Simpson is likable, depending on the circumstances.
Your qualifier is insurmountable. If Homer Simpson is the everyman then I will turn from a philathrope to a misanthrope. He is repeatedly called a madman and a criminal throughout the series. He is a liar, he is selfish, short-sighted and a violent alcoholic and he repeatedly screws over the people he should value more than his own life for the most pitiful reasons without ever learning a thing.
I have watched 20 seasons of it, every word I have said about him is factual and I've had enough of The Simpsons because of the character Homer Simpson. His redeemable qualities fall far short of his irredeemable ones, and though I don't believe in a hell that's where his writers send him. In one episode he literally drags Lisa with him.
Last time we talked about rocketry the +5 people said LEO and geostationary are different beasts. The moon is ~10x higher up.
Mebbe Chinese spies have found those old Saturn V blueprints the US misplaced. Give them a call? Just refurbish the old tech with some new magnets, alloys and microchips and presto it's ultra-modern. Thermodynamics don't change.
If you work for the govt you are slightly less of a pawn, but the ideal would be to own robots that do work for you. So returning to the topic, go go Super Transforming JAXA!
If your multi-purpose robots can build robots that build multi-purpose robots you can enable your fellow man provided you get your elements free of charge. Known to be on the moon is Si, Al, Ca, Fe, Mg, Ti, and Na which to work with, but perhaps a hight-temp superconductor can be concocted to substitute copper wire. Unfortunately, patents. The dream is still many decades away.
"The very first Crisis Camp bar camp was held in Washington, D.C. in May 2009. During one of the opening sessions of the camp an industry panel spoke, and clearly stated that some issues of global importance take precedence over competitive business concerns." - RHoK.Org
Re:Days of Garage Inventor long gone(if ever exist
on
Scientific R&D At Home?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
All the low level hanging fruit in most fields has been mined.
I find it rude that you think so little of the ability of amateur scientists, but I'll chalk it up to you having a bad day.
The fruits of scientific discovery has never been low, not even when Archimedes took a bath, but what has changed is the size of the scientific community and the entrenchment of traditions. If I discover something that boggles my mind and I'm unable to quantify it to write a formal paper about it, no matter how keen my intuition or observational skills are I'll be marginalized. You find it typical that researchers are only vindicated after death, but you like som many others seem to assume that this doesn't occur today.
A certain recluse matematician comes to mind as a lone researcher, but he was far from unfamiliar with the traditions of his field. You might argue that with trees falling in the forest and listeners being lacking, making a discovery without being able to communicate it equals the abscence of science. I understand the sentiment but I'm of a mind saying that importance lies with identifying an effect as repeatable for specific reasons rather than the ability of naming it after yourself and impressing your peers with mathematical tautology.
Or get a bunch of old microwave ovens and see what you can plasmify at what distance. Electricity is cheap and your utility company will thank you!
Atomic power is a good source for X-rays and all sorts of fun can be had with radiation. Even ultraviolet is enough to increase the mutation rate of bacteria. Mutants! Need I say more? *wink-wink nudge-nudge*
You can also build your own lasers, and tesla coils are always impressive. Don't bother with rockets because the cheapest/best rocket engines are solid explosives that fit nicely in the hands of pros.
When I'm established I'll have a bunch of high-density flywheels built to deliver impulses of power befitting my megalomania. Then, superconductors!
Who knows what kind of crazy tech is out there doing the hard spy work now, the geek in me hopes that there's something more interesting than satellites...
The challenge is automating the discovery of interesting information in the vast, vast collection of data captured.
I take the battery out of my mobile phone when I'm going to any meeting of a political nature and any plugged in, uncovered CCD gives me the creeps.
tl;dr - Ranting about sarcastic laughter and prominent fools
I find myself laughing at stuff the writer and director never intended to be funny, for my own reason. - Yes, laughing 'at', not 'with'. - In these cases my mirth stems from a hidden irony, you might consider me callous for laughing when Homer Simpson's heart is broken but I bare in mind that the fictional man has no vindicative characteristic what so ever beyond infrequent decency and that he exists only to entertain me. I loathe the character so I cut my loss by exploiting all the good homour there is to be had.
I feel others should do this too because in sum mine is a positive reaction. If at for example you laugh from your gut at a political meeting when a candidate says for example that nuclear fuel can't be transmutated you communicate some very important information. It appears to me that with no one doing this a lot of bullshit can come to pass and that letting BS go by unmarked leads to very little laughter later on.
