It'd be a lot easier and quicker to sterilize a planet with life then to terraform one where life is presently impossible. That's why.
That would lead to the following hypothesis: In any galaxy, there's only place for one intelligent species, because that species will destroy life on any other planet before that other planet had time to evolve intelligence on its own.
Not on Pluto, around Saturn. The intergalactic quarantine sign is a ring system around one of the largest planets of the system. Jupiter was considered already too close to Earth, that's why they chose Saturn.
Mostly harmless? Is a chimpanzee with a bible in one hand and a loaded gun in the other mostly harmless?
If you are from an advanced civilization, a death star is just a joke compared to your weapons, and your shields could easily withstand an explosion of all of Earths nuclear weapons at once, assuming they'd actually get that far: Yes, I'd say "mostly harmless" fits quite well. Not completely harmless, but easily to deal with if you are warned.
That's of course an assumtion. Given that it turns out that the people with the highest education on average have the least number of children, it may turn out that any sufficiently advanced civilization will simply stop expanding and instead get into an equilibrium, which removes the pressure of colonization. The only remaining reason to go into space will be curiosity, and it's IMHO unlikely that a generational ship will be sent out in order to satisfy curiosity. And even if such a ship is sent out, already the first generation born on that ship will probably be just as curious about Earth as about any yet-unfound world, and I guess quite soon the "Earth-curiosity" will be much stronger.
And you base that estimate on what, exactly? Besides, even if you're correct on the odds, it's still a probability calculation -- one could hit us next week, we haven't tracked any but a fraction of a percent of the big rocks out there. But big rocks hitting the Earth aren't the only problem: a nearby gamma ray burster could do sufficient damage, and Eta Carinae (for one) is going to go "real soon now". Then there are the home-grown hazards -- runaway greenhouse, global thermonuclear war, the whole doomsday scenario litany. Perhaps none of them likely, but none of them in the "we don't need to worry about it for a million years" category either.
Not to forget the possibility of our planet being destroyed by a Vogon constructor fleet... we really should be able to leave our planet before that happens!
Of course, all this does not take into account a fourth possibility: They are us! Maybe they actually have colonized this planet. Their scientists figured out that the easiest way to colonize a planet which already has a biosphere is to manipulate some species to put the own mind in them. The result is a new species which is obviously descendent from some animal on the colonized world, but inheriting the mind from the extra-terrestrians. Someone who didn't know that would conclude that the intelligent species evolved from the previous one, and wonder how the brain evolution happened. And especially if the descendants have completely forgotten the ancestry and their superior knowledge, for whatever reason.
Maybe the knowledge was concentrated to some small group having the power (let's call them "the priests"), and all others were actively prevented from getting that knowledge. After a few generations, the abilities of "the priests" would appear to be pure magic to the non-priests. At some time, the original priests were displaced through a revolution, and with them the original knowledge vanished.
(Disclaimer: The above is just some random idea, not something I really believe)
Well, quantum physicists are already used to kittens (Ok, Schrödinger used a cat, but that's just because he needed too long to built that darn killing mechanism!:-))
I bet your Perl program ran on a 32-bit computer, if not even 64-bit. That one solves Sudoku on a 16-qubit architecture. So what you did is clearly not a fair comparison!:-)
This is eerily familiar territory in the UK. The government has decided that everyone in the country will have to have a biometric ID card by 2013
Unless that biometric ID card also contains an RFID chip, this is not the same. While the police may ask you for the card, they can't read it without you even knowing it. This especially makes it hard to track you using that card.
Of course, why do we need another digital port for monitors. Some variation of Ethernet, USB, Firewire, could also do the job.
Indeed, let's also include the graphics card with the monitor instead of the computer and run an X server on the monitor and connect it through ethernet. If we in addition connect the keyboard and mouse directly to that monitor, we could even put it remote from the actual computer if we wish to. We just need a nice name for that monitor/keyboard/mouse combination running X. Well, what about calling it "X Terminal"?
Any OS would is vunerable to an extent, since 90% of the problems are caused by the users allowing things to be installed. No OS can guard against that.
That's wrong. The only problem is that an OS which doesn't allow you to install any software would probably a big failure...
Given that today's ROMs are typically flash, how long until some malware just reflashes it? This would also allow the malware to take control even before the OS boots up.
Indeed, it also explains why 1998 was the hottest year up to now. In 1999, the first version of Napster was released, which enhanced piracy and therefore reduced the temperature.
Destroying a country will get quite easy. All you have to do is to route a massive attack on US infrastructure through Tor exit nodes in that country. The US military will then finish the job for you.
You joke, but I think people are missing the fact that bombs can stop many attacks. If for instance a nation was able to launch some massive attack that was crippling the Internet, in this world of zombied computers can't simply block everything. A true Internet crashing attack would take hundreds (thousands?) of people to pull off and you likely might be able to at least localize them to a single nation. If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.
