I think it's fairly likely that there will not be too much variation in natural lifespan in space-faring races (+/-50%?). Evolution probably places an upper bound on lifetime - much longer than a century and either you need low birth rates or a high attrition rate (think how proportionally few humans made it past 35 years prior to the 18th Century) to avoid a Malthusian population problem (which would act as a selector for different traits). However if you have a low birth rate and long generations, then the species will take longer to evolve and would probably lose any competition with species that have a shorter lifespan.
With significantly shorter lifespans, the problem arises from the information transfer between individuals necessary to advance socio-cultural/scientific progress to the level of complex space-faring civilization. The lower bound on average lifespan probably is more flexible because a species could evolve a more efficient of inter-generational information transfer than we have with oral traditions and written texts. However that's not the bound on lifespan that needs to be flexible to survive a long interstellar trip.
Once technology allows safe changing genomes of adult organisms (probably by using viruses) and cybernetics develop to the level where many biological traits are meaningless anyway, biological evolution over natural generations of individuals becomes irrelevant. Evolution as a process will of course go on as long as there's any growth and non-infinite resources, but it won't be biological evolution for beings able to control their genome arbitrarily, or possibly do away with biological genome altogether.
and that they maintain their desire to repeat this procedure for countless generations.
Just a quick comment on this note: no need to maintain that desire. It's only required that in the course of their cultural evolution over thousands and thousands of years, after they get sufficient technological capability, at least some subculture every few thousand years has both the wealth and the desire to do this.
Hard to imagine a technological species where that never happens. Even if somebody makes an attempt only every 1000 years, and the attempts fails 90% of the time, that's one successful interstellar colonization event per 10000 years, originating from one technological world.
Note that over thousands of years, and looking at our own development, a technological civilization would morph into something totally unrecognizable. We're just on the brink of it starting to happen, so we can see how it can happen: genetic modification, nanotechnology, cybernetics and neural interfaces, exponential development of computer power. Put them together and... we have as much an idea of what is the result, that "cavemen" had when they first started to speculated what it would be like if they brought fire into their cave.
Did the Romans plant devices that could chop off the limbs of a playing child years or even decades after the conflict has ended, devices specifically intended to maim and kill indiscriminately ? And did they in fact spread this disease all over the world by exporting the stuff to every two bit warlord with the cash to buy them ?
The Romans were ruthless enough to chop limbs off children personally (sort of a "hands off"-approach;-). It takes quite a different level of ruthlessness to personally skewer a kid with a sword, than selling a mine to somebody who may use it in a way that results in kids getting maimed and killed. Any coward can quiet their conscience in the hopes of quick profits (for an arms merchant) or not think very far into the future when securing their position in a war (for a soldier in a war zone). Very very few individuals (today, in developed countries) are ruthless enough to personally off a kid.
In fact, those nuclear weapons have made the world far less safe, for the simple reason that retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike is not only absolutely certain, but would also carry with it extremely destructive consequences for the entire planet. We have come right to the brink of destruction multiple times now, because of human or computer error, or poor diplomacy.
OTOH, considering how close to war we were during the cold war even with the potential destruction of human civilization by nuclear war, then without a WW3 would have been almost certain. And a total war of industrialized nations taken to the extreme can be destructive enough to crumble the civilization without nuclear weapons, especially considering that both sides were prepared for biological and chemical war as well as nuclear. The effort now spent on developing nuclear weapons would probably have been spent on developing other kinds of WMD. Imagine MIRV-delivered clouds of nerve gas. Not much better for humans, than MIRV delivered nuclear warheads.
This is honestly bullshit. Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.
Can you provide an example of this modern ruthlessness? Preferably so that you'd compare it to what the Romans might have done instead, that's less ruthless.
Lotteries are a really shitty bet. The payoff is much, much, much lower than the odds of winning. The house edge can be anywhere from 10% to 50% for a single bet. (e.g. for the UK lottery, you've got a 14,000,000/1 chance of winning, but the payout is roughly 7,000,000/1. A good mathematician would notice that he's going to be phenomenally better off if he places long-odds bets on sports at his local bookies (~10% house edge?), or going to a real casino (0% - ~6% house edge, depending on the game, with craps being the 0% edge if you play a perfect game, which no-one can for any reasonable length of time, which is how long it takes to average out)
But if you spend, say, $10/month, that is $120 yearly, on Lottery, and then spend the same amount in a casino yearly, and do this for 10 years, which gives better chance of winning enough to retire comfortably, let's say one million dollars? I wouldn't be surprised if it's lottery...