Americans have been known for their poor grasp of sarcasm and I'm sure that the re-election of Dubya would never have happened if you had seen him for the fool we unsympathetic Europeans recognized him as. Politicans are keen on literally getting the upper hand when shaking hands on camera, but people with keen social acumen know that if that's the kinds of game they play they should wait with shaking hands until they have something to agree on. You can't lie for long with these all-important signals you send because people have evolved huge brains to pick that crap apart, and once you're caught your game is over. The really symathetic thing is to show all debutants early on in their career that we the people value their merit over their acting skills, so that they know what to spend their time on.
The goals of the party are essentially dictated centrally from Sweden
I think you bit off a bit too much rhetoric there, and that your worries are founded on air.
...the formation of international parties (much like the well known International Socialist Organization) bodes ill for countries on an individual basis
I won't take your word for it, and I expect you to thank me for it. Evidence please. That is, evidence of your main point, not evidence regarding the incidental ISO.
I could imagine that international parties are scrutinized more closely so that the people who make up their rank are not dabbling buffoons, but rather competent citizens with a clear sense of both ideals and morals. In the case of political pirate parties, it seems their main goal is to unify consumers so that when the bill is eventually footed it does not contain the price gouging and DRM that is expected of the entertainment industries. It might take the form of a tax, but then if it is written into law with competence it should be a very affordable tax that entitles you to high-quality entertainment regardless of your income and distributes the money to artist in relation to their accomplishment.
Naturally, if one thinks bureaucracy is always inefficient the point is moot... But then again that means one has been barking up the wrong tree for the past 40 years.
Flywheel energy storage (FES) works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. When energy is extracted from the system, the flywheel's rotational speed is reduced as a consequence of the principle of conservation of energy; adding energy to the system correspondingly results in an increase in the speed of the flywheel.
Maraging steel, UHMWPE, and carbon fibres are some of the materials with the highest known tensile strength. The higher the tensile strength, the higher the energy density, which is good for mobile applications but perhaps not necessary for a small town. I suspect a flywheel would also be more reliable and environmentally friendly than most batteries.
"We will tell you that in the world of the exciter, the holy grail is to get a universal design that can generate all the waveforms that you could possibly imagine," says Falco.
Sounds like Software-defined Radio. You (yes, you) can buy one for under $1000 USD last I checked, but amps and antennas will cost you more.
Most of the engineering effort in SDR goes into the software, and there is of course a relevant open source project. To weaponize the tech you'll want to assemble a library of proven techniques, and on one level those are a matter of rather simple electrical engineering. If you want to do more than disable the mark, say feed it false information, the complexity goes up by an order of magnitude. Then they will want to have detailed information for each type of device they want to interfere with and have a way to defeat it before they engage it.
Usually military systems are isolated from other information systems such as the internet. This tech might bridge the gap by inducting a charge in for example exposed wires as a plane flies overhead and aims its directional antennas at them. The rest is in the hands of established military hackers.
"Some other way" is so easy to say, and for males it unfortunately it usually means the victim tries to take others with him. You have to understand that the depressed mind only sees depressed options and that to them the positive ones seem unrealistic. This doesn't mean the person is irrational, and in medicine the term "depressive realism" is used to imply that the patient is actually better rooted in reality than their undiagnosed peers, it means the problem is very difficult.
In my opinion it is wrong to blame or fault the victims of suicide, because all of them have honestly tried to get well. Parents CANNOT educate their children about this because it's not the children who are at fault for becoming depressed. The only way right now to ensure your kid isn't bullied in school is home-schooling. Some say children need to learn social skills in school, but often the particular skills learned are focused on picking on someone weaker so that you don't become the one picked on.
Blame for this rests squarely on bullies from all walks of life, and you and me for not being brave enough to stop the bullies. Actually, it rests less on me because I have on several occasions stood up for people who were being bullied. Earlier in my life I didn't recognize what bullying was because I was socially inept, and in my childhood I did some bullying too. Then I was bullied, and I was depressed and I was suicidal, but I pulled through by simply suffering until the next day could not possibly be worse than the day before. School is something I survived, not something I value nor cherish.
