create about 50 general-purpose robots. The programming of these robots instruct them to build factories first, where other robots are to be created. Eventually, have thhem build the factory portable so that it can be relocated easily in case of depleted resources or danger. (Kind of like the Starcraft Terran buildings.)
Now the robots finished the factory and start production of the robots. More robots equals to more factories etc.
The factories itself could be improved by creating machines with them capable of building the robots better.
Further improvement would be the ability to connect themselves to larger entities. In an self-improvement (2nd generation robots, generated by robot-made factories) robots no longer are all equal, but specialized, much like cells in a human body. The specialization is adapted to the environment and the needs of the robots.
Thus, PCs are here to stay. No console is easier to set up for development than a PC. For a PC, I just need a development environment. For a console, I need additional hardware, expensive stuff that I only get as a registered developer. But how to BECOME a registered developer, if one has no chance of starting to code games?
Don't forget about the human ability to adapt very quickly. Humans can live almost everywhere, just like rats, cockroaches, dogs, and ants. I see these possibilities:
a) Humans die out, some other species (ants or rats or cockroaches maybe) evolve to sentience. b) Human civilizations continue to evolve and collapse, with an overall increase in technology (there was a breakdown in tech after the fall of Rome, but today the tech level is far higher). Assuming a continuing improvement of human tech, it would not be foreseeable what we would be capable of in 10 Million years. Maybe ants & cockroaches evolve to sentience, which would make an interesting situation. c) Humans broke down into species, just like the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G.Wells Time Machine. This is actually not as likely as one might think, for humans tend to reorganize to societies, and communicate/trade with other ones. A derivation into subspecies would require a complete isolation - or genetic/nanotechnological manipulation. Isolation because of far-distant colonies in Tau Ceti would be possible, too (assuming that we don't invent FTL travel). Here, too an evolution of cockroaches, ants etc. would be possible.
Overall, the hottest candidates for the next species with sentience are IMO ants, cockroaches, rats, squids, bonobos, dolphins. I could also imagine that some cats make it.
This is actually a very interesting possibility to think about: what if we are the first species with sentience, and thus the one that starts a new shift in the fauna of this planet, propagating sentience, both on this planet and in space? This reminds me of "2001", where the ancients figured out how to travel through space, and discovered that mind and sentience are the most precious things in the universe.
Don't make the mistake many people do: don't think of a god as some guy with a beard, who's used to be praised by his followers, etc. etc. Thats one bitter consequence of the medieval period: our concept of religion has been reduced to the harmful definition the church forced upon everyone.
I don't think that if a god exists, it would be like you said (human form etc.) However, I refuse to say that there is definitely nothing of higher conciousness, simply because we can neither prove nor disprove it.
Of course. Now the next step is to acknowledge that there are religious people on BOTH sides, scientists and religious zealots. The former say there is no god and they do not accept any non-rational junk, the others say that science is just a deception of the devil and we all must praise their God.
However, if you say that you don't know, then you are actually an agnostic. Agnostics know only that they don't know. Atheists know that there cannot be a God. I am an agnostic myself, btw, however thats no reason for not thinking about the possibilities (as long as they remain possibilities).
Ah, the typical ignorant Slashdot reader. You do know that there are more religions than the Christian one? If you actually read parts of the bible you would have noticed that a) most of it MUST NOT be read literally, but as metaphors, b) the things Jesus said (if he existed) apply to everday life. I mean things like treat other like you want to be treated yourself. I DO NOT believe in a billionaire pope who shits on the "followers".
Or buddhism? Buddhism and Christan belief are actually very similar - the ORIGINAL Christian belief, that is, not the one warped by the Catholic Church. Both do not really try to describe the Universe, and do not impose Dogmata all around (thats what the church did!) but are very, very good lessons of how to make peace with oneself, how to get to KNOW oneself, how to look through the piles of illusions so many people are trapped in. Thus, I do think beliefs are right (i do not count Buddhism as a religion), but religions are not. Organized belief is never good, since it takes away the ability to think freely. Also, religions are often filled with dogmata and priests plundering their followers. But to live without a belief is not possible. Your belief is that you have to be 100% rational.