Better to be considered an asshat by someone who is clearly delusional, than being delusional yourself - or enabling their delusions at the cost to society as a whole. Religion needs put down, hard.
Ideology is the only thing that is able to keep a human society from imploding upon itself. Be happy that you're able to choose your ideology yourself, and be honest about your ideology if you want to be.
And before you dream of putting down mainstream Christianity (for example), think for a while what is most likely to replace it. I'm pretty sure it won't be as pleasant for you.
Religion will disappear on it's own, if it's to disappear at all, when humanity is ready to collectively replace it with something else. Trying to speed the process directly will lead to rise of ideological fundamentalism.
Having your work explicitly include/import/require (using that scripting language command) a file that has unambiguous copyright held by somebody else sure sounds like deriving from that file.
The end user, in memory, mayble. Unfortunately copyright only applies to original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression, and an in memory combination is neither tangible nor original.
Now you're not making sense. If you put a copyrighted work to the cloud storage (can't get much more intangible than that), it's no longer under copyright? And I'd say both the original code, and the new code using it, and their combination in memory, are original works. How could they not be?
If there are several version of the file available (like C stdio.h or something) then I think the copyright holder of the original would have to prove that derived work derives from his version of the original and not somebody else's. But in many cases, the imported file is available from only one source, and there's no ambiguity like this.
In Baystate vs. Bentley Systems (1997) a U.S. district court ruled that "technical interfaces" are not covered by copyright. There are good reasons for that. See here [pdf].
Including a specific, unique copyrighted file, with intention to include just that file, is more than using a technical interface. It's using a specific implementation of that interface. Remove the original part, and new part ceases to be what it is intended, marketed and sold as. The new part is clearly derived from the original, expanding on it. If the new part is distributed alone, but with the intention of a specific original work being combined with it (as proven by eg. installation instructions telling how to get the original work required by the new work), then I think copyright law does view that as distributing a derived work.
Use dependency does not make something a derivative. Interface compatibility does not make a derivative.
Having your work explicitly include/import/require (using that scripting language command) a file that has unambiguous copyright held by somebody else sure sounds like deriving from that file. Or at least it could plausibly be interpreted that way. Logically it's a lot like loading a copyrighted picture onto a paint program, and then proceeding to paint on top of it. Result is derived work.
If there are several version of the file available (like C stdio.h or something) then I think the copyright holder of the original would have to prove that derived work derives from his version of the original and not somebody else's. But in many cases, the imported file is available from only one source, and there's no ambiguity like this.
I could write a GPL library. So everything that links to it must abide by the terms of the GPL.
GPL only kicks in with distribution. If you're distributing something which links non-GPL code with GPL code, then GPL doesn't give you the right to distribute that GPL code, and copyright holder(s) of the GPL code can sue you for copyright infringement (unless you have some other permission than one granted by GPL).
If you're distributing just the non-GPL part without any GPL code, then it potentially gets murky.
With compiled programming languages it's easier, because generally the binary will be linked against a specific library, which can be interpreted as having created a derivative work (when the binary that links against GPL library is compiled).
With script code (or with distributing non-GPL compiled software as source, to be compiled by the user), it's less easy. However, I can easily see include/require/import/whatever script command being interpreted as "derive from". But here there's the option of creating differently licensed original (100% non-derived) version of GPL code, and then deriving the non-GPL stuff from that (even though it then works with the GPL version too). However, this usually isn't feasible.
And once non-GPL stuff is derived from GPL stuff, distributing this derived work it needs permission from copyright holder(s) of the original. GPL gives the permission, but requires GPLing the derived work, and quite often with GPL software, you can't get any other kind of permission except GPL.
Or this is how I understand it. IANAL, and could be totally wrong.
He also said "and when" to indicate it was inevitable. This admittedly made the "if" part completely stupid.
No, not stupid. "If and when" is a shorter and nicer way of saying "when inevitably at an unpredictable time in the future". It conveys much more meaning than just plain "when".