The only way this very serious problem is going to be fixed is if you yourself start fixing it, and start setting an example not tolerating intolerance. The correct response to bullies is alienation from the social group they're preying on until their malfunction can be sorted out, but time and time again schools opt to alienate the victim and let the bully continue destroying lives. The development of this case is right as it should be, pushing accountability for something you'd seemingly prefer to continue.
I don't share your opinion, in fact I think it's half-formed like a knee-jerk reaction, and I hope you will take the issue of suicide serious before one of your own loved ones falls victim to it. Then if not sooner you will understand that it just isn't as simple as you, as we all, would like it to be.
It also works with hearing. My mother has an implant which transformed her from almost deaf to... Well, in some cases she's got cyborg super-hearing because the microphones are sometimes rather high-tech. Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
Personally I'm waiting for a cyborg Ethernet adapter, since I don't think abstract information is any hindrance for neuroplasticity. With the head gear already in use for simple games it could be the first step into the Johnny Mnemonic augmented reality. Maybe we can one day hook children up to a neural trainer to let them learn all the school stuff in a year, so that they can spend their valuable time doing something much more important; playing.
How can they possibly justify applying a book written by a bunch of shepherds and nomads to something as modern as organ transplantation?
It's because
A. Their god doesn't talk to them anymore B. They don't listen C. Nietzsche killed him
It's fairly easy to work oneself into a state of exctacy where the idle chatter of one's mind sounds so concentrated it has to be the voice of god. But since all preachers are so enamoured with their own voice and the simili of power that their interpretations of scripture grants them, when it comes to listening to the voice of their conscience for moral guidance they expect that voice to be as loud and intolerant as their own.
The techniques for trance, extacy and so on used to be the closely guarded secrets of priesthoods since these were also the basis of their power. Today however if you are able to filter out the New Age BS from the ancient shamanistic practices you too can commune with nature, 'talk with god', and achieve concentration so deep that you're unable to differentiate between yourself and the focus of your mind. Clearly the Abrahamic tradition didn't get the memo, or their preachers would be instructing people in these internal arts rather than puff themselves full of air like the Rabbis behind this brain-fart.
Ethics requires a prior example. When we face something we have no prior experience of it's a matter of moral. I'll try to provide some perspective.
- Here on Earth humans live in symbiosis with a great many creatures but some of those creatures have become dependent on the humans because of selectve breeding leading to poor defence against predatory animals. - Nature itself won't judge our actions as good or bad, it just happens that if we make a lot of bad choices we undermine our own future. - Biodiversity is the buffer of life against shortsighted organisms such as viruses. - When we have the ability to travel to other stars, and when we find finally a planet flourishing with life, we are more likely to admire the place for its beauty than start a logging company. - When we discover another sentient species, we don't want to be a threat to their universe that they must eradicate.
A large measure of tolerance will be needed for and among the cosmic-ray resistant mutants we send on a very isolated journey. There is probably a gene we can trip to make them tolerant, but that won't stop Earthlings from projecting their own occasionally malignant taboos and norms on them. They won't just be straight, gay or into BDSM to control their social instincts, they might have both male and female genitalia or a different organ altogether to mediate social bonding and communication. They might have flesh fused with circuitry, or perhaps only their avatar resembles the human form.
We treat each other like aliens, and sometimes on the inside we are different forms of life. Children torn to shreds in Gaza becomes an anonymous portfolio of pictures on the internet, in your home town it would be public upheaval. We are barely beginning to grasp our day-to-day roles as social animals, yet we somehow see fit to brutalize in attitude or deeds those whose downfall might improve our own status in the tribe, as if school shootings 'just happen'. We decry our own violent nature and stubbornly avoid the simplests of peace, such as looking at the seconds dial of a watch and waiting for one that's longer than the others.
Slashdot Mirror
Carmack has always been Chuck Norris. Our puny minds cannot simply grasp this greatness.
...the pure.
Like white people, not long ago. How far back do we have to look before black people were finally granted the rights of white men in Ohio?
This law could rip the US apart in a few scant years... Which would make for excellent sci-fi, come to think of it.*
(* My idea. I'm a sci-fi writer so no stealing my ideas again. :b)
Simpson is likable, depending on the circumstances.
Your qualifier is insurmountable. If Homer Simpson is the everyman then I will turn from a philathrope to a misanthrope. He is repeatedly called a madman and a criminal throughout the series. He is a liar, he is selfish, short-sighted and a violent alcoholic and he repeatedly screws over the people he should value more than his own life for the most pitiful reasons without ever learning a thing.
