I dunno, this seems a bit silly all round. I mean if there is a catastrophe sufficient to wipe out all seed and food crops in the world, or at least within easy reach, it's not very likely that there will be a whole lot of anything or anybody else to replant and eat said food crops. On top of that, its fairly safe to assume the disaster would have pretty much erased whole ecosystems; are the food crops sufficient to maintain a viable ecosystem by themselves? Kind of a waste of money, really.
I'm a little late to the party and will probably never be read, but heres my wild and hairy idea... Hydrogen might have a strong future, as might solar power. The fact of the matter is that there is a near-infinite amount of solar power being pumped out by the sun. We already have the technology to harness this. Its not trivial but far from impossible to set up a satellite that pulls in tens or hundreds of gigawatts of electricity. It doesn't even need to be in geosynch orbit, put it closer to the sun than the earth and in a paralell orbit, and there you have all the energy you could ever need.
The problem then becomes one of storing the energy. There are a few methods that could be used, but production of hydrogen from water is one we can do right now, via electrolysis. So where do we get the water? I'm not sure what the current consensus is on cometary composition, but assuming they contain a significant amount of water, one of those could supply sufficient hydrogen for quite some time. Basically the problem is one of storing heat energy in one form or another. The "beaming power to earth" idea is a non starter I reckon.
Once you have the hydrogen or whatever ingots produced, the next issue to resolve is transportation to earth. This is probably the trickiest part. You need to coat the fuel in some kind of material that will allow re-entry, and then collect it for processing and redistribution (space elevator?). I haven't worked out how that would function yet, but its just an engineering problem, to whit, it is solvable with today's technology.
Even if this is not practical for earth's power supply needs, it certainly would be a valuable asset in exploring and colonising the solar system, both for unmanned drones and for manned colonies. Storing the power and delivering the power are the two tricky parts.
You want the nokia 6820, with an even easier to use keyboard than the blackberry, that folds away. I got one about a year and a half ago, and I've never looked back. Amazing device.
Doubling the number of coders will double the number of bugs and double the total time
I recall back in school, we were in English class, and one of our assignments was to write an essay on a particular topic. I wrote a mighty big long dissertation, much to the head shaking disapproval of my classmates, who held that the more you wrote, the more mistakes you would make. Made like 2 errors in 20 pages.
This won't stand. Speaking as one of those descendants of Normans, I am very proud of my French ancestry. As for the rest of your tired, old, tedious, racist rant, here is an apt rebuttal. The attention of the audience is drawn in particular to the terms "ungrateful", and "ignorant", both of which apply fully in their rich buttery goodness to you, you troll.
This isn't so much politics as it is the clash between the dark side of the force, and the good guys, with Sen Orrin Hatch (owns a good deal of SCO stock) as vader, and Maddox under obi wan ashdown. Can pirates use lightsabers?
Yeah they did that to me as well, Zonk both times. The blurb on top bore ZERO resemblance to what I had entered. Mind you note that sometimes they say "user writes" and other times its "user wrote in to mention". Thats the difference I reckon. Eh I was trying to stir up an unholy flame war for jollies both times anyway, so no harm really.
I can't find the site right now because of the extraordinary morass of wine-tasting sites on the internet, gooing up google, but as I recall, some time ago a scientific double blind study was run on groups of volunteers and individuals, testing a variety of wines. No two individuals or groups came up with the same or even slightly similar descriptions of the wines, even when presented with multiple choice options. Bring back the good old days of the Romans, when wine held approximately the same social position as lager!:D
This is how you react when someone says the opposite of what your stereotype tells you they should say?
Nah you are indulging in a practise known as sophistry, complicating matters to obfuscate the process or end result (cf. creationism -> id). You are beating the same tired old drum beat, just playing it on a new set of skins.
See again, not unlike the ID'ers (I'm going to make a leap here and guess you are of the religious persuasion), you have backtracked and completely changed your tune. Not to mention being actually outright wrong. From your original post there...
Now you pooh-pooh those disciplines,
Dementias. Not disciplines. Like anorexia, not eating to make yourself more beautiful, and denying the body what it naturally needs to be healthy.
Also...
It'll be interesting to see how the Condom Generation turns out, and if their understanding of human sexuality ends up building a better tomorrow than our parents' did.
Our parents were the children of the sixties. Condom generation indeed. Nothing like a nice bit of ad hominem to warm an argument up, eh? I've never seen it applied against an entire generation though... would that be some sort of -ism? Condoms have been in use since the time of the Roman empire, even if you ignore the whole "free love" deal of the sixties. I'd pick apart your entire ouroboros-like argument, but to paraphrase a fictional character, I haven't travelled through christmas overindulgence to bandy words with a grandstanding religious. Happy new year.
Is the crime a crime because your crops failed for the third year running (since thats all the absentee landlord will let you grow) and your wife and children are starving to death by the roadside? The law is, simply put, a system for exacting revenge for wrongdoings. If the law fails in that regard, or worse turns against those it is meant to protect, I would feel fully justified in breaking it, regardless of the letter of the law. Not that the laws back then were meant to protect anyone but the landed gentry; it in fact suited british authorities to deport as many peasants as possible to far-off lands. I'm not talking about taping movies on your VCR, I'm talking about survival.
At least 24 or lost don't have dubious (ham handed attempts to deal with or to set forth, I couldn't figure out which) social agendas or try to appeal to the "enlightenment" crowd. Mind you I'd still watch it for that asian chick, my god I'd hit that like a bag full of hammers. Heres the penthouse pic for those with a pulse.