Just read a bit about Costa Rica, and I'd have to say, quite a remarkable achievement. Good luck spreading the idea, it could work beautifully for a few neighboring countries too. In that neighborhood, It's probably true what you say about military being internal tool for politicians in power.
I'm from a country that has been almost conquered and effectively annexed by a neighboring superpower in WW2 (like many similar countries indeed were). I'm also almost certain that my country would have been occupied (sort of like Czechoslovakia or Hungary were) during cold war if we didn't have a relatively large conscription-based military combined with a history of defending our country. So my point of view is quite different from yours.
Funny you should say that. I live in a country with no army, and lo, it hasn't been taken over by anyone.
Can you clarify, do you live in a country that is not protected by any army, or is your country, and by extension you, just leeching the protection from some other nations/coalitions army?
(Well, ok, there's third alternative, that you pay for the protection in some way, though you don't have an army of your own.)
Nice. So, we don't have money for the unemployed, for the ill, or even for veterans benefits, but we can afford laser systems to shoot down planes for imaginary invasions.
Well, other things aside, the primary purpose of this kind of systems isn't to counter imaginary invasion, it's to keep them just imaginary, instead of real.
And the nasty thing is, if it's successful, we'll never know if military spending played a critical role in that or not.
However, looking at the history of humanity, I personally find it very improbable that any current densely populated piece of land, including US soil, will be free of war for more than a few centuries at most.
This is very important. As you said, aircraft carriers and big surface ships are where Battleships were during the inter-World War years. They are still here because there are no large naval battles to test them. The biggest threat to such large surface sips are the true capital ships of today, the nuclear submarines. Generally, an underwater hit is more fatal than a hit to the superstructure by "breaking the back" of the surface vessel. North Korea just sunk a South Korea vessel using a dinky outdated submarine. This is the writing on the wall for aircraft carriers.
I believe the aircraft carriers "back" generally is the flight deck. So a non-nuclear torpedo doesn't have a chance to "break the back" of them. Of course this doesn't mean a sub-launched torpedo can't easily mission kill such a ship.
BP posted the original. All they photochopped were three of the screens, two of which were blank (one says "loading") and one of which looks like it's staring directly at a bright light. You'll also notice the source for the replacement screens are just three of the other existing screens.
And just how do we know the "original" they posted isn't also photoshopped, but this time by somebody competent, hmm...?;-)
The EXIF data only indicates that they probably didn't set their camera clock or it got reset changing the batteries.
Don't forget Occam's Razor! Is that really the simplest explanation that fits the known facts? No, not by a long shot! You know how much money oil industry has. It's practically certain they have time machine, which they've used to transfer the command center back in time, to a random time before the accident. That way they could take a photo without showing the panic and chaos there is today, so that they appear to be in control of the situation.
> I don't think any amount of stuff on LEO would prevent launching of military satellites to higher orbits,
Define "any". It's a problem. Really.
Maury
"Any amount" as in amount that is small enough so that interaction between debris particles doesn't cause very rapid depletion, while still being large enough to pose more than 50% chance of collision with a rocket booster stage as it zips through LEO altitudes towards MEO or GEO.
Note: if there are gaps in debris field allowing higher probability of successful LEO penetration, that also counts as not being dense enough. And in this context, it's worth noting that while it would take only a dense enough band of debris orbiting above equator to prevent launches from equator, preventing launches from higher latitudes would require complete blanketing of the Earth, which requires something like 1-2 orders of magnitude more debris.
Sure there is: the oceans. Most of Earth surface is completely uninhabited, and building an artificial island is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier and safer than building equal living area in space (including other planets).
Yet it's not happening.
Another thing of course is, that volume of expanding "balloon" increases polynomially, while a population grows exponentially. There will always be shortage of resources eventually, and therefore need to live together with people who don't agree with you (at the very basic level, they think the food you're eating should be eaten by them).
Bingo! Siberia is rich prize that would soooooo much richer if it were...depopulated...from those pesky non-Hans. Shades of Tibet? The Han think very long term...centuries. What is Russia willing to risk to keep Siberia?
