
The "childhood" of an AI is going to be measured in seconds and minutes, rather than years - and the next generation of hardware will come 24 months later.
Once humans are removed from the entire process (which is a surety if humans survive to the 22nd century) then evolution will have "done with us".
Evolution has performed some amazing experiments: when it got its "hands" on DNA, it promptly experimented with the limits of the new paradigm: (See Diplodocus, and other sauropods) until it settled on the best form for our environment: humans.
This isn't to say that super intelligent theropods could not be reading
Or so we think...
No, I can't believe any alien race would be silly enough to telegraph their actions in such a way. The energy bill dopesn't make sense.
Of course, in any interstellar conflict, the advantage is always going to be on the side which has more energy and better tech.
Frankly, if aliens are anything like us (and of course, they might be!)... well, we wouldn't attack a planet until we were 100% sure we'd take very few losses, and our victory would be overwhelming. We're lazy, and scared, so we don't tend to fight in situations where we are not sure of the outcome.
If bug-eyed aliens try to attack our solar system, the only chance we'd have is if their tech is only slightly more advanced than our own. Otherwise we'd be facing simply stunning energy weapons which would be measured in the PetaWatt range or greater. Maybe advanced aliens can cause the sun to send out Coronal Mass Ejections such that the earth gets toasted. We would not have any defence against that.
What I'm saying is that having the ABILITY to pour hundreds of gigawatts of infra-red laser light into the space around earth makes us a different proposition to a civilisation which can NOT. Hell, who knows, maybe the interplanetary definition of "civilised" is "able to protect one's planet from NEOs"?
I mean, we're talking about "Type I" civilisations here - and we are still a "Type 0". We couldn't face a Type I opponent.
Holding big guns simply says "Hey, we aren't sheep. Please don't mess with us."
Yep, I'm sure the destructive power of a gigwatt focused on an area say 1.5 metres across (With a starting beam of 1.0 metres in diameter) is liable to just "blow shit up" rather than melt it. It's the air trapped inside what you are heating which does the damage I'm sure.
However, the "surgical" part is relative: a lot less damaging than dropping a Daisy Cutter, or a MOAB bomb on something. But the real advantage of this kind of orbital assault is that they never see it coming, nothing can stop it (although clouds may reduce its efficiency), you can't protect against it for long (even mirrors will break down rapidly under such a pounding), and there's probably no limit to the amount of time the energy can be focused on a single spot. Eventually, enough energy would be expended to literally create a magma lake around your target.
Not if we detect it first, and turn the lasers on it, focusing say, 100 launchers directly at the thing. That'd be enough to deflect all but the very largest asteroid...
Diverting space rocks for combat seems like a poor use of energy, and a method which lets your target see it coming a LONG time before it hits.
In this regard, it's probably most effective as a terror/worry weapon, than as a device to pound a planet's surface.
The BMDS (Ballistic Missile Defence System) is fulfilling all its objectives perfectly: namely, providing pork in the states where the system is made and "tested".
There's certainly no question that the BDMS can never work as sold to the American people: you just can't hit missiles with other missiles in any reliable way. Not unless the target sends signals to say "shoot me".
Well, I'm all for megawatt class lasers - as this means the technology is about 1/1000th of the way towards using lasers for something useful: Beamed Laser Launching of hardware into space.
Liek Myrabo of http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ has been developing beamed power launch technology for some years now. In my correspondence with him, he has estimated that a 1-ton payload can be launched into low earth orbit using a 1-Gigawatt class pulsed laser cannon.
This ground-based launcher is the ultimate tool, and if you build a ring of them around your country, you can be pretty well assured of having utter domination of not just the sky above you, but the skies above everywhere. The first to deploy the network wins the game!
There is almost no end of uses for this array of gigawatt laser cannons:
1) Beamed Laser launcher, with total cost to orbit of just cents per kilo.
2) Inbound missile melter, extraordinaire.
3) Extreme Bug-eyed alien tamer. Unfriendly invaders might think twice before tangling with a species capable of focusing better than 100 Gigawatts of energy at inbound bogies.
4) Surgical Strike weapon par excellence. Reflected back to earth via large space-based mirrors allows you to wave the thing in a decreasing spiral which will turn your neighbours house to molten slag, but barely singe your fence.
5) Galaxies' brightest Search and Rescue spotlight: defocused in orbit, and reflected to earth to illuminate areas currently under search and rescue operations.
6) Illuminate work sites on the moon during the long luna night. Defocused to make a nice night light back on earth.
7) Interplanetary messaging system: embed knowledge into the beam, and send it to likely looking planets. Long term payoff - unknown.
8) Asteroid deflection device: light pressure alone is enough to deflect an inbound near earth object. Just 2cm/s velocity change is enough to deflect most inbounds.
9) Interstallar probe launcher: lightsail driven robot craft accelerated to a decent %age of light speed in fairly short order.
I'm sure there are other uses too - but these would seem to be the obvious ones.
I'm sorry, but ANY list of "good extensions" which doesn't include EASYGESTURES is simply some nerd's favourites - and not an ACTUAL list of good extensions.
EASYGESTURES is the greatest aid to navigating the web since the invention of the hyperlink. There simply is no substitute for opening multiple tabs in the background: it improves the speed and amount of information available to you, in a way which does not cause any waiting.
Every single person I have taught to use Easygestures (and this includes 8-year olds to an 88-year old!) admits that it is "the best thing anyone ever taught me about the Internet".
So what are you waiting for? http://easygestures.mozdev.org/
I just want a planet with two cores now.
I'm all gung-ho for my early cyborg action (I already have several implants in my body - mostly to fix broken parts though unfortunately) but ideally, one would bypass the limitations of biology in favour of hardware.
I'd like to have an eagle body, a dolphin body and a human/android body. Of course, they'd be indistinguishable from the originals except for toughness, and ability.
If I could MOD you up, I would!
Yep - there's no such think as a missing link. There might have been in the past, but morphological properties allow us to make the connections without having to see all the transitional forms in between. As parent noted: Ambulocetus was predicted by evolution, and then it was found pretty much oin the form predicted, with the bony structures of the inner ear as predicted, in the geological strata at the date predicted - so there's nothing new about evolution proving its own efficacy.
It might be exciting for scientists to actually discover a predicted fossil (well, of course it is!) but us mere mortals don't need to see it to know the truth: we have seen mud skippers on mud flats. We have seen an eel a kilometre from water in the middle of a field, wriggling to the next waterway. We've learned that Inter-tidal zone animals are extremely tough, and can survive long periods of exposure to the extremely hard environment of "air".
So this isn't exactly surprising.
What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture". I am very interested in seeing this thing - so where the bloody hell is it?
I bother to fuck because it is enjoyable, not just because it is a biological imperative. I assume your "why fucking bother" is an oblique and cunning allusion to evolutionary processes, rather than the frustrated ravings of a complete idiot and an utter fool.
In answer to your question though:
1) Natural Selection has already run its course, that's why.
2) Because humans have an inate desire to improve themselves by any means possible, that's why.
Evolution has used many tools over the last 14 or so billion years to advance itself. It used gravity to collapse gas clouds into suns, and supernova feces, similarly, into planets, then it used other laws of physics and chemistry to create planets like Earth. Survival of the fittest was evolution's tool during the emergence of creatures on Earth, and to create homo sapiens sapiens.
Natural Selection is much reduced now - and so is survival of the fittest to a large degree. (Although those genuinely unable to survive are auto-aborted early in a pregnancy - an effect of survival of the fittest.)
From natural selection and survival of the fittest, evolution is now turning its attention to Un-natural selection (or "technoselection" if you will), whereby humans are improved via the use of technology. Ultimately, this may lead to several different species of humans, and a far wider definition of "human".
Ultimately of course, biology is a dead-end for evolution, and it seems likely to me that humans as we are now, are pretty much as far as biology can go. (It doesn't seem credible to think that bio-engineering could add infra-red ability to the human eye, add 100 petabytes of fault-free storage to the brain, create bones which will knit in an hour, harden bone until it's like metal, allow RF signals to be intercepted by the brain, or allow back-ups to be created should the worst occur.)
The limits of biology are well known, and it's obvious to me, that unless we find a way to move humanity from biology into hardware, that evolution will leave humanity behind, and we'll be destined to the fate suffered by other evolutionary dead ends.
If we don't pick up the mantle, I believe our self-aware creations will, and either way, this will lead to the pace of evolution kicking up yet another notch.
Each stage of evolution, and each paradigm of evolution has taken roughly half as long to achieve its goals as the preceding paradigm. The paradigm of technology removes almost all constraints from the rate of change in technology, and hence evolution can increase its pace at a rate more suited to the paradigm.
This is the start of something wonderful. The Auditory nerves have already been hacked, and we are well down the path towards providing 1,024 channels of sound to persons who have lost their hearing due to ear damage, or malformed ear hardware.
Hacking the Optic Nerve is the Next Big Thing because humans get 90% of all sensory input via the optic nerve. Once you've cracked that you're 90% of the way towards very, very advanced cyborgs, with the 'net being ubiquitously available, and displaying as a HUD-type device over our normal vision, or as a 6 foot screen when the eyes are closed.
Simultaneous to these developments, we are already taking steps towards being able to offer ages people perfect memories again, by the introduction of the artificial hippocampus. (To my knowledge there are no people, as yet, with this device, but it works in Rats)
Having the ability to crack the "memory code" of our brains with a better hippocampus, and allowing our brains to use external storage ("wet-wiring"?), coupled with optic and auditory nerve implants is going to allow humans to improve themselves mentally beyond the limits which evolution, chemistry and brain size have created.
I can't wait for my implants!
I hope they won't run windows Brain-Edition though.
I concur. They're the wrong trousers indeed.
Didn't Qurio claim to be the world's first "running" robot?
I always thought Qurio was great: push him over and no matter what orientation he ends up in, he can get back to his feet again. I think it's not too far away that after they get up off the ground, they come over and slap you for pushing them over...
As to the whole walking thing - it's a fascinating topic I think:
1) walking is a controlled fall, the only thing preventing you from going face-first into the pavement is that next foot fall.
2) Maximum cruising speed is attained in a single revolution. No other animal or engine can claim the same (AFAIK).
Um, yeah, It is.
W seems to enjoy it, but others don't seem to appreciate his efforts in this endeavour.
I'm a MiniDisc guy. I've always been.
:P
Interesting, interesting. Mind explaining that?
Oh wait, that's right, you were in nappies when the Sony Walkman Cassette player was around.
Actually, that isn't really true. The annual shuttle costs vary very little, regardless of how many times it/they fly per year. If only one flight happens, then, simplistically, you say that a shuttle flight costs 8 Billion or so. If 5 fly, then it's 1.6 billion per flight. Those numbers are WAY too high for any kind of program which makes any sense, but since when has the shuttle made any sense?
Actually flying the shuttle adds very little cost to the overall shuttle budget. The vast majority of costs are tied up on the ground, and don't depend on the thing actually making orbit. This is the real tragedy for NASA, because while the shuttle isn't flying, they're still paying the same annual rate as when it IS flying.
You are an idiot. Of course you can ask for your money back if a mechanic mucks up trying to fix your car. The analogy you draw is perfect, because it highlights the EXACT reason why you can't get your money back from a doctor. Here's why.
1) EVERY car of the same model is IDENTICAL and they ALL come with the SAME WORKSHOP MANUAL.
So, what fixes a broken bulb in a headlight in one car, will fix the exact same issue in a car of the same model and year. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
2) EVERY person is DIFFERENT and we do NOT come with a "Workshop Manual".
What might repair Person A's eyesight problem doesn't work for Person B at all, and for Person C it actually makes things worse! What Doctor's can *usually* says is that Treatment X will help Y% of people, do nothing for Z% of people, and hurt S% of people. See?
This is the exact reason it takes an awful lot longer to become a doctor, than it does to become a mechanic. All a mechanic has to do is learn some basic principles, be able to read a workshop manual and follow instructions. It aint like that for a Doctor. At University you "learn" the "workshop manual" for the majority of people. Unfortunately, even this "generic" manual COMES WITH ENTIRE PAGES WHICH ARE COMPLETELY BLANK!
I have many physician friends, and to a man (and to a woman) they all wish the same thing: that every person born, comes with their own, customised owners manual, and workshop manual. If they did, being a doctor wouldn't be much harder than being a mechanic. The only difference would be cleaner working conditions, and nicer finger nails.
"Pirx the Pilot" held me spellbound.
A+ No.1 Supar SF. 3 thumbs up.
Given the failure of the NZ Labour government to make a single decent decision in Wellington, in the last 6 years, I consider it exceedingly unlikely that ICANN can do any better there.