Consider that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rosetta Stone have both existed for ~2000 years. Can you name a single form of media we have today that will last as long?
1) Go downtown this afternoon (any small town or city will do), and look at the buildings. I bet you will see plenty of carved writing on walls and cornerstones. Some even depicts history!
2) Many, many volumes of information are currently being preserved in the Library of Congress and elsewhere utilizing anti-aging techniques. I would expect most of these collections to survive for quite a long time.
Well, I can't really speculate on what a non-sentient being may or may not be able to do with out information, but I do think that the 'digital-fear' folks are making an undue amount of noise.
A post-apocalyptic society would almost certainly glean a tremendous amount of information from ours. While they would not likely find readability or meaning from Slashdot (and sometimes I don't now), I am sure that the sheer volume of printed matter would ensure most of our prominent history survives.
If nothing else, the Voyager probes have some pretty durable discs with binary information recorded on them, and a post earth (or even extra-terrestrial) society has some good chance of finding them and decoding that information.
Is that to say we can't do better? No. But I think the picture is a bit better than it is usually painted.
So, you would argue that we are worse at reccord keeping than we were 2000 years ago?
I think a comparison to the Dark Ages is a bit silly. Maybe our record keeping sucks, but who has never heard of the Peloponnesian War? (It was 431 BC BTW)
Oh yes, my mistake, I forgot about all of that starvation in Italy and Ireland, silly me.
You point to Italy and Ireland, I'll point to Mexico and most any place in South America
Over populated planet? The evidence is against you. Food production has outstripped population growth throughout the recorded history of either. Not one place on earth are farmers starving while people in the cities they serve getting fat. Not even in North Korea (where everybody not "connected" is starving).
At what cost has "food production... outstripped population growth"?
We cut down the jungle to grow one year of feed for a cow, then it's desert.
Also, you seem convinced I'm a commie, so I'll stay in line with your odd appraisal and link to our own government starving farmers.
Then again, a Chinese-Socialist system that you seem to lean toward created a massive famine in China during the 1960's.
This I can't stand. I'm an Anarchist and proud of it.
So, please, look at the real world and skip the propoganda.
It's not a matter of skipping the propaganda, it's more a matter of reading everyone's propaganda and drawing your own conclusions. I would have thought a guy with a nick like yours would understand that.
Yea, right, you are blaming it on a global scarcity?
Nope, I'm blaming it on over-use. As we over populate the planet and move from grain based diets to animal based diets, we are starving billions of people. The evidence is staggering.
Try blaming it on bad people with guns forcing the relocation of their rivals to places without food along with the same bad folk preventing relief supplies from getting to the helpless in rival groups as the main cause of hunger.
While I like the idea of blaming those people (and they are somewhat responsible), the obvious villain is religious ideology, and most prominently, the Catholic Church and it's anti-birth control stance.
But perhaps Voltaire said it best: "Men will not be free until the last King is strangled
with the entrails of the last priest."
This really points out that the problem is not 'abundance' per se, but over-use.
Just like cattle overgrazing a field, humans have become more and more of a risk to their own existence. If there were fewer humans, we would have many fewer problems.
I like to think of the American diet as a prime example of the over-use problem. As we continue our way down the path of least resistance, we have become much more sedentary. Then you add a diet designed to produce fat storage and you wind up with a lot of fat people.
From Wikipedia: "Uranium oxide concentrate from mining is not significantly radioactive - barely more so than the granite used in buildings. It is refined to form yellowcake (U3O8), then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). As a gas, it undergoes enrichment to increase the U-235 content from 0.7% to about 3.5%. It is then turned into a hard ceramic oxide (UO2) for assembly as reactor fuel elements."
and
"High level Waste (HLW) arises from the use of uranium fuel in a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons processing. It contains the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and hot. It can be considered the "ash" from "burning" uranium. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation."
That's if you measure the front bumper. The rear bumper decelerates at a different rate. Quite unfortunately for those sitting in-between.
I'd quite prefer this to the full force of a 60 mile an hour impact to a perfectly ridged automobile when it impacts the tree. Better to risk being squished than to impale yourself on a steering wheel.
You start out as a lowly president's kid, only endowed with a small oil company and a baseball team.
The object of the game is to use deception and underground systems such as skull and bones to achieve world domination.
It looks to me that he disabled the second CPU for the Solaris test, while he loaded an SMP kernel for the linux example.
I can't understand why you would expect a test like that not to favor the linux configuration. Given his results, I would have to say the Solaris machine was awesome.
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Are at Satirewire.
Yep. And in numerous other movies.
And here is another nice article on the threat they really are.
~$400 to take out a small city? Scary.
Consider that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rosetta Stone have both existed for ~2000 years. Can you name a single form of media we have today that will last as long?
1) Go downtown this afternoon (any small town or city will do), and look at the buildings. I bet you will see plenty of carved writing on walls and cornerstones. Some even depicts history!
2) Many, many volumes of information are currently being preserved in the Library of Congress and elsewhere utilizing anti-aging techniques. I would expect most of these collections to survive for quite a long time.
Well, I can't really speculate on what a non-sentient being may or may not be able to do with out information, but I do think that the 'digital-fear' folks are making an undue amount of noise.