Especially if climate warms up, Siberia could turn into quite a nice environment in a few hundred years (alternatively, it could turn into a total hell, freezing in winter, scorching dry in summer, with peat dust storms that could turn into regional firestorms at any time with a strike of lightning, but never mind that;-).
But I bet Russia is willing to risk MAD becoming reality to keep Siberia.
Except for the fact that GPS satellites are not in LEO orbit. It would not affect the GPS constellation at all. It could affect future launches of GPS by preventing future launches. Most, but not all comm satellites are in higher orbits. Also with the same caveats on future launches.
I don't think any amount of stuff on LEO would prevent launching of military satellites to higher orbits, or even to LEO (they'd just have a short lifetime on LEO).
Ok, once we can move a nice little asteroid and break it into small pebbles covering LEO, then we perhaps could make the environment too hazardous for launches. But, alas, our puny technology can't do that yet. OTOH, at that point we'll probably also have the technology to clean up the orbit, even from ground (think of giant sharks with lasers in their heads, roaming the oceans and looking into the space, zapping space junk out of orbit).
You're a sucker if you buy SC2. Go play something else. Go get League of Legends or something. Don't encourage this shit where you pay $50-60 a pop 2-3 times just to get an entire game.
Apparently you don't understand. It's very simple really. It's Starcraft. S-T-A-R-C-R-A-F-T. Everything else, such as life, liberty and pursuit of (any other kind of) happiness, is secondary.
(And no, I'm not a real fan, and I have no current plans to play or buy the game, just saying...)
From what we know about asteroids, they seem to be composed mostly of things like iron, nickel and silica, none of which are particularly rare or hard to extract here on Earth. Preventing an impact event is one thing, but it's doubtful that there's much money in harvesting asteroids.
Material of Earth has differentiated, meaning we've got more heavy stuff in the core, and more light stuff on the surface. So it's plausible to think that some asteroids (depending on where, when and how they were formed in the first place) would have very high concentrations of stuff like uranium, gold, platinum group metals...
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's fairly likely that there will not be too much variation in natural lifespan in space-faring races (+/-50%?). Evolution probably places an upper bound on lifetime - much longer than a century and either you need low birth rates or a high attrition rate (think how proportionally few humans made it past 35 years prior to the 18th Century) to avoid a Malthusian population problem (which would act as a selector for different traits). However if you have a low birth rate and long generations, then the species will take longer to evolve and would probably lose any competition with species that have a shorter lifespan.
With significantly shorter lifespans, the problem arises from the information transfer between individuals necessary to advance socio-cultural/scientific progress to the level of complex space-faring civilization. The lower bound on average lifespan probably is more flexible because a species could evolve a more efficient of inter-generational information transfer than we have with oral traditions and written texts. However that's not the bound on lifespan that needs to be flexible to survive a long interstellar trip.
Once technology allows safe changing genomes of adult organisms (probably by using viruses) and cybernetics develop to the level where many biological traits are meaningless anyway, biological evolution over natural generations of individuals becomes irrelevant. Evolution as a process will of course go on as long as there's any growth and non-infinite resources, but it won't be biological evolution for beings able to control their genome arbitrarily, or possibly do away with biological genome altogether.
and that they maintain their desire to repeat this procedure for countless generations.
Just a quick comment on this note: no need to maintain that desire. It's only required that in the course of their cultural evolution over thousands and thousands of years, after they get sufficient technological capability, at least some subculture every few thousand years has both the wealth and the desire to do this.
Hard to imagine a technological species where that never happens. Even if somebody makes an attempt only every 1000 years, and the attempts fails 90% of the time, that's one successful interstellar colonization event per 10000 years, originating from one technological world.
Note that over thousands of years, and looking at our own development, a technological civilization would morph into something totally unrecognizable. We're just on the brink of it starting to happen, so we can see how it can happen: genetic modification, nanotechnology, cybernetics and neural interfaces, exponential development of computer power. Put them together and... we have as much an idea of what is the result, that "cavemen" had when they first started to speculated what it would be like if they brought fire into their cave.
Did the Romans plant devices that could chop off the limbs of a playing child years or even decades after the conflict has ended, devices specifically intended to maim and kill indiscriminately ? And did they in fact spread this disease all over the world by exporting the stuff to every two bit warlord with the cash to buy them ?