Yea, they are so advanced, they can even bake pizza for you, in an integrated stone oven! And don't forget about the huge amount of WD40 included! And if the PS3/xbox360 fusion reactor has insufficient fuel, an integrated auxiliary warp drive can move the thing into the Sun's corona, and a mini-fuel scoop can suck in truckloads of hydrogen!
The 6,5" CDs are annoying. I like the smaller ones, but with only ~250 MB capacity the usefulness of these is limited. However, a small version of these DVDs would be fine. Easier transporation, less danger of being broken...
Besides, it just looks cooler. Would remind me of the Johny Mnemonic 320GB discs (the movie was crap, but the disc and the drive were cool).
Anyone knows about the works of Burkhard Heim? That guy developed a theory which seems to be capable of predicting the mass of all particles, for example, among other things. Yet it is virtually unknown, partly because of it being written in German and not released for public peer-reviewing (it is being translated in English now), partly because of its formidable math. The AIAA awarded his paper as the "paper of the year 2005". Early mistakes as of it being unable to predict the top quark apparently have been fixed. Anyone got more? While he did release his work on a esoteric publisher, I do think his work has some relevance.
Why I mention that? His physics address the same thing as superstrings, the Theory of Everything.
The API, the consistency, the HIG,.... Its a pleasure to write apps using Qt, a horror using GTK. GTK is far too unstable, has a terrifying API, is badly documented, and has serious flaws in the usability (try to tab around in GQView, for example - you get stuck in the line widget because it eats the tab keypresses), and many GTK apps simply don't look professional. Compare aMule and eMule. Which one has the better UI? (I'm aware that aMule uses wxWidgets, but this one is in turn based on GTK).
OK, OK, I *am* biased against GTK. But everybody is biased in some sort. Of course there are serious flaws within Qt (the installation is horrible, and compiling takes ages, both Qt itself and Qt programs). But the thing is that Qt has a superior API - its lightyears ahead. That, combined with the good documentation, is a good reason to choose Qt over GTK.
But, most people bash Qt not because of technical issues, but because of the license. That is a BIG problem, because it is seen as "lame" to use Qt for apps, because you are using something "non-OS". So, the rule is: use the one that has the most liberal license, even if it is not the best one.
I for one stick with Qt, and ignore that lies about the license. I don't blame anyone for sticking with GTK, but I do get annoyed when I am accused of NOT using GTK. "You are using PROPIETARY STUFF! You traitor!" This is exaggerated, but thats the way many religious zealots see it.
Yes, mass is the problem. Actually, I wonder if the thesis that *information* cannot travel faster than c is correct. It is clear that *mass* cannot (at least not without tricks), but no one states that information can't. While Einsteins theory has been proven several times in terms of particles (particles living longer than they should, thanks to relativistic effects), but what if somehow one manages to nullify the mass of a thing?
Thats the core of the possible FTL mechanism Burkhard Heim proposed. A really interesting theory this guy proposed. Unfortunately, its hard to get and hard to read (very advanced math in there - most people, including me:), just quit). He said that with really strong magnetic fields (say, 20 Tesla or more) induced using fast spinning discs, matter could be phased-out of the normal space, nullifying its mass. The net result would be a possibility to fly 11 lightyears in 80 days.
Actually, it can. It travelled faster than light during the inflation era of the universe. Also, it is possible using quantum tunneling - BUT almost all information is lost. The catch is the "almost", some bits get through, but most of it is destroyed. While this could be feasible for communications in the future, it is highly unlikely to be a useful means of transporting matter. (Even if one could transmit information about the structure of a thing, thanks to the highly lossy transfer, you would look like a Chicken McNugget once you are at the destination.)
You know, some firefighters swear that fire is alive sometimes. It reacts to you, eats, replicates... of course, a small campfire does not look like this, but a whole building in flames is a different story.
