I understand the needle-in-a-haystack thing, but we do a LOT of digging. We dig for ores, we dig for fertilizer, we dig for salt, we dig for energy, we dig for decor, we dig for infrastructure, we dig for energy, we dig for simple knowledge. We regularly take core samples all over the world in all different terrains. In doing so, we've discovered fossils from nearly every period that we think life has existed on Earth, and we've stumbled upon the remains of human and even pre-human cultures. I find it unlikely to the point of absurdity that something as blatant as a plow or a wheel - or yes, an arrowhead - would escape all of that. An engineer taking core samples and finding an arrowhead at the 50 million year mark in the strata would find that very interesting indeed. Even evidence of butchered animals would be quite interesting - and indeed they have fossil evidence of butchering as early as 3.4 million years. I just don't see it as very likely that even a primitive tool-maker would escape notice in the fossil record... but I concede it is likely that small populations may have popped in and out of existence many times without modern-day detection. Just nothing that we would regard as a "civilization".
Right, so if a delicate shell can survive this process, why not a robust piece of stoneware, building brick, or glass? At the very least, you'd see the kinds of fossils where just an impression of the original organism survives. Any tool robust enough to work wood or stone would survive. And it's not limited to man-made (well, creature-made) objects. Hewn wood, agricultural activity, or butchered animals would be evident in the fossil record. A garbage pit or excrement pile would provide plenty of potential fossilized material.
Agreed, but they had to stay intact long enough to undergo mineralization. If it can happen with relatively soft and delicate organic material, then why not with more durable materials? Another example would be fossilized seashells.
It would not have to petrify - simply survive surrounded by sediment. People don't need to dig a random rock - it can be exposed by weathering. Very delicate seashell fossils wash up all the time on the beach.
Sure, if exposed. But glass (and ceramics in general) will certainly be as durable as a dinosaur bone. We should find bits of it safely ensconced in layers of sedimentary rock.
Nope, if you displayed a 4:3 video, it would be stretched to a wide screen with rectangular pixels and looked distorted.
I was thinking of of anamorphic DVD, which stored at 720x576 pixels (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) - even when they are meant to be played back widescreen... they call this an "anamorphic DVD". If you were doing video production of anamorphic DVDs, you would want a video screen with rectangular pixels so that you could see "native" resolution at the correct aspect ratio. It's also possible that the panels were made for DVD playback and then repurposed when the expected demand didn't materialize.
Mostly empty for you, maybe. For me I always have a ton of tabs and can't read the text. Need to go by icon. There used to be an extension for Firefox called Tree Style Tabs that did the trick, but it doesn't work as well with the new extension framework.
4:3 is better if you have two monitors, but widescreen is better if you are stuck with one monitor and trying to edit two documents side-by-side, diffing, etc. Essentially I'm saying that 8:3 is the ideal monitor, I guess;p
Now why browsers put tabs across the top rather than down the side...
I finally killed my fax service, but for probably 10 years or so I was using an email-based fax service that was just a few bucks a month. Cheaper than maintaining a dedicated line even if you ignore the cost of the fax machine and supplies.
Yeah, I have no idea where the AC lives, or even if the events he describes are real. Without more detail it is hard to say anything intelligent... but if it is true that they simply "wrote a letter" rather than go through the established process then I could see why nothing happened.
Excellent question! In my case it serves as a redundant line for the alarm, but we really only have it because it comes "free" with our internet bundle.
We also call internationally fairly frequently, but for that I have a VOIP phone hooked up to the house wiring through an Obi device. This also lets us call the house with our cell phones and then forwards our international calls (though I use an Android SIP app if I have a decent internet connection). For my wife it's easier to just call the house, and besides that it lets me route the call to the cheapest SIP provider for that country.
Finally, we have an actual address tied to 911 - so that can speed the response in an emergency.
Well, that's less than ideal. It's not a practical problem anyway, since everyone has a cell phone - in an emergency I don't need to run down to the basement, plug in the fiber router, and then run back up to a hardwired phone - I just take the phone out of my pocket and dial 911.
This kind of thing happens all the time. You appeal to someone with a higher lock level than yourself to resolve the dispute. In a lot of cases, a sign like this has no legal status (like in PA) and the Waze community knows this and will ignore it.
