You might if an ant said, "Hey, we're down here. Why not come over to the ant hill and have a chat?"
How do you know the ant which was crossing your kitchen yesterday didn't do exaxtly that? You don't know the ant language (based on substances you don't even recognice in those concentrations), so it's hard for you to tell. (No, I don't really expect ants to do that, or even to be able to do that, but if they did it. we likely wouldn't notice anyway).
Maybe for superior intelligences a chat with us would predictably be just boring? Why should they come to a chat, if they can basically predict every of our answers? Not much of a point.
But the point is that life here wouldn't exist if aliens kept taking over the planet before life could start. Interesting idea. It would mean a galaxy basically can only support one intelligent life form, because that one will destroy the conditions for another one to evolve. Which would immediatly explain why we don't find ETIs: If there were any in our galaxy, we wouldn't be here to find them.
"I have no good grasp on where humans will be 2 billion years from now, but I am sure we will be pretty advanced."...or dead. But it will be a very advanced death.
Part of what makes the Linux experience so positive in my book is that it doesn't try to emulate Windows.
Indeed, and part of what I don't like at some newer developments of Linux GUI programs are trends to make them more like Windows. Fortunately one crucial difference remains: The Linux programs for the most part are highly configurable, so I can (mostly) change them to the way I like. The unfortunate part is just that the amount of work I have to put into that is constantly growing.
That's not a bias in operating systems, it's an expectation about human behaviour. I'd also fear attacks from angry Linux worshippers if I tried to use Windows in an otherwise Linux-only business. And yes, the huge majority of people won't care. But it's generally the minority of people you've got trouble with.
Didn't you hear? They are timing the release of the Hurd to coincide with that of Duke Nukem Forever. They'll both be 'ready' sometime in early 2024. Well, that was the plan. But DNF is written in Perl 6, which won't be ready until 2048.
No, kernel 0.000001 would still be a microkernel. You'd have to go below that to get a nanokernel. Of course, kernel 0.001 already was a millikernel (so it didn't keep microkernel until 0.1, but lost that status much earlier; 0.1 was when it ceased to be a centikernel), and since 1.0 we have a full kernel. I guess it will be a long time until we get a kilokernel (i.e. kernel 1000.0).
Importing immigrants? My impression is that a lot of effort is spent on keeping immigrants out (well, at least that sort of immigrants who most likely would take a job as domestic servant).
It is impossible to proof that anything doesn't cause problems. Indeed, I cannot proof that this post will not cause a nuclear war! Does that mean I shouldn't have written it?
So it didn't happen in the later years either? Surely they didn't remove the cell tower after that year, did they? Also, I guess most people still live in that building, right? So if the cell tower radiation had been the reason, there should have been around 7 cancer deaths each year since.
Not to mention the radioactive radiation it emits... and it's a proven fact that people get skin cancer from sun exposure! The sun harms us! Turn it off!
Indeed, the Martians left their planet because the headaches the radiation from Earth made them! And if you wonder why we don't get signals from extra-terrestrials: It's because we only listen to electromagnetic waves, and those are outlawed in all other civilisations of the galaxy, due to the bad effects they cause.
Anyone saying you can is in violation of the laws of reality, which trump the GPL significantly. Go on spreading the fiction that it's somehow possible to actually run a business selling something that your customer is then free to copy and distribute at no cost to them. What does Red Hat do, again?
Well, "transparent" is used in two different ways. One is to mean you can see inside, i.e. can see the inner workings, the other is to mean you hardly see it at all, like the transparent air you normally look through without noticing it. Here obviously the second meaning is used.
Since GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, and parts of the kernel are GPLv2 only, it's not possible to have just a few parts of the kernel to be GPLv3. The resulting kernel would not be distributable at all. IANAL however.
Most of the code is contributed under copyright assignment contracts, which contain explicit clauses effectively guaranteeing that the FSF will distribute only under free license conditions. IANAL, but I guess an arbitrator would be bound by those contracts as well.
I was long puzzled about those "fuzzy systems" you mentioned, but finally I think you are speaking about fuzzy logic, right? If so, quantum computing isn't like that. In fuzzy logic (as far as I understand it), your final result is always the one with the most weight. That is, if you get a fuzzy value of 99% for "do it", the algorithm will finally say "do it". However, a qubit in a state with 99% "1" and 1% "0" may still give "0" when measured. You still can get the "wrong" result, it just gets less likely (but then, it gets "even more wrong").
However the power of quantum computing comes from a different angle anyway. A classic example of quantum parallelism is the problem of checking if a one-bit function is constant (i.e. if f(0)=f(1)). A classical computer would need two evaluations of the function to test this: You call f once with 0, and then again with 1, and compare the results. A quantum computer can test it with only one evaluation of f. A quantum implementation of f would give the output by flipping some other qubit (because all quantum computing has to be reversible, you cannot simply replace the input bit with the new value). Basically you prepare both the input qubit of f and the output qubit in a certain "equatorial" state. Now you run the calculation, and finally you read the input qubit to get your result, while the output qubit isn't changed. Now this sounds like magic, but it indeed works. It's easy to do the math, but unfortunately I (again) cannot offer you an image of it.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you know the ant which was crossing your kitchen yesterday didn't do exaxtly that? You don't know the ant language (based on substances you don't even recognice in those concentrations), so it's hard for you to tell. (No, I don't really expect ants to do that, or even to be able to do that, but if they did it. we likely wouldn't notice anyway).
