What interests me here is his claim that we don't know much about life. And I guess there's a large element of truth here.
If you take a person who has just died, and look at any one of their billions of cells, you will find that they are ALL still "alive"; consuming oxygen, things moving around in them; proteins being formed... until the oxygen runs out.
So, you are in the curious state of being dead, while almost all of your cells are still clinically alive. It's quite fascinating really.
From these facts, we can reliable assert that human life is not dependent on cellular activity. There is a lot more to it than that.
Additionally, we now know that resuscitating humans who are "dead" (cold water near drowning, heart attack etc.) re-introduces oxygen, and it's the ocygen which actually kills you.
At what point does oxygen become the thing which kills you during a resus' event?
Are there ways to "immunize" a "dead" person so that re-animation is possible without brain death or cellular suicide due to rapid infusion of O2?
If we learn to re-animate people by immunizing them prior to resus', at what point after traditional "death" is a body no longer able to be revived? What does that say about the "time of death" or even how to declare someone "dead"?
Given the ENORMOUS gulf between 1900 and 2000, you could reanimate a person who died in 1908, and it would take them very little effort at all to adjust to 21st century life.
Do you think if you were frozen now, you'd have trouble being resurrected in 2028? I think not. You'd love it.
Humans are like that: adaptable.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say you could resurrect an ancient Sumerian person with little or no difficulties.
The situation would be no different to bringing a Papuan to New York city. They might not like it much, but they'd adjust pretty quickly.
I believe that collapsing the equation results in the number of civilisations in our galaxy being the same number as the number of years those civilisations last.
That puts the upper bound in our galaxy at the number of years we consider ourselves to be civilised. So, the answer (arguably) is "zero" civilisations in our galaxy, including us, because we aren't civilised yet.
I put the number (personally) at less than 50, and most likely less than 2, ourselves included.
Sorry but no. The launch requirements of hubble were quite specific: It was shuttle or nothing. No ELV could have launched it, because it was designed for shuttle launch.
A different telescope could have been launched via some hypothetical heavy lift vehicle you didn't have then and don't have now. But not Hubble.
Sorry: Only Shuttle was capable of lifting Hubble. It was designed to fit inside the shuttle's payload bay.
Sure, it could have been designed for another class of lifter, but it wasn't. If the shuttle had died after Hubble was built, it'd be nothing but a curiosity in a space museum somewhere.
Sorry - these guys should have spoken to some paraglider or hang glider pilots before their study. What they would have been told is that at wind speeds exceeding about 5 knots at ground level, cows and horses put their tails into the wind, and keep their heads downwind.
I have used cow-filled paddocks as excellent wind socks on numerous occasions: if cows are NOT aligned in any particular direction, then I know winds are lighter than 5 knots, and I look for other tell-tales of wind direction (smoke, or dust mainly).
At over 5 knots though, cows are extremely reliable, and I have never suffered a downwind landing after checking the cow-orientation of a nearby field.
You got marked as a troll for this. Yet you are 100% correct. How very sad.
How very very sad that Americans, who led the space race, and used to make the best cars in the world, now couldn't build a car to save themselves, and after building the stupendous Saturn 5, now find themselves incapable of building a basic launcher (based on 50 year old "techomology") without fucking it up badly.
No wonder 'Merka is in trouble everywhere it looks.
Games in New Zealand are usually in the $120 range for new releases. Most new games suck donkey testicles. These are the facts. (Developers take note).
I'll DL/Torrent the whole game before I buy.
If it's a good game, and if I need a valid key to play online, and I see myself playing the game a bit, then I'll get online and buy the thing from an overseas supplier to avoid paying the retarded price in New Zealand.
Mostly though, the games I torrent end up having 2 hours of game play, and then I'll dump it, because it's crap.
Often, I spend a great deal of time looking for resources for the game online. Developers seem to think a 6-page PDF is enough of a manual for a game, but that's bullshit. Usually I have no idea how to play, and even finding out what to do can take hours. When this happens, and I don't find a really good fan-built resource or active online community which can answer my questions, then I give up in disgust.