In our case, we opted to have fiber rather than a copper landline (Verizon Fios) - so aside from a small backup battery there is no phone service during a power outage. Over the last 10 years, I've found our cell phone service to be 100% reliable during power outages - including extended outages due to disasters like Sandy and Irene. Cell phones are easy to charge via power packs, generators, or car chargers. Our alarm system uses a cell phone backup, and it has worked in every power outage (I know because my alarm company calls when the power goes out).
So I think this particular advantage is overblown.
That is just not a problem. First of all, they would know that they lost a spacecraft and would be looking for it. A spacecraft with a last known position and trajectory would be very easy to find, with its fuel supply defining any possible deviations. Second of all, nuclear war doesn't begin with a single re-entry - it begins with hundreds of launches. Stuff hits the Earth all the time from space without triggering nuclear war or attempts at a shootdown. Just a few years ago a huge meteor nailed Russia, causing millions in damage. No war, no attempts to shoot it down. Spacecraft-sized objects seem to hit earth every few years, and so far no nuclear crises.
They "sent a letter" to the company that lets the community edit the map? Gee, I wonder why that didn't work. Maybe try logging in and changing the road yourself. If you don't have high enough access, leave a message on the board.
that if everyone went exactly the speed limit, many traffic jams would never happen
That applies to everyone not going exactly the speed limit - so people going 1 under would also fuck the flow up. "Exactly the speed limit" is an impossible ideal, and in any case there aren't any speeders when a road is congested.
In this case it appears that the 'Scientists' pre-programmed all the movement to do the assembly from an exact starting setup,
...which is exactly what "assembly instructions" are for humans. I consider myself fairly handy, but I don't think I'd tackle Ikea assembly without my "programming".
I think you are on a whole different level than I am... I'm talking about mitigating an antenna or equipment failure, and you are talking about the end of life as we know it. You are correct, knowing your location in space will not save us from nuclear war.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the needle-in-a-haystack thing, but we do a LOT of digging. We dig for ores, we dig for fertilizer, we dig for salt, we dig for energy, we dig for decor, we dig for infrastructure, we dig for energy, we dig for simple knowledge. We regularly take core samples all over the world in all different terrains. In doing so, we've discovered fossils from nearly every period that we think life has existed on Earth, and we've stumbled upon the remains of human and even pre-human cultures. I find it unlikely to the point of absurdity that something as blatant as a plow or a wheel - or yes, an arrowhead - would escape all of that. An engineer taking core samples and finding an arrowhead at the 50 million year mark in the strata would find that very interesting indeed. Even evidence of butchered animals would be quite interesting - and indeed they have fossil evidence of butchering as early as 3.4 million years. I just don't see it as very likely that even a primitive tool-maker would escape notice in the fossil record... but I concede it is likely that small populations may have popped in and out of existence many times without modern-day detection. Just nothing that we would regard as a "civilization".
Right, so if a delicate shell can survive this process, why not a robust piece of stoneware, building brick, or glass? At the very least, you'd see the kinds of fossils where just an impression of the original organism survives. Any tool robust enough to work wood or stone would survive. And it's not limited to man-made (well, creature-made) objects. Hewn wood, agricultural activity, or butchered animals would be evident in the fossil record. A garbage pit or excrement pile would provide plenty of potential fossilized material.
They had to survive long enough to mineralize.
Agreed, but they had to stay intact long enough to undergo mineralization. If it can happen with relatively soft and delicate organic material, then why not with more durable materials? Another example would be fossilized seashells.
It would not have to petrify - simply survive surrounded by sediment. People don't need to dig a random rock - it can be exposed by weathering. Very delicate seashell fossils wash up all the time on the beach.
Sure, if exposed. But glass (and ceramics in general) will certainly be as durable as a dinosaur bone. We should find bits of it safely ensconced in layers of sedimentary rock.
If that's the case, then getting through probably won't do you any good :)
Nope, if you displayed a 4:3 video, it would be stretched to a wide screen with rectangular pixels and looked distorted.
I was thinking of of anamorphic DVD, which stored at 720x576 pixels (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) - even when they are meant to be played back widescreen... they call this an "anamorphic DVD". If you were doing video production of anamorphic DVDs, you would want a video screen with rectangular pixels so that you could see "native" resolution at the correct aspect ratio. It's also possible that the panels were made for DVD playback and then repurposed when the expected demand didn't materialize.
I wonder if the rectangular-pixel monitors were meant for video production, where standards used to include rectangular "pixels"?
Mostly empty for you, maybe. For me I always have a ton of tabs and can't read the text. Need to go by icon. There used to be an extension for Firefox called Tree Style Tabs that did the trick, but it doesn't work as well with the new extension framework.
4:3 is better if you have two monitors, but widescreen is better if you are stuck with one monitor and trying to edit two documents side-by-side, diffing, etc. Essentially I'm saying that 8:3 is the ideal monitor, I guess ;p
Now why browsers put tabs across the top rather than down the side...
Yes, I'm sure Verizon did the math. Doesn't really console you when a big storm knocks your power out for a week.
I finally killed my fax service, but for probably 10 years or so I was using an email-based fax service that was just a few bucks a month. Cheaper than maintaining a dedicated line even if you ignore the cost of the fax machine and supplies.
Yeah, I have no idea where the AC lives, or even if the events he describes are real. Without more detail it is hard to say anything intelligent... but if it is true that they simply "wrote a letter" rather than go through the established process then I could see why nothing happened.
Excellent question! In my case it serves as a redundant line for the alarm, but we really only have it because it comes "free" with our internet bundle.
We also call internationally fairly frequently, but for that I have a VOIP phone hooked up to the house wiring through an Obi device. This also lets us call the house with our cell phones and then forwards our international calls (though I use an Android SIP app if I have a decent internet connection). For my wife it's easier to just call the house, and besides that it lets me route the call to the cheapest SIP provider for that country.
Finally, we have an actual address tied to 911 - so that can speed the response in an emergency.
Well, that's less than ideal. It's not a practical problem anyway, since everyone has a cell phone - in an emergency I don't need to run down to the basement, plug in the fiber router, and then run back up to a hardwired phone - I just take the phone out of my pocket and dial 911.
Same thing in the US. It just doesn't last very long if your outage is prolonged... maybe 8 hours on standby.
This kind of thing happens all the time. You appeal to someone with a higher lock level than yourself to resolve the dispute. In a lot of cases, a sign like this has no legal status (like in PA) and the Waze community knows this and will ignore it.
In our case, we opted to have fiber rather than a copper landline (Verizon Fios) - so aside from a small backup battery there is no phone service during a power outage. Over the last 10 years, I've found our cell phone service to be 100% reliable during power outages - including extended outages due to disasters like Sandy and Irene. Cell phones are easy to charge via power packs, generators, or car chargers. Our alarm system uses a cell phone backup, and it has worked in every power outage (I know because my alarm company calls when the power goes out).
So I think this particular advantage is overblown.
That is just not a problem. First of all, they would know that they lost a spacecraft and would be looking for it. A spacecraft with a last known position and trajectory would be very easy to find, with its fuel supply defining any possible deviations. Second of all, nuclear war doesn't begin with a single re-entry - it begins with hundreds of launches. Stuff hits the Earth all the time from space without triggering nuclear war or attempts at a shootdown. Just a few years ago a huge meteor nailed Russia, causing millions in damage. No war, no attempts to shoot it down. Spacecraft-sized objects seem to hit earth every few years, and so far no nuclear crises.
They "sent a letter" to the company that lets the community edit the map? Gee, I wonder why that didn't work. Maybe try logging in and changing the road yourself. If you don't have high enough access, leave a message on the board.
that if everyone went exactly the speed limit, many traffic jams would never happen
That applies to everyone not going exactly the speed limit - so people going 1 under would also fuck the flow up. "Exactly the speed limit" is an impossible ideal, and in any case there aren't any speeders when a road is congested.
In this case it appears that the 'Scientists' pre-programmed all the movement to do the assembly from an exact starting setup,
...which is exactly what "assembly instructions" are for humans. I consider myself fairly handy, but I don't think I'd tackle Ikea assembly without my "programming".
I think you are on a whole different level than I am... I'm talking about mitigating an antenna or equipment failure, and you are talking about the end of life as we know it. You are correct, knowing your location in space will not save us from nuclear war.
Hahaha, the comments are precious.
The existence of this makes me feel better about using YouTube to figure out how to repair my appliances.