About the definition of life, a while ago I heard the possibility about everything be alive. Since a rock reacts upon heat, water, etc. it is not "dead". As for replication, there are animals that do not replicate or try to self-sustain themselves. OK, these are mostly guards protecting a queen, but lifeforms do not have to replicate itself directly. However, there are similar patterns on all scales. A human is born, grows, his personality thrives, later he gets old and dies. Same applies to all animals and plants, all civilizations, all celestial bodies, galaxies, even to the universe (if its finite, that is).
IIRC, the conclusion was that energy=information=life. Highly hypothetical stuff, though very interesting.
1) Even if it has a "scratch-proof" surface, data gets much more delicate. Think about it, 45 GB of data on one disk. If this disk gets broken, you lose a whole lot more than having the data on 10 DVDs and losing one.
2) It is still a mechanic, spinning system. Which sucks, because it has to accelerate first, then it can read. If there is an error, it decelerates.. well, you know it already. It blocks parts of the system, and is downright annoying. OK - the data density is MUCH higher than in a CD. But no one says that the maximum transfer rate isn't going to increase. And when this happens, we have the spinning & error problems again.
Nothing maybe about it, really. China IS the next superpower. However, they have different priorities and history than the USA, so I don't see them as being quite the same insanely rapacious religious freeeks that the USA is turning out to be. They will turn out to be a different kind of greed. But given thing like the Oil Peak, and the ever burgeoning human population both on earth and in their own country, they won't have the same "free head start" the USA did with Texas Oil, appalachian coal and other 19th and early 20th century resources the USA had, so China will have to pick its battle more carefully.
China has existed for more than 2000 years. See them as a superpower will be very interesting. As the very least they have much more culture than the US. Unfortunately, their regime is not exactly open to human rights - but the USA won't be for long, either. About the Oil Peak thing: a real irony would be that the oil fields replenish, as has been theorized in several papers (which have NOT been debunked - abiotic oil exists, however it is considered as unlikely that it makes a significant amount of the oil we need), Texas etc. become oil-rich in 500 years again, within the ruins of the US civilization, the society that needed oil more than all the others.
Same thing is slowly happening now. The wealth is being extracted from the USA. the ruling class is off shoring their money and production facilities. When the moment is right, they'll just walk away and let the peasants fight over the scraps.
Now this really scares me. See, its quite obvious that the ruling class would extract the ABC-arsenal out of the US - after all, they don't want those peasants to ruin their off-shored homes. But if the peasants get hold of bombs, several parts of the globe will turn into major warzones.
At that point, I think we'll see the USA devolve, much like the UK or the former CCCP - split into smaller more manageable states. And like the former Soviets, some areas will do better than others. NYC, SF, LA etc will end up in countries much like Moscow and St. Pete's (only with better weather).
I believe that the state of an empire isnt actually the peak of a civilization. I think the peak happens after the decline of the empire. See the empire as a cocoon. The post-empire state is the butterfly. GB is a nice example.
As for NYC, SF, LA, well - I'm European, I have never visited the USA, but it seems to be that 90% of what the US image is about is concentrated in the coasts. The glorious land of the free mostly exists there, or so it seems.
The USA may only be 5% of the planet, but it has lots of nukes.
If it looks like the right wing is going to completely triumph both culturally and militarily in he USA, I urge the people of the EU, Japan, South Korea, and China to tell your leaders to pull the plug. Sell their American Bonds, sell their dollars. Let the USA sink into the oblivion of its multi-trillion dollar debt. If they complain, tell them to ask Jesus for the money. It'll be tough, but you all can get along without us.
You know, with China its the other way round. The US plug is in China, and they can't pull it. China is rapidly becoming a new superpower, maybe outstripping the US in its rise. EU, Russia, India, Pakistan and most of Asia have good/excellent relations with China. US will be losing, thats for sure. Unfortunately, the EU is still very bonded to the USA. Lets see what happens when they crash.
Erm.
What about self-reproducing systems? Genetic algorithms? Neural nets? These things quickly get very complex, at some point it becomes hardly possible to oversee the complexity. Of course, the brain itself is an stunningly complex system, but if there is one plausible possibility of ID, then its in self-reproducing systems.
This also implies that God exists/existed in our universe. It does not require God to be more complex than the creation, it does not even require him to exist after the beginning.
The usual question that the hypothesis of a created universe arises is: if there was/is a creator, who/what created him?
A paradoxon, you might say. But I see something else in here: a fractal pattern. The creator is created by a creator is created by a creator etc. Following this thought it says that we are creators too, which is quite correct - we create, both good and bad things. So, the scale is the only difference. Maybe the scale distances between us and the higher scale of the creator of the universe is so high that we cannot recognize it. Just imagine that in each quantum a whole universe would exist - the people in there would hardly be able to recognize their creators out there.
Of course, this boils down to the fact that the creator is no supernatural being - maybe we are our own creator. (Then again, this structure would be of such a magnificent naturse that one could call it supernatural.)
It would have been very ironic if the specifications for an open document format had been released as DOC.
However, they released them as PDF. Close enough, since PDF belongs to Adobe:)
Re:SF writers can't wait for Star Wars to end, too
on
No Need For Trek Anymore
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Hmm.. where does "Alien" fit in? 70s?
A while ago I played a PC game called "Iron Seed". It was some strange mix of Master Of Orion and Battlestar Galactica. Interesting thing is, that for the FTL drive to work, the mass of the ship has to be as small as possible. Thus, the crew of 250.000 people was digitalized, and their "engrams" now control the ships. The bodies of 250k people made a huge difference in mass. Unfortunately, the "engrams" need to be connected to a body, otherwise they get insane. Therefore a virtual body is periodically created, and the engrams put in for a while. This way, they stay sane.
Another one (I can't remember its name) was about a future with highly developed technology, and FTL travel - but no starships. Instead, people developed the ability to interact with space on a quantum level, shifting and bending the very fabric of spacetime as they wish.
Slashdot Mirror
would be this:
create about 50 general-purpose robots.
The programming of these robots instruct them to build factories first, where other robots are to be created. Eventually, have thhem build the factory portable so that it can be relocated easily in case of depleted resources or danger. (Kind of like the Starcraft Terran buildings.)
Now the robots finished the factory and start production of the robots. More robots equals to more factories etc.
The factories itself could be improved by creating machines with them capable of building the robots better.
Further improvement would be the ability to connect themselves to larger entities. In an self-improvement (2nd generation robots, generated by robot-made factories) robots no longer are all equal, but specialized, much like cells in a human body. The specialization is adapted to the environment and the needs of the robots.
Thus, PCs are here to stay. No console is easier to set up for development than a PC. For a PC, I just need a development environment. For a console, I need additional hardware, expensive stuff that I only get as a registered developer. But how to BECOME a registered developer, if one has no chance of starting to code games?
Standing up... check
Eating something... check
Taking a shower... check
Read the daily SCO news... check
Don't forget about the human ability to adapt very quickly. Humans can live almost everywhere, just like rats, cockroaches, dogs, and ants. I see these possibilities:
a) Humans die out, some other species (ants or rats or cockroaches maybe) evolve to sentience.
b) Human civilizations continue to evolve and collapse, with an overall increase in technology (there was a breakdown in tech after the fall of Rome, but today the tech level is far higher). Assuming a continuing improvement of human tech, it would not be foreseeable what we would be capable of in 10 Million years. Maybe ants & cockroaches evolve to sentience, which would make an interesting situation.
c) Humans broke down into species, just like the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G.Wells Time Machine. This is actually not as likely as one might think, for humans tend to reorganize to societies, and communicate/trade with other ones. A derivation into subspecies would require a complete isolation - or genetic/nanotechnological manipulation. Isolation because of far-distant colonies in Tau Ceti would be possible, too (assuming that we don't invent FTL travel). Here, too an evolution of cockroaches, ants etc. would be possible.
Overall, the hottest candidates for the next species with sentience are IMO ants, cockroaches, rats, squids, bonobos, dolphins. I could also imagine that some cats make it.
This is actually a very interesting possibility to think about: what if we are the first species with sentience, and thus the one that starts a new shift in the fauna of this planet, propagating sentience, both on this planet and in space? This reminds me of "2001", where the ancients figured out how to travel through space, and discovered that mind and sentience are the most precious things in the universe.
Tell me, did Greedo shoot first?
Don't make the mistake many people do: don't think of a god as some guy with a beard, who's used to be praised by his followers, etc. etc. Thats one bitter consequence of the medieval period: our concept of religion has been reduced to the harmful definition the church forced upon everyone.
I don't think that if a god exists, it would be like you said (human form etc.) However, I refuse to say that there is definitely nothing of higher conciousness, simply because we can neither prove nor disprove it.
Of course. Now the next step is to acknowledge that there are religious people on BOTH sides, scientists and religious zealots. The former say there is no god and they do not accept any non-rational junk, the others say that science is just a deception of the devil and we all must praise their God.
However, if you say that you don't know, then you are actually an agnostic. Agnostics know only that they don't know. Atheists know that there cannot be a God. I am an agnostic myself, btw, however thats no reason for not thinking about the possibilities (as long as they remain possibilities).
Ah, the typical ignorant Slashdot reader. You do know that there are more religions than the Christian one? If you actually read parts of the bible you would have noticed that a) most of it MUST NOT be read literally, but as metaphors, b) the things Jesus said (if he existed) apply to everday life. I mean things like treat other like you want to be treated yourself. I DO NOT believe in a billionaire pope who shits on the "followers".
Or buddhism? Buddhism and Christan belief are actually very similar - the ORIGINAL Christian belief, that is, not the one warped by the Catholic Church. Both do not really try to describe the Universe, and do not impose Dogmata all around (thats what the church did!) but are very, very good lessons of how to make peace with oneself, how to get to KNOW oneself, how to look through the piles of illusions so many people are trapped in. Thus, I do think beliefs are right (i do not count Buddhism as a religion), but religions are not. Organized belief is never good, since it takes away the ability to think freely. Also, religions are often filled with dogmata and priests plundering their followers. But to live without a belief is not possible. Your belief is that you have to be 100% rational.
Yea, they are so advanced, they can even bake pizza for you, in an integrated stone oven! And don't forget about the huge amount of WD40 included! And if the PS3/xbox360 fusion reactor has insufficient fuel, an integrated auxiliary warp drive can move the thing into the Sun's corona, and a mini-fuel scoop can suck in truckloads of hydrogen!
Oh yes, and you can play games with it, too.
The 6,5" CDs are annoying. I like the smaller ones, but with only ~250 MB capacity the usefulness of these is limited. However, a small version of these DVDs would be fine. Easier transporation, less danger of being broken...
Besides, it just looks cooler. Would remind me of the Johny Mnemonic 320GB discs (the movie was crap, but the disc and the drive were cool).
More likely the smart ones will be born in other countries. Look at India.
Anyone knows about the works of Burkhard Heim? That guy developed a theory which seems to be capable of predicting the mass of all particles, for example, among other things. Yet it is virtually unknown, partly because of it being written in German and not released for public peer-reviewing (it is being translated in English now), partly because of its formidable math. The AIAA awarded his paper as the "paper of the year 2005". Early mistakes as of it being unable to predict the top quark apparently have been fixed. Anyone got more? While he did release his work on a esoteric publisher, I do think his work has some relevance.
Why I mention that? His physics address the same thing as superstrings, the Theory of Everything.
The API, the consistency, the HIG, ....
Its a pleasure to write apps using Qt, a horror using GTK. GTK is far too unstable, has a terrifying API, is badly documented, and has serious flaws in the usability (try to tab around in GQView, for example - you get stuck in the line widget because it eats the tab keypresses), and many GTK apps simply don't look professional. Compare aMule and eMule. Which one has the better UI? (I'm aware that aMule uses wxWidgets, but this one is in turn based on GTK).
OK, OK, I *am* biased against GTK. But everybody is biased in some sort. Of course there are serious flaws within Qt (the installation is horrible, and compiling takes ages, both Qt itself and Qt programs). But the thing is that Qt has a superior API - its lightyears ahead. That, combined with the good documentation, is a good reason to choose Qt over GTK.
But, most people bash Qt not because of technical issues, but because of the license. That is a BIG problem, because it is seen as "lame" to use Qt for apps, because you are using something "non-OS". So, the rule is: use the one that has the most liberal license, even if it is not the best one.
I for one stick with Qt, and ignore that lies about the license. I don't blame anyone for sticking with GTK, but I do get annoyed when I am accused of NOT using GTK. "You are using PROPIETARY STUFF! You traitor!" This is exaggerated, but thats the way many religious zealots see it.
Yes, mass is the problem. Actually, I wonder if the thesis that *information* cannot travel faster than c is correct. It is clear that *mass* cannot (at least not without tricks), but no one states that information can't. While Einsteins theory has been proven several times in terms of particles (particles living longer than they should, thanks to relativistic effects), but what if somehow one manages to nullify the mass of a thing?
:), just quit). He said that with really strong magnetic fields (say, 20 Tesla or more) induced using fast spinning discs, matter could be phased-out of the normal space, nullifying its mass. The net result would be a possibility to fly 11 lightyears in 80 days.
Thats the core of the possible FTL mechanism Burkhard Heim proposed. A really interesting theory this guy proposed. Unfortunately, its hard to get and hard to read (very advanced math in there - most people, including me
Actually, it can. It travelled faster than light during the inflation era of the universe. Also, it is possible using quantum tunneling - BUT almost all information is lost. The catch is the "almost", some bits get through, but most of it is destroyed. While this could be feasible for communications in the future, it is highly unlikely to be a useful means of transporting matter. (Even if one could transmit information about the structure of a thing, thanks to the highly lossy transfer, you would look like a Chicken McNugget once you are at the destination.)
You know, some firefighters swear that fire is alive sometimes. It reacts to you, eats, replicates ... of course, a small campfire does not look like this, but a whole building in flames is a different story.
About the definition of life, a while ago I heard the possibility about everything be alive. Since a rock reacts upon heat, water, etc. it is not "dead". As for replication, there are animals that do not replicate or try to self-sustain themselves. OK, these are mostly guards protecting a queen, but lifeforms do not have to replicate itself directly. However, there are similar patterns on all scales. A human is born, grows, his personality thrives, later he gets old and dies. Same applies to all animals and plants, all civilizations, all celestial bodies, galaxies, even to the universe (if its finite, that is).
IIRC, the conclusion was that energy=information=life. Highly hypothetical stuff, though very interesting.
1) Even if it has a "scratch-proof" surface, data gets much more delicate. Think about it, 45 GB of data on one disk. If this disk gets broken, you lose a whole lot more than having the data on 10 DVDs and losing one.
2) It is still a mechanic, spinning system. Which sucks, because it has to accelerate first, then it can read. If there is an error, it decelerates.. well, you know it already. It blocks parts of the system, and is downright annoying.
OK - the data density is MUCH higher than in a CD. But no one says that the maximum transfer rate isn't going to increase. And when this happens, we have the spinning & error problems again.
You call it irony. I call it "hell-has-frozen-over".
Nothing maybe about it, really. China IS the next superpower. However, they have different priorities and history than the USA, so I don't see them as being quite the same insanely rapacious religious freeeks that the USA is turning out to be. They will turn out to be a different kind of greed. But given thing like the Oil Peak, and the ever burgeoning human population both on earth and in their own country, they won't have the same "free head start" the USA did with Texas Oil, appalachian coal and other 19th and early 20th century resources the USA had, so China will have to pick its battle more carefully.
China has existed for more than 2000 years. See them as a superpower will be very interesting. As the very least they have much more culture than the US. Unfortunately, their regime is not exactly open to human rights - but the USA won't be for long, either. About the Oil Peak thing: a real irony would be that the oil fields replenish, as has been theorized in several papers (which have NOT been debunked - abiotic oil exists, however it is considered as unlikely that it makes a significant amount of the oil we need), Texas etc. become oil-rich in 500 years again, within the ruins of the US civilization, the society that needed oil more than all the others.