I have watched 20 seasons of it, every word I have said about him is factual and I've had enough of The Simpsons because of the character Homer Simpson. His redeemable qualities fall far short of his irredeemable ones, and though I don't believe in a hell that's where his writers send him. In one episode he literally drags Lisa with him.
Last time we talked about rocketry the +5 people said LEO and geostationary are different beasts. The moon is ~10x higher up.
Mebbe Chinese spies have found those old Saturn V blueprints the US misplaced. Give them a call? Just refurbish the old tech with some new magnets, alloys and microchips and presto it's ultra-modern. Thermodynamics don't change.
If you work for the govt you are slightly less of a pawn, but the ideal would be to own robots that do work for you. So returning to the topic, go go Super Transforming JAXA!
If your multi-purpose robots can build robots that build multi-purpose robots you can enable your fellow man provided you get your elements free of charge. Known to be on the moon is Si, Al, Ca, Fe, Mg, Ti, and Na which to work with, but perhaps a hight-temp superconductor can be concocted to substitute copper wire. Unfortunately, patents. The dream is still many decades away.
TFA:
Random Hacks of Kindness
Clueless:
Is it licensed under the GPL? BSD? Apache?
Anonymous:
Who cares...?
A voice of reason, thankfully.
"The very first Crisis Camp bar camp was held in Washington, D.C. in May 2009. During one of the opening sessions of the camp an industry panel spoke, and clearly stated that some issues of global importance take precedence over competitive business concerns."
- RHoK.Org
All the low level hanging fruit in most fields has been mined.
I find it rude that you think so little of the ability of amateur scientists, but I'll chalk it up to you having a bad day.
The fruits of scientific discovery has never been low, not even when Archimedes took a bath, but what has changed is the size of the scientific community and the entrenchment of traditions. If I discover something that boggles my mind and I'm unable to quantify it to write a formal paper about it, no matter how keen my intuition or observational skills are I'll be marginalized. You find it typical that researchers are only vindicated after death, but you like som many others seem to assume that this doesn't occur today.
A certain recluse matematician comes to mind as a lone researcher, but he was far from unfamiliar with the traditions of his field. You might argue that with trees falling in the forest and listeners being lacking, making a discovery without being able to communicate it equals the abscence of science. I understand the sentiment but I'm of a mind saying that importance lies with identifying an effect as repeatable for specific reasons rather than the ability of naming it after yourself and impressing your peers with mathematical tautology.
Or get a bunch of old microwave ovens and see what you can plasmify at what distance. Electricity is cheap and your utility company will thank you!
Atomic power is a good source for X-rays and all sorts of fun can be had with radiation. Even ultraviolet is enough to increase the mutation rate of bacteria. Mutants! Need I say more? *wink-wink nudge-nudge*
You can also build your own lasers, and tesla coils are always impressive. Don't bother with rockets because the cheapest/best rocket engines are solid explosives that fit nicely in the hands of pros.
When I'm established I'll have a bunch of high-density flywheels built to deliver impulses of power befitting my megalomania. Then, superconductors!
Who knows what kind of crazy tech is out there doing the hard spy work now, the geek in me hopes that there's something more interesting than satellites...
The challenge is automating the discovery of interesting information in the vast, vast collection of data captured.
I take the battery out of my mobile phone when I'm going to any meeting of a political nature and any plugged in, uncovered CCD gives me the creeps.
There are no plans to recover the flight test vehicle
Oh yes there is!
Row row row the boat, gently on the vast rolling Ocean...
Uh, nevermind.
Speaking of, I think that website has just seen the most vicious slashdotting in the history of vicious slashdottings.
I'll just wait a few until the crowd clears...
You're not worried about the DNS servers?
tl;dr - Ranting about sarcastic laughter and prominent fools
I find myself laughing at stuff the writer and director never intended to be funny, for my own reason. - Yes, laughing 'at', not 'with'. - In these cases my mirth stems from a hidden irony, you might consider me callous for laughing when Homer Simpson's heart is broken but I bare in mind that the fictional man has no vindicative characteristic what so ever beyond infrequent decency and that he exists only to entertain me. I loathe the character so I cut my loss by exploiting all the good homour there is to be had.
I feel others should do this too because in sum mine is a positive reaction. If at for example you laugh from your gut at a political meeting when a candidate says for example that nuclear fuel can't be transmutated you communicate some very important information. It appears to me that with no one doing this a lot of bullshit can come to pass and that letting BS go by unmarked leads to very little laughter later on.
Americans have been known for their poor grasp of sarcasm and I'm sure that the re-election of Dubya would never have happened if you had seen him for the fool we unsympathetic Europeans recognized him as. Politicans are keen on literally getting the upper hand when shaking hands on camera, but people with keen social acumen know that if that's the kinds of game they play they should wait with shaking hands until they have something to agree on. You can't lie for long with these all-important signals you send because people have evolved huge brains to pick that crap apart, and once you're caught your game is over. The really symathetic thing is to show all debutants early on in their career that we the people value their merit over their acting skills, so that they know what to spend their time on.
The goals of the party are essentially dictated centrally from Sweden
I think you bit off a bit too much rhetoric there, and that your worries are founded on air.
...the formation of international parties (much like the well known International Socialist Organization) bodes ill for countries on an individual basis
I won't take your word for it, and I expect you to thank me for it. Evidence please. That is, evidence of your main point, not evidence regarding the incidental ISO.
I could imagine that international parties are scrutinized more closely so that the people who make up their rank are not dabbling buffoons, but rather competent citizens with a clear sense of both ideals and morals. In the case of political pirate parties, it seems their main goal is to unify consumers so that when the bill is eventually footed it does not contain the price gouging and DRM that is expected of the entertainment industries. It might take the form of a tax, but then if it is written into law with competence it should be a very affordable tax that entitles you to high-quality entertainment regardless of your income and distributes the money to artist in relation to their accomplishment.
Naturally, if one thinks bureaucracy is always inefficient the point is moot... But then again that means one has been barking up the wrong tree for the past 40 years.
Flywheel energy storage (FES) works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. When energy is extracted from the system, the flywheel's rotational speed is reduced as a consequence of the principle of conservation of energy; adding energy to the system correspondingly results in an increase in the speed of the flywheel.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Maraging steel, UHMWPE, and carbon fibres are some of the materials with the highest known tensile strength. The higher the tensile strength, the higher the energy density, which is good for mobile applications but perhaps not necessary for a small town.
I suspect a flywheel would also be more reliable and environmentally friendly than most batteries.
"We will tell you that in the world of the exciter, the holy grail is to get a universal design that can generate all the waveforms that you could possibly imagine," says Falco.
Sounds like Software-defined Radio. You (yes, you) can buy one for under $1000 USD last I checked, but amps and antennas will cost you more.
Most of the engineering effort in SDR goes into the software, and there is of course a relevant open source project. To weaponize the tech you'll want to assemble a library of proven techniques, and on one level those are a matter of rather simple electrical engineering. If you want to do more than disable the mark, say feed it false information, the complexity goes up by an order of magnitude. Then they will want to have detailed information for each type of device they want to interfere with and have a way to defeat it before they engage it.
Usually military systems are isolated from other information systems such as the internet. This tech might bridge the gap by inducting a charge in for example exposed wires as a plane flies overhead and aims its directional antennas at them. The rest is in the hands of established military hackers.
"Some other way" is so easy to say, and for males it unfortunately it usually means the victim tries to take others with him. You have to understand that the depressed mind only sees depressed options and that to them the positive ones seem unrealistic. This doesn't mean the person is irrational, and in medicine the term "depressive realism" is used to imply that the patient is actually better rooted in reality than their undiagnosed peers, it means the problem is very difficult.
In my opinion it is wrong to blame or fault the victims of suicide, because all of them have honestly tried to get well. Parents CANNOT educate their children about this because it's not the children who are at fault for becoming depressed. The only way right now to ensure your kid isn't bullied in school is home-schooling. Some say children need to learn social skills in school, but often the particular skills learned are focused on picking on someone weaker so that you don't become the one picked on.
Blame for this rests squarely on bullies from all walks of life, and you and me for not being brave enough to stop the bullies.
Actually, it rests less on me because I have on several occasions stood up for people who were being bullied. Earlier in my life I didn't recognize what bullying was because I was socially inept, and in my childhood I did some bullying too. Then I was bullied, and I was depressed and I was suicidal, but I pulled through by simply suffering until the next day could not possibly be worse than the day before. School is something I survived, not something I value nor cherish.
The only way this very serious problem is going to be fixed is if you yourself start fixing it, and start setting an example not tolerating intolerance. The correct response to bullies is alienation from the social group they're preying on until their malfunction can be sorted out, but time and time again schools opt to alienate the victim and let the bully continue destroying lives. The development of this case is right as it should be, pushing accountability for something you'd seemingly prefer to continue.
I don't share your opinion, in fact I think it's half-formed like a knee-jerk reaction, and I hope you will take the issue of suicide serious before one of your own loved ones falls victim to it. Then if not sooner you will understand that it just isn't as simple as you, as we all, would like it to be.
The science behind it has a name and this article is a good intro to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
It also works with hearing. My mother has an implant which transformed her from almost deaf to... Well, in some cases she's got cyborg super-hearing because the microphones are sometimes rather high-tech. Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
Personally I'm waiting for a cyborg Ethernet adapter, since I don't think abstract information is any hindrance for neuroplasticity. With the head gear already in use for simple games it could be the first step into the Johnny Mnemonic augmented reality.
Maybe we can one day hook children up to a neural trainer to let them learn all the school stuff in a year, so that they can spend their valuable time doing something much more important; playing.
How can they possibly justify applying a book written by a bunch of shepherds and nomads to something as modern as organ transplantation?
It's because
A. Their god doesn't talk to them anymore
B. They don't listen
C. Nietzsche killed him
It's fairly easy to work oneself into a state of exctacy where the idle chatter of one's mind sounds so concentrated it has to be the voice of god. But since all preachers are so enamoured with their own voice and the simili of power that their interpretations of scripture grants them, when it comes to listening to the voice of their conscience for moral guidance they expect that voice to be as loud and intolerant as their own.
The techniques for trance, extacy and so on used to be the closely guarded secrets of priesthoods since these were also the basis of their power. Today however if you are able to filter out the New Age BS from the ancient shamanistic practices you too can commune with nature, 'talk with god', and achieve concentration so deep that you're unable to differentiate between yourself and the focus of your mind.
Clearly the Abrahamic tradition didn't get the memo, or their preachers would be instructing people in these internal arts rather than puff themselves full of air like the Rabbis behind this brain-fart.
This should not be patented. Newsfeed is needed for human survival. It should not carry a price.
Claiming public awareness is big for any company. Quite bold.
I have a feeling the EU won't like it.
Low Cost High Performance Uncertainty Quantification
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1645421&jmp=cit&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=62671076&CFTOKEN=92670385#CIT
Keywords:
Inverse Covariance Matrices, Stochastic Estimation, Iterative
Renement, Iterative Solvers, Quadratic Cost, Massive
Parallelism
Ethics requires a prior example. When we face something we have no prior experience of it's a matter of moral. I'll try to provide some perspective.
- Here on Earth humans live in symbiosis with a great many creatures but some of those creatures have become dependent on the humans because of selectve breeding leading to poor defence against predatory animals.
- Nature itself won't judge our actions as good or bad, it just happens that if we make a lot of bad choices we undermine our own future.
- Biodiversity is the buffer of life against shortsighted organisms such as viruses.
- When we have the ability to travel to other stars, and when we find finally a planet flourishing with life, we are more likely to admire the place for its beauty than start a logging company.
- When we discover another sentient species, we don't want to be a threat to their universe that they must eradicate.
A large measure of tolerance will be needed for and among the cosmic-ray resistant mutants we send on a very isolated journey. There is probably a gene we can trip to make them tolerant, but that won't stop Earthlings from projecting their own occasionally malignant taboos and norms on them. They won't just be straight, gay or into BDSM to control their social instincts, they might have both male and female genitalia or a different organ altogether to mediate social bonding and communication. They might have flesh fused with circuitry, or perhaps only their avatar resembles the human form.
We treat each other like aliens, and sometimes on the inside we are different forms of life. Children torn to shreds in Gaza becomes an anonymous portfolio of pictures on the internet, in your home town it would be public upheaval.
We are barely beginning to grasp our day-to-day roles as social animals, yet we somehow see fit to brutalize in attitude or deeds those whose downfall might improve our own status in the tribe, as if school shootings 'just happen'. We decry our own violent nature and stubbornly avoid the simplests of peace, such as looking at the seconds dial of a watch and waiting for one that's longer than the others.
I can see cell phones with the computing power of todays desktops in the next 5-10 years WITHOUT this.
It's a witch. A witch! Fire! Fire!
Sometimes I wonder if a 4-digit slashID# really does make you a better hacker...