Maybe for superior intelligences a chat with us would predictably be just boring? Why should they come to a chat, if they can basically predict every of our answers? Not much of a point.
Or maybe all sufficiently advanced species learn to create new universes, create a better one (or several of them) and move there. :-)
Indeed, and part of what I don't like at some newer developments of Linux GUI programs are trends to make them more like Windows. Fortunately one crucial difference remains: The Linux programs for the most part are highly configurable, so I can (mostly) change them to the way I like. The unfortunate part is just that the amount of work I have to put into that is constantly growing.
That's not a bias in operating systems, it's an expectation about human behaviour. I'd also fear attacks from angry Linux worshippers if I tried to use Windows in an otherwise Linux-only business.
And yes, the huge majority of people won't care. But it's generally the minority of people you've got trouble with.
Didn't you hear? They are timing the release of the Hurd to coincide with that of Duke Nukem Forever. They'll both be 'ready' sometime in early 2024. Well, that was the plan. But DNF is written in Perl 6, which won't be ready until 2048.
No, kernel 0.000001 would still be a microkernel. You'd have to go below that to get a nanokernel. Of course, kernel 0.001 already was a millikernel (so it didn't keep microkernel until 0.1, but lost that status much earlier; 0.1 was when it ceased to be a centikernel), and since 1.0 we have a full kernel. I guess it will be a long time until we get a kilokernel (i.e. kernel 1000.0).
Importing immigrants? My impression is that a lot of effort is spent on keeping immigrants out (well, at least that sort of immigrants who most likely would take a job as domestic servant).
Well, just tell them the cell towers send out positive energy. Also don't forget to mention that around cell towers there are no negative earth rays.
It is impossible to proof that anything doesn't cause problems. Indeed, I cannot proof that this post will not cause a nuclear war! Does that mean I shouldn't have written it?
So it didn't happen in the later years either? Surely they didn't remove the cell tower after that year, did they? Also, I guess most people still live in that building, right? So if the cell tower radiation had been the reason, there should have been around 7 cancer deaths each year since.
Hey, do you have any proof that those two pranksters were not aliens? :-)
Not to mention the radioactive radiation it emits ... and it's a proven fact that people get skin cancer from sun exposure! The sun harms us! Turn it off!
Indeed, the Martians left their planet because the headaches the radiation from Earth made them! And if you wonder why we don't get signals from extra-terrestrials: It's because we only listen to electromagnetic waves, and those are outlawed in all other civilisations of the galaxy, due to the bad effects they cause.
Ok, you named the first of the items from the top ten of lame top ten lists on Slashdot. So what are the other nine items? :-)
Well, "transparent" is used in two different ways. One is to mean you can see inside, i.e. can see the inner workings, the other is to mean you hardly see it at all, like the transparent air you normally look through without noticing it. Here obviously the second meaning is used.
Since GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, and parts of the kernel are GPLv2 only, it's not possible to have just a few parts of the kernel to be GPLv3. The resulting kernel would not be distributable at all.
IANAL however.
Unfortunately, since step 6 is an unconditional jump back to step 2, you'll never reach step 7, let alone step 8. Sorry, no profit for you. :-)
Most of the code is contributed under copyright assignment contracts, which contain explicit clauses effectively guaranteeing that the FSF will distribute only under free license conditions. IANAL, but I guess an arbitrator would be bound by those contracts as well.
I guess airports would be a great place to put those devices. After all, airplanes make a lot of noise ...
You are thinking about something like this?
I was long puzzled about those "fuzzy systems" you mentioned, but finally I think you are speaking about fuzzy logic, right? If so, quantum computing isn't like that. In fuzzy logic (as far as I understand it), your final result is always the one with the most weight. That is, if you get a fuzzy value of 99% for "do it", the algorithm will finally say "do it". However, a qubit in a state with 99% "1" and 1% "0" may still give "0" when measured. You still can get the "wrong" result, it just gets less likely (but then, it gets "even more wrong").
However the power of quantum computing comes from a different angle anyway. A classic example of quantum parallelism is the problem of checking if a one-bit function is constant (i.e. if f(0)=f(1)). A classical computer would need two evaluations of the function to test this: You call f once with 0, and then again with 1, and compare the results. A quantum computer can test it with only one evaluation of f. A quantum implementation of f would give the output by flipping some other qubit (because all quantum computing has to be reversible, you cannot simply replace the input bit with the new value). Basically you prepare both the input qubit of f and the output qubit in a certain "equatorial" state. Now you run the calculation, and finally you read the input qubit to get your result, while the output qubit isn't changed. Now this sounds like magic, but it indeed works. It's easy to do the math, but unfortunately I (again) cannot offer you an image of it.
Then you distinctly remember wrong. The exact phrase he got was: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine"