The Fermi Paradox
on
Lonely Planets
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There's a book called If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens, Where Is Everybody? by Stephen Webb. The title is from the question posed by Enrico Fermi. I've just bought the book but haven't read it yet.
The book discusses 50 possible answers grouped into 3 broad categories:
1. 'They Are Here' (e.g., '...and They Are Meddling in Human Affairs', '...and They Are Called Hungarians'),
2. 'They Exist But Have Not Yet Communicated' (e.g., 'Everyone Is Listening, No One Is Transmitting'),
3. 'They Do Not Exist' (e.g. 'Continuously Habitable Zones Are Narrow').
Semi-related quote: "The aliens will contact us when they can make money by doing so." -- David Byrne
Semi-related problem: I know of a 7m parabolic dish (so that I can listen, too) I can get for free but have no place to put it.:(
Man, I wish I made batteries. I would make one for the iPod and charge half as much. I think that I could make a fortune.
Henry Petroski wrote (I'm paraphrasing): "Any idiot can make 1 pencil for $10. An engineer can tell you how to make 100,000 pencils for $0.01 each." My point being: yes, you can make an iPod battery. But can you sell them for $49 and make a profit?
Assumption: use of computers in offices would dramatically reduce consumption of paper. Actually, the reverse is true; paper use has soared.
Except in a handful of institutions which have made a concerted and well-planned effort to reduce/eliminate paper.
I ain't heard it, but my guess is that the sound from this device pales in comparison to a good pipe organ. It ain't about power, it's about a very complex sound waveform that may or may not be reproducible. Go listen to a top-notch organ sometime, then tell me whether you'd be interested in hearing a digital simulation. (I don't mean to be disparaging to these guys, though--they're welcome to try.)
The thing to worry about is broadband-over-power-lines (BPL). This would wreak havoc on all kinds of transmitted signals. For more info refer to the Amateur Radio Relay League (www.arrl.org).
OS X runs fine on my tangerine iMac, although I did have to get more RAM and a bigger hard drive first. I don't use it much, but haven't encountered any problems with applications, either.
So does this make ham radio more or less useful? While unencrypted broadcasts are not private, they're also hard to monitor. (Encryption is illegal in the amateur radio service.) For the govt to listen, they'd have to know what frequency and mode I'm using, and when and where I'm transmitting. The relatively low fidelty would make automated voice recognition with keyword-searching difficult.
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely --having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
This other classics downloadable at
http://promo.net/pg/
This is something I've been wanting for about 20 years. I want to record radio programs (not music) that I can download to my iPod; then I could listen to it while walking, hiking, or on a road trip. In general, for time-shifting. I mostly want various public radio programs like Prairie Home Companion, Le Show, Car Talk, Afropop Worldwide, etc. Cassettes aren't long enough.
I'm a physician. I just received in the mail today from the state health dept a folder with advice to providers and materials for educating people about antibiotic resistance. It includes brochures for the waiting rooms, a "prescription" pad that states "You have been diagnosed...virus...antibiotic treatment does not help viral infections.", and several other related things.
http://www.healthoregon.org/antibiotics
Slashdot Mirror
I got Halo and Final Fantasy XI a couple of weeks ago and have since stopped watching TV entirely.
Damn--I need 150,000.
The book discusses 50 possible answers grouped into 3 broad categories:
1. 'They Are Here' (e.g., '...and They Are Meddling in Human Affairs', '...and They Are Called Hungarians'),
2. 'They Exist But Have Not Yet Communicated' (e.g., 'Everyone Is Listening, No One Is Transmitting'),
3. 'They Do Not Exist' (e.g. 'Continuously Habitable Zones Are Narrow').
Semi-related quote: "The aliens will contact us when they can make money by doing so." -- David Byrne
Semi-related problem: I know of a 7m parabolic dish (so that I can listen, too) I can get for free but have no place to put it. :(
Henry Petroski wrote (I'm paraphrasing): "Any idiot can make 1 pencil for $10. An engineer can tell you how to make 100,000 pencils for $0.01 each." My point being: yes, you can make an iPod battery. But can you sell them for $49 and make a profit?
Assumption: use of computers in offices would dramatically reduce consumption of paper. Actually, the reverse is true; paper use has soared. Except in a handful of institutions which have made a concerted and well-planned effort to reduce/eliminate paper.
I ain't heard it, but my guess is that the sound from this device pales in comparison to a good pipe organ. It ain't about power, it's about a very complex sound waveform that may or may not be reproducible. Go listen to a top-notch organ sometime, then tell me whether you'd be interested in hearing a digital simulation. (I don't mean to be disparaging to these guys, though--they're welcome to try.)
"Soon this company will be asked by a country in the Middle East for their kits."
d ef ault_page.htm
And it won't take them long to figure out that model rockets can't be turned into useful weapons.
http://www.saverocketrynow.org/continuation_of_
The thing to worry about is broadband-over-power-lines (BPL). This would wreak havoc on all kinds of transmitted signals. For more info refer to the Amateur Radio Relay League (www.arrl.org).
OS X runs fine on my tangerine iMac, although I did have to get more RAM and a bigger hard drive first. I don't use it much, but haven't encountered any problems with applications, either.
So does this make ham radio more or less useful? While unencrypted broadcasts are not private, they're also hard to monitor. (Encryption is illegal in the amateur radio service.) For the govt to listen, they'd have to know what frequency and mode I'm using, and when and where I'm transmitting. The relatively low fidelty would make automated voice recognition with keyword-searching difficult.
I miss BASIC. I refuse to learn object-oriented programming or a complicated programming environment. I just want to crunch a few numbers.
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely --having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." This other classics downloadable at http://promo.net/pg/
This is something I've been wanting for about 20 years. I want to record radio programs (not music) that I can download to my iPod; then I could listen to it while walking, hiking, or on a road trip. In general, for time-shifting. I mostly want various public radio programs like Prairie Home Companion, Le Show, Car Talk, Afropop Worldwide, etc. Cassettes aren't long enough.
I'm a physician. I just received in the mail today from the state health dept a folder with advice to providers and materials for educating people about antibiotic resistance. It includes brochures for the waiting rooms, a "prescription" pad that states "You have been diagnosed...virus...antibiotic treatment does not help viral infections.", and several other related things. http://www.healthoregon.org/antibiotics