Given that cutting all connections to that country would have the same effect as far as the internet is concerned, but has no direct ill effect on any non-internet related infrastructure of the target country, I can't see how bombing could be justified even in that case. But maybe I'm just not thinking American enough...
We have developed processors that are really good. Their clock rates are beyond imagination fast. Yet competing against a processor which is massively parallel and with a clock rate less than 30 cycles per second, (Your brain) modern computers are at best running poor second rate.
That entirely depends on the type of problem you throw at them. After all, if computers couldn't beat our brains in certain areas, there would be no point in using them.
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That would lead to the following hypothesis: In any galaxy, there's only place for one intelligent species, because that species will destroy life on any other planet before that other planet had time to evolve intelligence on its own.
Not on Pluto, around Saturn. The intergalactic quarantine sign is a ring system around one of the largest planets of the system. Jupiter was considered already too close to Earth, that's why they chose Saturn.
If you are from an advanced civilization, a death star is just a joke compared to your weapons, and your shields could easily withstand an explosion of all of Earths nuclear weapons at once, assuming they'd actually get that far: Yes, I'd say "mostly harmless" fits quite well. Not completely harmless, but easily to deal with if you are warned.
That's of course an assumtion. Given that it turns out that the people with the highest education on average have the least number of children, it may turn out that any sufficiently advanced civilization will simply stop expanding and instead get into an equilibrium, which removes the pressure of colonization. The only remaining reason to go into space will be curiosity, and it's IMHO unlikely that a generational ship will be sent out in order to satisfy curiosity. And even if such a ship is sent out, already the first generation born on that ship will probably be just as curious about Earth as about any yet-unfound world, and I guess quite soon the "Earth-curiosity" will be much stronger.
You think so? We better ask Multivac about that.
Not to forget the possibility of our planet being destroyed by a Vogon constructor fleet
Of course, all this does not take into account a fourth possibility: They are us! Maybe they actually have colonized this planet. Their scientists figured out that the easiest way to colonize a planet which already has a biosphere is to manipulate some species to put the own mind in them. The result is a new species which is obviously descendent from some animal on the colonized world, but inheriting the mind from the extra-terrestrians. Someone who didn't know that would conclude that the intelligent species evolved from the previous one, and wonder how the brain evolution happened. And especially if the descendants have completely forgotten the ancestry and their superior knowledge, for whatever reason.
Maybe the knowledge was concentrated to some small group having the power (let's call them "the priests"), and all others were actively prevented from getting that knowledge. After a few generations, the abilities of "the priests" would appear to be pure magic to the non-priests. At some time, the original priests were displaced through a revolution, and with them the original knowledge vanished.
(Disclaimer: The above is just some random idea, not something I really believe)
Well, quantum physicists are already used to kittens (Ok, Schrödinger used a cat, but that's just because he needed too long to built that darn killing mechanism! :-))
Whoosh!
I bet your Perl program ran on a 32-bit computer, if not even 64-bit. That one solves Sudoku on a 16-qubit architecture. So what you did is clearly not a fair comparison! :-)
Unless that biometric ID card also contains an RFID chip, this is not the same. While the police may ask you for the card, they can't read it without you even knowing it. This especially makes it hard to track you using that card.
Does an RFID chip survive a serious burning?
With correct rounding, 2/3=.667
You have just clicked yes. Did you really want to click yes?
Indeed, let's also include the graphics card with the monitor instead of the computer and run an X server on the monitor and connect it through ethernet. If we in addition connect the keyboard and mouse directly to that monitor, we could even put it remote from the actual computer if we wish to. We just need a nice name for that monitor/keyboard/mouse combination running X. Well, what about calling it "X Terminal"?
That's wrong. The only problem is that an OS which doesn't allow you to install any software would probably a big failure
Given that today's ROMs are typically flash, how long until some malware just reflashes it? This would also allow the malware to take control even before the OS boots up.
Indeed, it also explains why 1998 was the hottest year up to now. In 1999, the first version of Napster was released, which enhanced piracy and therefore reduced the temperature.
Destroying a country will get quite easy. All you have to do is to route a massive attack on US infrastructure through Tor exit nodes in that country. The US military will then finish the job for you.
Given that cutting all connections to that country would have the same effect as far as the internet is concerned, but has no direct ill effect on any non-internet related infrastructure of the target country, I can't see how bombing could be justified even in that case.
But maybe I'm just not thinking American enough
Of course that would result in future botnet software hardening the computers they run on against other attacks.
... who initially read the title as stating that a mars camera is making eye problems worse? :-)
Well, I'm glad that I don't own one.
That entirely depends on the type of problem you throw at them. After all, if computers couldn't beat our brains in certain areas, there would be no point in using them.
AFAIK C++0x (i.e. the next version of the C++ standard) will.