Same thing is slowly happening now. The wealth is being extracted from the USA. the ruling class is off shoring their money and production facilities. When the moment is right, they'll just walk away and let the peasants fight over the scraps.
Now this really scares me. See, its quite obvious that the ruling class would extract the ABC-arsenal out of the US - after all, they don't want those peasants to ruin their off-shored homes. But if the peasants get hold of bombs, several parts of the globe will turn into major warzones.
At that point, I think we'll see the USA devolve, much like the UK or the former CCCP - split into smaller more manageable states. And like the former Soviets, some areas will do better than others. NYC, SF, LA etc will end up in countries much like Moscow and St. Pete's (only with better weather).
I believe that the state of an empire isnt actually the peak of a civilization. I think the peak happens after the decline of the empire. See the empire as a cocoon. The post-empire state is the butterfly. GB is a nice example.
As for NYC, SF, LA, well - I'm European, I have never visited the USA, but it seems to be that 90% of what the US image is about is concentrated in the coasts. The glorious land of the free mostly exists there, or so it seems.
The USA may only be 5% of the planet, but it has lots of nukes.
If it looks like the right wing is going to completely triumph both culturally and militarily in he USA, I urge the people of the EU, Japan, South Korea, and China to tell your leaders to pull the plug. Sell their American Bonds, sell their dollars. Let the USA sink into the oblivion of its multi-trillion dollar debt. If they complain, tell them to ask Jesus for the money. It'll be tough, but you all can get along without us.
You know, with China its the other way round. The US plug is in China, and they can't pull it. China is rapidly becoming a new superpower, maybe outstripping the US in its rise. EU, Russia, India, Pakistan and most of Asia have good/excellent relations with China. US will be losing, thats for sure. Unfortunately, the EU is still very bonded to the USA. Lets see what happens when they crash.
Erm. What about self-reproducing systems? Genetic algorithms? Neural nets? These things quickly get very complex, at some point it becomes hardly possible to oversee the complexity. Of course, the brain itself is an stunningly complex system, but if there is one plausible possibility of ID, then its in self-reproducing systems. This also implies that God exists/existed in our universe. It does not require God to be more complex than the creation, it does not even require him to exist after the beginning.
this structure would be of such a magnificent naturse Oups. I meant a magnificent nature. I really need a spellchecker.
The usual question that the hypothesis of a created universe arises is: if there was/is a creator, who/what created him?
A paradoxon, you might say. But I see something else in here: a fractal pattern. The creator is created by a creator is created by a creator etc. Following this thought it says that we are creators too, which is quite correct - we create, both good and bad things. So, the scale is the only difference. Maybe the scale distances between us and the higher scale of the creator of the universe is so high that we cannot recognize it. Just imagine that in each quantum a whole universe would exist - the people in there would hardly be able to recognize their creators out there.
Of course, this boils down to the fact that the creator is no supernatural being - maybe we are our own creator. (Then again, this structure would be of such a magnificent naturse that one could call it supernatural.)
It would have been very ironic if the specifications for an open document format had been released as DOC. However, they released them as PDF. Close enough, since PDF belongs to Adobe :)
Hmm..
where does "Alien" fit in? 70s?
A while ago I played a PC game called "Iron Seed". It was some strange mix of Master Of Orion and Battlestar Galactica. Interesting thing is, that for the FTL drive to work, the mass of the ship has to be as small as possible. Thus, the crew of 250.000 people was digitalized, and their "engrams" now control the ships. The bodies of 250k people made a huge difference in mass. Unfortunately, the "engrams" need to be connected to a body, otherwise they get insane. Therefore a virtual body is periodically created, and the engrams put in for a while. This way, they stay sane.
Another one (I can't remember its name) was about a future with highly developed technology, and FTL travel - but no starships. Instead, people developed the ability to interact with space on a quantum level, shifting and bending the very fabric of spacetime as they wish.