Another comment on the "affecting policies" question:
It is indeed interesting to watch that the pirates did already have quite a notable effect on german politic after they won seats in Berlin last year. The position of the leading party (CDU) on things like ACTA didnt change 100%, but you could see many of the politicians changing their arguments pretty quickly after that first election.
And this is not the first time this has happened. The green party which sometimes got up to 25% in nationwide polls and was in the government for some years, did have that same effect on the two big parties. Without the green party it would not be so "mainstream" today for all parties to be very close to each other on ecology politics.
Another reader from Germany,
I wanted to point out that germany does have a history of big problems arising out of a badly designed purely proportional representation with no 5% hurdle. This was in the so called Weimarer Republic before Nazi ruling and is claimed to be one of the (smaller) contributing factors to NSDAP gaining ground. The parliament was at that time split between so many very small parties that coalitions we changing by the day and the government was very unstable.
So the current "post nazi" system was designed with this problem in mind and is now a hybrid. The democracy in germany still has some problems though. Most notably the fact that there are too many elections because of the extreme federal nature, constantly interrupting politicians and looking too much on their popularity instead of concentrating on their work.
Depends on what is the purpose of what?
If intelligent life is the rare and special thing and all that space is just the necessary byproduct you could also see it as making our lifes just the more special.
Not necessarily a depressing thought.
As much as I love the idea of living in a universe with many civilisations and crawling with life, it could ironically actually devalue the way people think of OUR world and our place in the universe.
In the end I think both outcomes can be mindboggling:)
Isn`t it equally fascinating if we were in fact alone and not necessarily make a god or fate responsible?
If intelligent life was so common I always wonder why we didnt see any self replicating drones visiting us yet?
Think about how much time they had to and only one civilisation had to build them.
OK let me rephrase: It is quite unique inside our solar system. Unless we find one other planet / moon pair with similar proportions, the only known such pair is pretty unique in my book.
Some factors can be tested and calculated in a simulation. Example: We have a very large planet far out in our solar system that catches objects that could otherwise collide with earth, therefore changing the timespan between extinction level events upwards far enough for intelligent life / civilizations to develop. Check. How likely do solar systems have things of the size of Jupiter that far out?
But for the majority of factors it is pointless to argue from the cause towards the effect unless you understand how exactly intelligent life develops. We know how much time it roughly took and we know that only one species has made that leap yet.
On many other contributing factors you can only argue backwards from observing our existing world: Earth has an exceptionally large moon (relative to earths size) and it therefore makes sense to look at this factor as a possible contribution to our existence.
Making a simulation of a process that we dont understand is not science IMO.
I think you misunderstood. The uniqueness is not in the fact that it has a moon but in its extraordinary size (in relation to the planet size).
That IS quite unique and it may be essential to life development. Or it may not... IMO its a strange approach to try to solve this question with a simulation.
The outcome seems to depend on lots of factors whose influence on the development of intelligent life are just not known yet. Without knowing how intelligent life develops a simulation seems like just guesswork.
If I want artistic freedom, I can watch video games or movies (where lots of hubble images end up anyway).
So the more scientifically correct you can get, the better.
Using non natural colors is OK, but even then it would be good if every movie / image would identify which colors are original and what is artistic freedom. I suspect a large number of people believe that many artistically colored images show normal spectrum images.
-Bernd
Wait a moment... For 100$ you are not getting the full development kit. This is just the dev system to write managed code. To develop a retail game or even a professional arcade title, devkits are MUCH more expensive last time I checked.
Nice point in general, but worthless without estimating the chances of finding these probes.
A 100 million year old probe would not necessarily be easy to find even if it wants to be found and landed on earth.
In my experience games mirror all assets which are located on the graphic card also in system memory.
Unfortunately a 32bit Windows EXE can only address 2GB of virtual memory no matter how much physical memory you have. Managing even 1GB of graphic assets in only 2GB of address room is pretty pointless. So the requirements for such cards should state that they require a 64bit OS to make any sense.
-Bernd
I might have a bit more sympathy for them if they'd actually done something with the idea, they might have made it big, been chosen by media companies who are desperate for an Apple alternative, or been bought out. Thats exactly what they tried:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2000_August_28/ai_64774037
I still agree that the patent should not have been granted in the first place, but they are not patent trolls.
-Bernd
If companies like https://www.23andme.com/ can get 1000$ for a very rough analysis of a persons genome, I wonder how much people would be willing to bid for the 1000 places in this program.
Obviously the 1000 candidates can not be choosen based on their bid alone, but a little online auction with candidates having to fill in a form on their health could probably help raise a significant part of the money needed for the project.
The calculation is probably pretty simple: 1% of people click that button results in 1% of 10 billion US$ revenue. This assumes only that almost all the 10 billion revenue is made with search ads (which is not true), but otherwise is a fair assumption.
-Bernd
Slashdot Mirror
Another comment on the "affecting policies" question:
It is indeed interesting to watch that the pirates did already have quite a notable effect on german politic after they won seats in Berlin last year. The position of the leading party (CDU) on things like ACTA didnt change 100%, but you could see many of the politicians changing their arguments pretty quickly after that first election.
And this is not the first time this has happened. The green party which sometimes got up to 25% in nationwide polls and was in the government for some years, did have that same effect on the two big parties. Without the green party it would not be so "mainstream" today for all parties to be very close to each other on ecology politics.
-Bernd
Another reader from Germany, I wanted to point out that germany does have a history of big problems arising out of a badly designed purely proportional representation with no 5% hurdle. This was in the so called Weimarer Republic before Nazi ruling and is claimed to be one of the (smaller) contributing factors to NSDAP gaining ground. The parliament was at that time split between so many very small parties that coalitions we changing by the day and the government was very unstable.
So the current "post nazi" system was designed with this problem in mind and is now a hybrid. The democracy in germany still has some problems though. Most notably the fact that there are too many elections because of the extreme federal nature, constantly interrupting politicians and looking too much on their popularity instead of concentrating on their work.
-Bernd
If land mass is your metric why not compare with average russians?
Depends on what is the purpose of what? If intelligent life is the rare and special thing and all that space is just the necessary byproduct you could also see it as making our lifes just the more special.
:)
Not necessarily a depressing thought.
As much as I love the idea of living in a universe with many civilisations and crawling with life, it could ironically actually devalue the way people think of OUR world and our place in the universe.
In the end I think both outcomes can be mindboggling
Isn`t it equally fascinating if we were in fact alone and not necessarily make a god or fate responsible?
If intelligent life was so common I always wonder why we didnt see any self replicating drones visiting us yet?
Think about how much time they had to and only one civilisation had to build them.
Fascinating either way...
Nah omniscient is an exaggeration.
OK let me rephrase: It is quite unique inside our solar system. Unless we find one other planet / moon pair with similar proportions, the only known such pair is pretty unique in my book.
Some factors can be tested and calculated in a simulation. Example: We have a very large planet far out in our solar system that catches objects that could otherwise collide with earth, therefore changing the timespan between extinction level events upwards far enough for intelligent life / civilizations to develop. Check. How likely do solar systems have things of the size of Jupiter that far out?
But for the majority of factors it is pointless to argue from the cause towards the effect unless you understand how exactly intelligent life develops. We know how much time it roughly took and we know that only one species has made that leap yet.
On many other contributing factors you can only argue backwards from observing our existing world: Earth has an exceptionally large moon (relative to earths size) and it therefore makes sense to look at this factor as a possible contribution to our existence.
Making a simulation of a process that we dont understand is not science IMO.
I think you misunderstood. The uniqueness is not in the fact that it has a moon but in its extraordinary size (in relation to the planet size). That IS quite unique and it may be essential to life development. Or it may not... IMO its a strange approach to try to solve this question with a simulation. The outcome seems to depend on lots of factors whose influence on the development of intelligent life are just not known yet. Without knowing how intelligent life develops a simulation seems like just guesswork.
If I want artistic freedom, I can watch video games or movies (where lots of hubble images end up anyway). So the more scientifically correct you can get, the better. Using non natural colors is OK, but even then it would be good if every movie / image would identify which colors are original and what is artistic freedom. I suspect a large number of people believe that many artistically colored images show normal spectrum images. -Bernd
Wait a moment... For 100$ you are not getting the full development kit. This is just the dev system to write managed code. To develop a retail game or even a professional arcade title, devkits are MUCH more expensive last time I checked.
Nice point in general, but worthless without estimating the chances of finding these probes. A 100 million year old probe would not necessarily be easy to find even if it wants to be found and landed on earth.
In my experience games mirror all assets which are located on the graphic card also in system memory. Unfortunately a 32bit Windows EXE can only address 2GB of virtual memory no matter how much physical memory you have. Managing even 1GB of graphic assets in only 2GB of address room is pretty pointless. So the requirements for such cards should state that they require a 64bit OS to make any sense. -Bernd
If companies like https://www.23andme.com/ can get 1000$ for a very rough analysis of a persons genome, I wonder how much people would be willing to bid for the 1000 places in this program.
Obviously the 1000 candidates can not be choosen based on their bid alone, but a little online auction with candidates having to fill in a form on their health could probably help raise a significant part of the money needed for the project.
-Bernd
The calculation is probably pretty simple: 1% of people click that button results in 1% of 10 billion US$ revenue. This assumes only that almost all the 10 billion revenue is made with search ads (which is not true), but otherwise is a fair assumption. -Bernd