Tip for Developers: engage one of your DEV team to create a "X-HELP" web site, where X is the name of the game. Assume NOTHING when assembling the site. Treat a player like they have never played a game before. Make a link to the site from within the game.
Try looking for Descent 3 Help, or D3 Help to see what I did for the old game. That's what's required (and more).
Here's a tip: if you think your game is going to be predominantly played online, then give the game away for free, but charge for an online gameplay key.
Here's some general tips for game devs to avoid fucking off potential purchasers:
Don't disable normal functionality in a game. I swear, No wonder people hate paying for games when developers stops a scroll wheel from scrolling a list of options!
When I click the EXIT GAME button, it's because I want to exit the fucking game! I do not want to see a stupid fucking dialog saying "Are you sure you want to exit the game?" Because I wouldn't have clicked the fucking button unless I was sure!
Allow the game to run in a window for fuck's sake!
Allow me to alt-tab out of the game without it crashing. AAAARGH!
Don't fuck with my mouse settings! If my middle button is double-click then let me use it!
Let me re-assign EVERY control in the game. I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE!
Let me use any god-damn controller I want! If I want to use a Magic-Orb from 1996, then let me do it! If I want to use a steering wheel to play Quake, then that's my choice, NOT YOURS!
Let me create customised commands using macros WITH A NICE INTERFACE.
Don't make your game in OpenGL: ATI cards suck for GL!
Let me turn off the fucking annoying splash screens and revolting adverts EACH AND EVERY TIME THE GAME STARTS. If you want me to pay for a game, stop making me watch adverts for the fucking thing! AARGH.
Make it possible to disable an Antivirus scanner, or simply prevent scans from taking place when your game is running. How hard can it be???
Close all military bases outside the USA. Pull all troops out of all countries.
Cut military spending to no more than 200 Billion/year. Do not adjust this figure for inflation.
Stop the war on drugs.
Decriminalise ALL drugs (Plus release the drug USER convicts from jail)
Hike income tax
Increase NASA's Budget to 200 Billion a year. Change their charter to exploration, research and manned missions ONLY. Commission Mars orbiting "Castles", and put 100+ people on Mars permanently. Commission a Europa life seeking mission with Cryobot. Send at least 2 rovers to Titan.
Fund EMC^2 to 500 Million dollars funding to produce Fusion Reactor prototype
Destroy the Ballistic Missile Defense System, and cancel all such future projects. Commission 2 Billion dollars of research (in Year 1) for Beamed Laser Launching techniques, and look at space-based mirrors to make ultimate strike weapon (add another 10 or 20 missions to this project as it matures. Use it for laser launching of solar sailed craft to Proxima Centauri etc)
Allocate 10 Billion to developing the technologies required to build a space elevator.
Engage Russia and China in Military talks: destroy all but a couple of hundreds nukes.
Cancel all F22 and B2 orders.
Offer Boeing incentives to destroy Airbus.
Reduce to power of the executive branch. Hand that power back to congress.
Reinstate Habeas Corpus. Close Gitmo. Release or try the prisoners there in federal court.
Reinstate all freedoms stolen.
Remove 95% of security checks at airports. Place two armed guards on each flight. Make cockpit doors unbreakable.
Prosecute Bush, Cheney and co. for treason.
Expel all professional Lobby groups and people from D.C. Change some laws.
Ban electronic voting without a paper trail. Open source it all.
Ban black highlighters.
Close the CIA. Comeup with something better.
Cut Israel loose.
Begin extracting Oil shale in Colorado at $30 a barrel.
Finish Yucca Mountain.
Allocate 500 Billion over 10 years for infrastructure maintenance and repairs in the USA.
Mandate high gas mileages on all new cars phased in over 5 years.
Cancel just about every entitlement program there is, to fund nationalised health product.
Destroy the culture of litigation; adopt New Zealand-like process.