The Romans were ruthless enough to chop limbs off children personally (sort of a "hands off"-approach ;-). It takes quite a different level of ruthlessness to personally skewer a kid with a sword, than selling a mine to somebody who may use it in a way that results in kids getting maimed and killed. Any coward can quiet their conscience in the hopes of quick profits (for an arms merchant) or not think very far into the future when securing their position in a war (for a soldier in a war zone). Very very few individuals (today, in developed countries) are ruthless enough to personally off a kid.
In fact, those nuclear weapons have made the world far less safe, for the simple reason that retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike is not only absolutely certain, but would also carry with it extremely destructive consequences for the entire planet. We have come right to the brink of destruction multiple times now, because of human or computer error, or poor diplomacy.
OTOH, considering how close to war we were during the cold war even with the potential destruction of human civilization by nuclear war, then without a WW3 would have been almost certain. And a total war of industrialized nations taken to the extreme can be destructive enough to crumble the civilization without nuclear weapons, especially considering that both sides were prepared for biological and chemical war as well as nuclear. The effort now spent on developing nuclear weapons would probably have been spent on developing other kinds of WMD. Imagine MIRV-delivered clouds of nerve gas. Not much better for humans, than MIRV delivered nuclear warheads.
This is honestly bullshit. Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.
Can you provide an example of this modern ruthlessness? Preferably so that you'd compare it to what the Romans might have done instead, that's less ruthless.
Lotteries are a really shitty bet. The payoff is much, much, much lower than the odds of winning. The house edge can be anywhere from 10% to 50% for a single bet. (e.g. for the UK lottery, you've got a 14,000,000/1 chance of winning, but the payout is roughly 7,000,000/1. A good mathematician would notice that he's going to be phenomenally better off if he places long-odds bets on sports at his local bookies (~10% house edge?), or going to a real casino (0% - ~6% house edge, depending on the game, with craps being the 0% edge if you play a perfect game, which no-one can for any reasonable length of time, which is how long it takes to average out)
But if you spend, say, $10/month, that is $120 yearly, on Lottery, and then spend the same amount in a casino yearly, and do this for 10 years, which gives better chance of winning enough to retire comfortably, let's say one million dollars? I wouldn't be surprised if it's lottery...
Better to be considered an asshat by someone who is clearly delusional, than being delusional yourself - or enabling their delusions at the cost to society as a whole. Religion needs put down, hard.
Ideology is the only thing that is able to keep a human society from imploding upon itself. Be happy that you're able to choose your ideology yourself, and be honest about your ideology if you want to be.
And before you dream of putting down mainstream Christianity (for example), think for a while what is most likely to replace it. I'm pretty sure it won't be as pleasant for you.
Religion will disappear on it's own, if it's to disappear at all, when humanity is ready to collectively replace it with something else. Trying to speed the process directly will lead to rise of ideological fundamentalism.
Just because they think the reason it is bolocked is because of the word sex in the URL, dosent meen that is the reason.
Indeed. Just think who will benefit from this news about the blocking... ;-)
Having your work explicitly include/import/require (using that scripting language command) a file that has unambiguous copyright held by somebody else sure sounds like deriving from that file.
The end user, in memory, mayble. Unfortunately copyright only applies to original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression, and an in memory combination is neither tangible nor original.
Now you're not making sense. If you put a copyrighted work to the cloud storage (can't get much more intangible than that), it's no longer under copyright? And I'd say both the original code, and the new code using it, and their combination in memory, are original works. How could they not be?
If there are several version of the file available (like C stdio.h or something) then I think the copyright holder of the original would have to prove that derived work derives from his version of the original and not somebody else's. But in many cases, the imported file is available from only one source, and there's no ambiguity like this.
In Baystate vs. Bentley Systems (1997) a U.S. district court ruled that "technical interfaces" are not covered by copyright. There are good reasons for that. See here [pdf].
Including a specific, unique copyrighted file, with intention to include just that file, is more than using a technical interface. It's using a specific implementation of that interface. Remove the original part, and new part ceases to be what it is intended, marketed and sold as. The new part is clearly derived from the original, expanding on it. If the new part is distributed alone, but with the intention of a specific original work being combined with it (as proven by eg. installation instructions telling how to get the original work required by the new work), then I think copyright law does view that as distributing a derived work.