A post-apocalyptic society would almost certainly glean a tremendous amount of information from ours. While they would not likely find readability or meaning from Slashdot (and sometimes I don't now), I am sure that the sheer volume of printed matter would ensure most of our prominent history survives.
If nothing else, the Voyager probes have some pretty durable discs with binary information recorded on them, and a post earth (or even extra-terrestrial) society has some good chance of finding them and decoding that information.
Is that to say we can't do better? No. But I think the picture is a bit better than it is usually painted.
So, you would argue that we are worse at reccord keeping than we were 2000 years ago?
I think a comparison to the Dark Ages is a bit silly. Maybe our record keeping sucks, but who has never heard of the Peloponnesian War? (It was 431 BC BTW)
How about an invention to prevent clueless submitters from submitting reg required articles without also posting a way around the reg?
I rather liked the fact that slashdot linked to the google version too.
I do however much prefer the YOURMAMA partner.
I knew I was not the only one who watched Nova's piece on string theroy last night!
Yep, if you have near infinite processing power, you need greater and greater key lengths to compensate.
Anyone care to speculate on the impending encryption arms race?
Ross,
Care to provide some sources for your data?
Oh yes, my mistake, I forgot about all of that starvation in Italy and Ireland, silly me.
... outstripped population growth"?
You point to Italy and Ireland, I'll point to Mexico and most any place in South America
Over populated planet? The evidence is against you. Food production has outstripped population growth throughout the recorded history of either. Not one place on earth are farmers starving while people in the cities they serve getting fat. Not even in North Korea (where everybody not "connected" is starving).
At what cost has "food production
We cut down the jungle to grow one year of feed for a cow, then it's desert.
Also, you seem convinced I'm a commie, so I'll stay in line with your odd appraisal and link to our own government starving farmers.
Then again, a Chinese-Socialist system that you seem to lean toward created a massive famine in China during the 1960's.
This I can't stand. I'm an Anarchist and proud of it.
So, please, look at the real world and skip the propoganda.
It's not a matter of skipping the propaganda, it's more a matter of reading everyone's propaganda and drawing your own conclusions. I would have thought a guy with a nick like yours would understand that.
Yea, right, you are blaming it on a global scarcity?
Nope, I'm blaming it on over-use. As we over populate the planet and move from grain based diets to animal based diets, we are starving billions of people. The evidence is staggering.
Try blaming it on bad people with guns forcing the relocation of their rivals to places without food along with the same bad folk preventing relief supplies from getting to the helpless in rival groups as the main cause of hunger.
While I like the idea of blaming those people (and they are somewhat responsible), the obvious villain is religious ideology, and most prominently, the Catholic Church and it's anti-birth control stance.
But perhaps Voltaire said it best: "Men will not be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Maybe where you and I live, but worldwide the problem is huge.
Worldwatch estimates that Hunger affects 1.1 billion, and Micronutrient Deficiency affects 2 - 3 billion.
But thats ok, because 1.1 billion suffer from Overconsumption.
This really points out that the problem is not 'abundance' per se, but over-use.
Just like cattle overgrazing a field, humans have become more and more of a risk to their own existence. If there were fewer humans, we would have many fewer problems.
I like to think of the American diet as a prime example of the over-use problem. As we continue our way down the path of least resistance, we have become much more sedentary. Then you add a diet designed to produce fat storage and you wind up with a lot of fat people.
With absolute certainty, the worst adware is the threadjack /. post
Especially evil is the sig line advertisement.
I knew it!
Nice troll.
From Wikipedia:
"Uranium oxide concentrate from mining is not significantly radioactive - barely more so than the granite used in buildings. It is refined to form yellowcake (U3O8), then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). As a gas, it undergoes enrichment to increase the U-235 content from 0.7% to about 3.5%. It is then turned into a hard ceramic oxide (UO2) for assembly as reactor fuel elements."
and
"High level Waste (HLW) arises from the use of uranium fuel in a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons processing. It contains the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and hot. It can be considered the "ash" from "burning" uranium. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation."
His former company (the one that still pays him millions a year) is actualy selling us gasoline at a 63 cent a gallon markup in Iraq. That's $1.59/gallon, more than most of us pay over here with tax!
How hard would it be to install a nuclear reactor on an oil rig in international waters and start splitting seawater?
Pretty damn hard if these guys stay active.
Nuclear is a terrible idea!
I'd go for "Knives Out" personally, but I guess it's not really famous.
That's if you measure the front bumper. The rear bumper decelerates at a different rate. Quite unfortunately for those sitting in-between.
I'd quite prefer this to the full force of a 60 mile an hour impact to a perfectly ridged automobile when it impacts the tree. Better to risk being squished than to impale yourself on a steering wheel.
That's about 60 miles an hour for the non-metric among us.
Impressive.
Until you see tastless games like, "Abortion by coathangar!" or "Rape that chick!"
Kind of like this?
World conquest through deception.
You start out as a lowly president's kid, only endowed with a small oil company and a baseball team.
The object of the game is to use deception and underground systems such as skull and bones to achieve world domination.
Pitfalls could include alcohol addiction, being bad at Political Science, and getting caught lying to your country.
Your objective could be a success however if you just talk to the right people
It looks to me that he disabled the second CPU for the Solaris test, while he loaded an SMP kernel for the linux example.
I can't understand why you would expect a test like that not to favor the linux configuration. Given his results, I would have to say the Solaris machine was awesome.
Here