Hold referendums of changes to the Constitution; first order of business is to add an amendment which prevents Congress from changing the consitution without a nation-wide referendum.
I'm calling bullshit on that figure. That would mean an effective refresh rate of 50,000 Hz, I believe. No one has a monitor even remotely that fast, and no graphics card manufacturer provides a graphics card capable of more than about 60Hz at high resolutions.
In other words, there's no need to produce a monitor that fast, no equipment which could leverage that rate, and no human is capable of distinguishing the qualitative (not quantitative) difference beyond about 200Hz. (Quantitative differences are detectable up to about 100 Hz, qualitative through to about 200.)
Reddit recently had an excellent essay written by a man with a couple of thousand hours in the SR71. The article mentioned in an offhand way that under full throttle to escape SAMs he often saw in excess of Mach 3.7, with the speed still increasing. His explanation for allowing such high Mach numbers: "Was too busy looking at other controls."
Certainly, he says it is alarming to see numbers far in excess of the maximum "rated" speed, and that the plane could certainly get damaged by high mach.
Why not list the iMate Jasjam device alongside those others? Frankly, is pisses all over the crackberry and that useless Nokia. (Both of which I tried out)
I've been using this phone/PDA/computer/camera/MP3 player/video conference unit for about 3 months now, and at $1198 New Zealand (wholesale), it's a bargain, especially with a 2GB micro-SD card thrown in.
Sorry Apple people... Safari is just not good enough. Here's why
1) It might seem acceptable on PlanetMac, but the real world requiores you can grab any corner or edge of an application and resize it. 100% lame.
2) Placing a 2-pixel wide strip to either side of the window is retarded. Just because MS are idiots does not mean you can take a pass on this! You MUST be able to slam the mouse to the top right corner of your screen - click, and close the app. (multi-monitor users notwithstanding) You also MUST be able to slam to the right side of the screen, click and drag to scroll. That's the most stupid lack of usability right there. 100% retarded.
3) Yeah - I've got a good idea: let's hide the Debug tool so no one can use those features! Let's then make users hack the preferences.plist file to reveal those tools - and then let's make sure that the single feature EVERYONE needs (to import bookmarks from Mozilla/Firefox) works but does not appear to. Yeah - great idea; bury all their personal bookmarks in some subfolder somewhere, but fill all the regular bookmark locations with Applespam! Great idea! 100% lazy.
4) Let them eat crap! Yeah - we have a web browser with Tabbed Browsing, but let's purposely cripple that behaviour and reveal no control at all about how they open, close, get shown or revealed, or how to control them in any way - except for 3 fucking useless radio buttons. 100% stupid.
Dunno what the Apple peeps are thinking, but when a piece of software gets to Version 3.0 (fuck the fact this is the first Windows release) we ALL expect the product to be slick as all hell, functioning perfectly, and logically, and not to be such a useless sack of crap.
Sorry Safari-for-Windows you blow goats.
Come back and see me when you decide to start making a browser with some proper usability features. For now, Firefox Owns Yuo!
Slashdot Mirror
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a guy carrying a bundle of removable hard drives around the office.
Or a station wagon loaded with hard drives.
Nothing can beat them.
"Jellyfish" Backgammon.
Level 7 is a world-class player. Tough to beat. It doesn't cheat, no matter what (useless) players say.
What interests me here is his claim that we don't know much about life. And I guess there's a large element of truth here.
If you take a person who has just died, and look at any one of their billions of cells, you will find that they are ALL still "alive"; consuming oxygen, things moving around in them; proteins being formed... until the oxygen runs out.
So, you are in the curious state of being dead, while almost all of your cells are still clinically alive. It's quite fascinating really.
From these facts, we can reliable assert that human life is not dependent on cellular activity. There is a lot more to it than that.
Additionally, we now know that resuscitating humans who are "dead" (cold water near drowning, heart attack etc.) re-introduces oxygen, and it's the ocygen which actually kills you.