Use dependency does not make something a derivative. Interface compatibility does not make a derivative.
Having your work explicitly include/import/require (using that scripting language command) a file that has unambiguous copyright held by somebody else sure sounds like deriving from that file. Or at least it could plausibly be interpreted that way. Logically it's a lot like loading a copyrighted picture onto a paint program, and then proceeding to paint on top of it. Result is derived work.
If there are several version of the file available (like C stdio.h or something) then I think the copyright holder of the original would have to prove that derived work derives from his version of the original and not somebody else's. But in many cases, the imported file is available from only one source, and there's no ambiguity like this.
Here's where it gets murky though.
I could write a GPL library. So everything that links to it must abide by the terms of the GPL.
GPL only kicks in with distribution. If you're distributing something which links non-GPL code with GPL code, then GPL doesn't give you the right to distribute that GPL code, and copyright holder(s) of the GPL code can sue you for copyright infringement (unless you have some other permission than one granted by GPL).
If you're distributing just the non-GPL part without any GPL code, then it potentially gets murky.
With compiled programming languages it's easier, because generally the binary will be linked against a specific library, which can be interpreted as having created a derivative work (when the binary that links against GPL library is compiled).
With script code (or with distributing non-GPL compiled software as source, to be compiled by the user), it's less easy. However, I can easily see include/require/import/whatever script command being interpreted as "derive from". But here there's the option of creating differently licensed original (100% non-derived) version of GPL code, and then deriving the non-GPL stuff from that (even though it then works with the GPL version too). However, this usually isn't feasible.
And once non-GPL stuff is derived from GPL stuff, distributing this derived work it needs permission from copyright holder(s) of the original. GPL gives the permission, but requires GPLing the derived work, and quite often with GPL software, you can't get any other kind of permission except GPL.
Or this is how I understand it. IANAL, and could be totally wrong.
He also said "and when" to indicate it was inevitable. This admittedly made the "if" part completely stupid.
No, not stupid. "If and when" is a shorter and nicer way of saying "when inevitably at an unpredictable time in the future". It conveys much more meaning than just plain "when".
Just read a bit about Costa Rica, and I'd have to say, quite a remarkable achievement. Good luck spreading the idea, it could work beautifully for a few neighboring countries too. In that neighborhood, It's probably true what you say about military being internal tool for politicians in power.
I'm from a country that has been almost conquered and effectively annexed by a neighboring superpower in WW2 (like many similar countries indeed were). I'm also almost certain that my country would have been occupied (sort of like Czechoslovakia or Hungary were) during cold war if we didn't have a relatively large conscription-based military combined with a history of defending our country. So my point of view is quite different from yours.
Funny you should say that. I live in a country with no army, and lo, it hasn't been taken over by anyone.
Can you clarify, do you live in a country that is not protected by any army, or is your country, and by extension you, just leeching the protection from some other nations/coalitions army?
(Well, ok, there's third alternative, that you pay for the protection in some way, though you don't have an army of your own.)
Nice. So, we don't have money for the unemployed, for the ill, or even for veterans benefits, but we can afford laser systems to shoot down planes for imaginary invasions.
Well, other things aside, the primary purpose of this kind of systems isn't to counter imaginary invasion, it's to keep them just imaginary, instead of real.
And the nasty thing is, if it's successful, we'll never know if military spending played a critical role in that or not.
However, looking at the history of humanity, I personally find it very improbable that any current densely populated piece of land, including US soil, will be free of war for more than a few centuries at most.
Not to mention the firing rate of that system is basically filling the sky with lead/depleted uranium/whatever.
Yeah, but only for about 20 seconds total, before running out of ammo... That's not very many missiles.
This is very important. As you said, aircraft carriers and big surface ships are where Battleships were during the inter-World War years. They are still here because there are no large naval battles to test them. The biggest threat to such large surface sips are the true capital ships of today, the nuclear submarines. Generally, an underwater hit is more fatal than a hit to the superstructure by "breaking the back" of the surface vessel. North Korea just sunk a South Korea vessel using a dinky outdated submarine. This is the writing on the wall for aircraft carriers.