At what point does oxygen become the thing which kills you during a resus' event?
Are there ways to "immunize" a "dead" person so that re-animation is possible without brain death or cellular suicide due to rapid infusion of O2?
If we learn to re-animate people by immunizing them prior to resus', at what point after traditional "death" is a body no longer able to be revived? What does that say about the "time of death" or even how to declare someone "dead"?
You overestimate how much society changes.
Given the ENORMOUS gulf between 1900 and 2000, you could reanimate a person who died in 1908, and it would take them very little effort at all to adjust to 21st century life.
Do you think if you were frozen now, you'd have trouble being resurrected in 2028? I think not. You'd love it.
Humans are like that: adaptable.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say you could resurrect an ancient Sumerian person with little or no difficulties.
The situation would be no different to bringing a Papuan to New York city. They might not like it much, but they'd adjust pretty quickly.
I love fish.
They're delicious.
I believe that collapsing the equation results in the number of civilisations in our galaxy being the same number as the number of years those civilisations last.
That puts the upper bound in our galaxy at the number of years we consider ourselves to be civilised. So, the answer (arguably) is "zero" civilisations in our galaxy, including us, because we aren't civilised yet.
I put the number (personally) at less than 50, and most likely less than 2, ourselves included.
I never cease to be amazed by the Earth's ability to record it's own history in the most remarkable detail.
This is nothing to do with "bandwidth".
This is "Data Traffic".
Jebus Chribt on a Fusking Pony! Isn't this supposed to be a tech site?
Sorry but no. The launch requirements of hubble were quite specific: It was shuttle or nothing. No ELV could have launched it, because it was designed for shuttle launch.
A different telescope could have been launched via some hypothetical heavy lift vehicle you didn't have then and don't have now. But not Hubble.
Sorry: Only Shuttle was capable of lifting Hubble. It was designed to fit inside the shuttle's payload bay.
Sure, it could have been designed for another class of lifter, but it wasn't. If the shuttle had died after Hubble was built, it'd be nothing but a curiosity in a space museum somewhere.
Etch plates of stainless steel with binary data. The first plate contains explanations (in several languages) of the binary format.
It is then simplicity itself to scan the plates and so create images (via code) from the binary data thereon.
Leave the hard work to the people who open the thing - not to the people creating it!
We should never underestimate how smart the people in the future will be, nor what resources they will have to hand, that we can't even imagine today.
Your only responsibility is to ensure data integrity; reading, or deciphering it is not your role.
Don't forget, people uncovering old technology absolutely LOVE coming up with ways to get the data out. Our future selves will be no different.
Sorry - these guys should have spoken to some paraglider or hang glider pilots before their study. What they would have been told is that at wind speeds exceeding about 5 knots at ground level, cows and horses put their tails into the wind, and keep their heads downwind.
I have used cow-filled paddocks as excellent wind socks on numerous occasions: if cows are NOT aligned in any particular direction, then I know winds are lighter than 5 knots, and I look for other tell-tales of wind direction (smoke, or dust mainly).
At over 5 knots though, cows are extremely reliable, and I have never suffered a downwind landing after checking the cow-orientation of a nearby field.
You got marked as a troll for this. Yet you are 100% correct. How very sad.
How very very sad that Americans, who led the space race, and used to make the best cars in the world, now couldn't build a car to save themselves, and after building the stupendous Saturn 5, now find themselves incapable of building a basic launcher (based on 50 year old "techomology") without fucking it up badly.
No wonder 'Merka is in trouble everywhere it looks.
What do I do?
Answer: move to a country where nothing would be stolen?
Isn't this lyrics from an old Tears for Fears song?
I believe I have the EP somewhere.
Games in New Zealand are usually in the $120 range for new releases. Most new games suck donkey testicles. These are the facts. (Developers take note).
I'll DL/Torrent the whole game before I buy.
If it's a good game, and if I need a valid key to play online, and I see myself playing the game a bit, then I'll get online and buy the thing from an overseas supplier to avoid paying the retarded price in New Zealand.
Mostly though, the games I torrent end up having 2 hours of game play, and then I'll dump it, because it's crap.
Often, I spend a great deal of time looking for resources for the game online. Developers seem to think a 6-page PDF is enough of a manual for a game, but that's bullshit. Usually I have no idea how to play, and even finding out what to do can take hours. When this happens, and I don't find a really good fan-built resource or active online community which can answer my questions, then I give up in disgust.
Tip for Developers: engage one of your DEV team to create a "X-HELP" web site, where X is the name of the game. Assume NOTHING when assembling the site. Treat a player like they have never played a game before. Make a link to the site from within the game.
Try looking for Descent 3 Help, or D3 Help to see what I did for the old game. That's what's required (and more).
Here's a tip: if you think your game is going to be predominantly played online, then give the game away for free, but charge for an online gameplay key.
Here's some general tips for game devs to avoid fucking off potential purchasers:
Don't disable normal functionality in a game. I swear, No wonder people hate paying for games when developers stops a scroll wheel from scrolling a list of options!
When I click the EXIT GAME button, it's because I want to exit the fucking game! I do not want to see a stupid fucking dialog saying "Are you sure you want to exit the game?" Because I wouldn't have clicked the fucking button unless I was sure!
Allow the game to run in a window for fuck's sake!
Allow me to alt-tab out of the game without it crashing. AAAARGH!
Don't fuck with my mouse settings! If my middle button is double-click then let me use it!
Let me re-assign EVERY control in the game. I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE!
Let me use any god-damn controller I want! If I want to use a Magic-Orb from 1996, then let me do it! If I want to use a steering wheel to play Quake, then that's my choice, NOT YOURS!
Let me create customised commands using macros WITH A NICE INTERFACE.
Don't make your game in OpenGL: ATI cards suck for GL!
Let me turn off the fucking annoying splash screens and revolting adverts EACH AND EVERY TIME THE GAME STARTS. If you want me to pay for a game, stop making me watch adverts for the fucking thing! AARGH.
Make it possible to disable an Antivirus scanner, or simply prevent scans from taking place when your game is running. How hard can it be???
That's the easy ones. Good luck.
DATA TRAFFIC.
Jesus fusking chribt on a pony; Bandwidth is speed. Data traffic is amount of data transfered.
Much more likely is they ran out of fuel.
Close all military bases outside the USA. Pull all troops out of all countries.
Cut military spending to no more than 200 Billion/year. Do not adjust this figure for inflation.
Stop the war on drugs.
Decriminalise ALL drugs (Plus release the drug USER convicts from jail)
Hike income tax
Increase NASA's Budget to 200 Billion a year. Change their charter to exploration, research and manned missions ONLY. Commission Mars orbiting "Castles", and put 100+ people on Mars permanently. Commission a Europa life seeking mission with Cryobot. Send at least 2 rovers to Titan.
Fund EMC^2 to 500 Million dollars funding to produce Fusion Reactor prototype
Destroy the Ballistic Missile Defense System, and cancel all such future projects.
Commission 2 Billion dollars of research (in Year 1) for Beamed Laser Launching techniques, and look at space-based mirrors to make ultimate strike weapon (add another 10 or 20 missions to this project as it matures. Use it for laser launching of solar sailed craft to Proxima Centauri etc)
Allocate 10 Billion to developing the technologies required to build a space elevator.
Engage Russia and China in Military talks: destroy all but a couple of hundreds nukes.
Cancel all F22 and B2 orders.
Offer Boeing incentives to destroy Airbus.
Reduce to power of the executive branch. Hand that power back to congress.
Reinstate Habeas Corpus. Close Gitmo. Release or try the prisoners there in federal court.
Reinstate all freedoms stolen.
Remove 95% of security checks at airports. Place two armed guards on each flight. Make cockpit doors unbreakable.