I believe the aircraft carriers "back" generally is the flight deck. So a non-nuclear torpedo doesn't have a chance to "break the back" of them. Of course this doesn't mean a sub-launched torpedo can't easily mission kill such a ship.
BP posted the original. All they photochopped were three of the screens, two of which were blank (one says "loading") and one of which looks like it's staring directly at a bright light. You'll also notice the source for the replacement screens are just three of the other existing screens.
And just how do we know the "original" they posted isn't also photoshopped, but this time by somebody competent, hmm...? ;-)
The EXIF data only indicates that they probably didn't set their camera clock or it got reset changing the batteries.
Don't forget Occam's Razor! Is that really the simplest explanation that fits the known facts? No, not by a long shot! You know how much money oil industry has. It's practically certain they have time machine, which they've used to transfer the command center back in time, to a random time before the accident. That way they could take a photo without showing the panic and chaos there is today, so that they appear to be in control of the situation.
> I don't think any amount of stuff on LEO would prevent launching of military satellites to higher orbits,
Define "any". It's a problem. Really.
Maury
"Any amount" as in amount that is small enough so that interaction between debris particles doesn't cause very rapid depletion, while still being large enough to pose more than 50% chance of collision with a rocket booster stage as it zips through LEO altitudes towards MEO or GEO.
Note: if there are gaps in debris field allowing higher probability of successful LEO penetration, that also counts as not being dense enough. And in this context, it's worth noting that while it would take only a dense enough band of debris orbiting above equator to prevent launches from equator, preventing launches from higher latitudes would require complete blanketing of the Earth, which requires something like 1-2 orders of magnitude more debris.
But there is no more of Earth to discover.
Sure there is: the oceans. Most of Earth surface is completely uninhabited, and building an artificial island is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier and safer than building equal living area in space (including other planets).
Yet it's not happening.
Another thing of course is, that volume of expanding "balloon" increases polynomially, while a population grows exponentially. There will always be shortage of resources eventually, and therefore need to live together with people who don't agree with you (at the very basic level, they think the food you're eating should be eaten by them).
Bingo! Siberia is rich prize that would soooooo much richer if it were...depopulated...from those pesky non-Hans. Shades of Tibet? The Han think very long term...centuries. What is Russia willing to risk to keep Siberia?
Especially if climate warms up, Siberia could turn into quite a nice environment in a few hundred years (alternatively, it could turn into a total hell, freezing in winter, scorching dry in summer, with peat dust storms that could turn into regional firestorms at any time with a strike of lightning, but never mind that ;-).
But I bet Russia is willing to risk MAD becoming reality to keep Siberia.
Except for the fact that GPS satellites are not in LEO orbit. It would not affect the GPS constellation at all. It could affect future launches of GPS by preventing future launches. Most, but not all comm satellites are in higher orbits. Also with the same caveats on future launches.
I don't think any amount of stuff on LEO would prevent launching of military satellites to higher orbits, or even to LEO (they'd just have a short lifetime on LEO).
Ok, once we can move a nice little asteroid and break it into small pebbles covering LEO, then we perhaps could make the environment too hazardous for launches. But, alas, our puny technology can't do that yet. OTOH, at that point we'll probably also have the technology to clean up the orbit, even from ground (think of giant sharks with lasers in their heads, roaming the oceans and looking into the space, zapping space junk out of orbit).
...you're gonna have to buy this game 3 times.
You're a sucker if you buy SC2. Go play something else. Go get League of Legends or something. Don't encourage this shit where you pay $50-60 a pop 2-3 times just to get an entire game.
Apparently you don't understand. It's very simple really. It's Starcraft. S-T-A-R-C-R-A-F-T. Everything else, such as life, liberty and pursuit of (any other kind of) happiness, is secondary.
(And no, I'm not a real fan, and I have no current plans to play or buy the game, just saying...)
From what we know about asteroids, they seem to be composed mostly of things like iron, nickel and silica, none of which are particularly rare or hard to extract here on Earth. Preventing an impact event is one thing, but it's doubtful that there's much money in harvesting asteroids.
Material of Earth has differentiated, meaning we've got more heavy stuff in the core, and more light stuff on the surface. So it's plausible to think that some asteroids (depending on where, when and how they were formed in the first place) would have very high concentrations of stuff like uranium, gold, platinum group metals...