Prosecute Bush, Cheney and co. for treason.
Expel all professional Lobby groups and people from D.C. Change some laws.
Ban electronic voting without a paper trail. Open source it all.
Ban black highlighters.
Close the CIA. Comeup with something better.
Cut Israel loose.
Begin extracting Oil shale in Colorado at $30 a barrel.
Finish Yucca Mountain.
Allocate 500 Billion over 10 years for infrastructure maintenance and repairs in the USA.
Mandate high gas mileages on all new cars phased in over 5 years.
Cancel just about every entitlement program there is, to fund nationalised health product.
Destroy the culture of litigation; adopt New Zealand-like process.
Hold referendums of changes to the Constitution; first order of business is to add an amendment which prevents Congress from changing the consitution without a nation-wide referendum.
That'll do for year 1...
I'm calling bullshit on that figure. That would mean an effective refresh rate of 50,000 Hz, I believe. No one has a monitor even remotely that fast, and no graphics card manufacturer provides a graphics card capable of more than about 60Hz at high resolutions.
In other words, there's no need to produce a monitor that fast, no equipment which could leverage that rate, and no human is capable of distinguishing the qualitative (not quantitative) difference beyond about 200Hz. (Quantitative differences are detectable up to about 100 Hz, qualitative through to about 200.)
Bad Journalism.
Reddit recently had an excellent essay written by a man with a couple of thousand hours in the SR71. The article mentioned in an offhand way that under full throttle to escape SAMs he often saw in excess of Mach 3.7, with the speed still increasing. His explanation for allowing such high Mach numbers: "Was too busy looking at other controls."
Certainly, he says it is alarming to see numbers far in excess of the maximum "rated" speed, and that the plane could certainly get damaged by high mach.
iMate's "Jasjam" phone spanks the living daylights out of the iPhone.
:P
Oh, but that's right, it's not available in the USA.
No one will ever solve my riddle!
MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
Why not list the iMate Jasjam device alongside those others? Frankly, is pisses all over the crackberry and that useless Nokia. (Both of which I tried out)
http://www.clubimate.com/t-DETAILS_JASJAM.aspx
I've been using this phone/PDA/computer/camera/MP3 player/video conference unit for about 3 months now, and at $1198 New Zealand (wholesale), it's a bargain, especially with a 2GB micro-SD card thrown in.
Sorry Apple people... Safari is just not good enough. Here's why
1) It might seem acceptable on PlanetMac, but the real world requiores you can grab any corner or edge of an application and resize it. 100% lame.
2) Placing a 2-pixel wide strip to either side of the window is retarded. Just because MS are idiots does not mean you can take a pass on this! You MUST be able to slam the mouse to the top right corner of your screen - click, and close the app. (multi-monitor users notwithstanding) You also MUST be able to slam to the right side of the screen, click and drag to scroll. That's the most stupid lack of usability right there. 100% retarded.
3) Yeah - I've got a good idea: let's hide the Debug tool so no one can use those features! Let's then make users hack the preferences.plist file to reveal those tools - and then let's make sure that the single feature EVERYONE needs (to import bookmarks from Mozilla/Firefox) works but does not appear to. Yeah - great idea; bury all their personal bookmarks in some subfolder somewhere, but fill all the regular bookmark locations with Applespam! Great idea! 100% lazy.
4) Let them eat crap! Yeah - we have a web browser with Tabbed Browsing, but let's purposely cripple that behaviour and reveal no control at all about how they open, close, get shown or revealed, or how to control them in any way - except for 3 fucking useless radio buttons. 100% stupid.
Dunno what the Apple peeps are thinking, but when a piece of software gets to Version 3.0 (fuck the fact this is the first Windows release) we ALL expect the product to be slick as all hell, functioning perfectly, and logically, and not to be such a useless sack of crap.
Sorry Safari-for-Windows you blow goats.
Come back and see me when you decide to start making a browser with some proper usability features. For now, Firefox Owns Yuo!