Whats with the yikes? From the 2005 human development index, Ireland is number 8 in the world in terms of standard of living, and rising, beating out the US at number 10 and the UK at number 15, besides being one of the richest nations on earth. Canadialand is at number 5, so don't worry, you still have a slight edge there.:D
Sir, I salute you. No apologies are needed, however, I understand that most people in America are rational, reasonable and intelligent. Even so, thats no reason to let the vocal minority get away with it. In fact, that's the main reason to not let them have their say unopposed. Happy christmas!
It's also about 2.2 times the median income of a male your country
Ireland, rank 9 in the world in terms of income per capita. And that was 2004. In 2003, we were at number 11. And in purchasing power parity we are at number 7 in the world. Your ignorance is, well, all there is to say about you really. Not to mention we don't use GBP here, you toolbag. We use euros. Still haven't managed to gather the gonads to sign in? Beh enough troll feeding for one holiday.
I generally don't respond to trolls, but this is like shooting fish in a barrel..
Well, with an entire four year's history of immigration
Yup, and we have still achieved more than America has in four hundred. Maybe you would like to take lessons?
almost as long as Ireland's alliance with the Nazi government
Ireland never had an alliance with the nazis, as an alliance would indicate mutual military operations and shared resources. Italy had an alliance. Ireland had neutrality. I realise that being probably American, you might have to look that one up (note, its not under pinko, french or commie), but its worth the effort.
Perhaps they can start by arranging prestigious jobs driving taxis, which you seem to believe is a model of economic integration.
Taxi drivers pull down 50k a year here, at least. Whats that, about 100k USD, or thereabouts... Maybe you might consider coming over to try it out? I know I could use a driver. Do, I'll get you a work visa.
I understand there's some ethnic strife there
Good to see that your understanding is on a par with the rest of your diatribe. Its religious and political strife, nothing to do with race. Do yourself a favour and google for "plantations" "northern ireland" and "bloody sunday". I doubt your little fat fingers can manage to hit the appropriate keys, but I couldn't be bothered to provide a link. And besides, its funny.
What a fucking laugh.
Well I know I got a good chuckle out of you.
Grow some balls, sign in, and take your karma like a man. I dare you.
You made the claim that without science there would be neither media nor civilization
Okay lets get this straight. What you call science is apparently only limited to discoveries made after the widespread use of the scientific method became the de facto standard. That is extremely arrogant and denigrates all the work that lead up to that process. Or do you have visions of iconic figures making leaps and bounds by themselves in a vacuum? Historical inaccuracies ha... Of course the work of Leonardo and Archimedes was nothing to do with science; I mean after all, they didn't wear lab coats. How could they have been scientists?
I'm not going to get into fine grained differences and similarities between the civilisations of the Greeks and the Romans in terms of technology. What was meant was that as compared to the immense technological adnace made in the last century, they are basically exactly similar in their capabilities.
Of course, for most, that would have gone without saying, and indeed it did. I put the odds of running across a pedant at being low enough to justify the use of the generalisation. But once in a while, you do run across the odd aspiring legal secretary that needs help with the long words.
Meh, and I thought the only turkey I would be encountering today would be on the dinner table. I am beginning to see why your sig proclaims your infamity.
they're either going to end up like Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off foreigners living inside their borders
A friend of mine recently returned from an extended stay in the US, I think Boston... he had a lot of stories to tell, but one that caught my attention with regard to this comment was a place called Martin Luther King boulevard (?). He said that's one place where white people don't go. There are many isolated ghettoes and racial divisions in America, so I really wouldn't start holding up the US as a poster child for some kind of cultural utopia.
I assume by your comment also that you are referring to the recent riots in France. I should point out that France is not Europe, nor is Europe a single nation. Which means the EU is the single largest effort to integrate different cultures and nationalities the world has ever seen, with open borders and ostensibly free trade. In my experience, people in Europe tend to treat foreigners warily at first, but still treat them as individuals, to be accepted or rejected on their individual merits.
My own country, Ireland, has seen a massive (and I mean massive) influx of foreign nationals in the last few (4) years, and after a few initial teething problems, foreigners are getting houses next door to Irish people, driving taxis, and teaching in our schools. They are learning the language and joining the culture. One notable incident was when a gentleman down at the post office, upon seeing the large number of black people in the queue, started yelling about foreigners and their ills. The entire staff of the post office as one got up from their posts and left for a few hours, in protest. And this is the main post office for a small city.
The scientific method is only a few centuries old.
Yes, the official scientific method and philosophy of same are in fact only a few centuries old. Prior to that, there were few appreciable differences (besides obvious cultural ones) between Medieval, ancient Greek, Sumerian, Incan, or Roman lifestyles and technological capabilities. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying "civilisation as we know it", as in the same civilisation that has put men on the moon and produced computers since the advent of the scientific method. Which merely underlines my point.
With the advent of blogging, maligned as it is, and the essentially cost free mass publishing brought about by the internet, not to mentions slashdot itself, we may be seeing that decline already beginning. I know I get most or all of my news online by this stage. Likewise thanks for the debate, have a happy christmas!
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, this seems a bit silly all round. I mean if there is a catastrophe sufficient to wipe out all seed and food crops in the world, or at least within easy reach, it's not very likely that there will be a whole lot of anything or anybody else to replant and eat said food crops. On top of that, its fairly safe to assume the disaster would have pretty much erased whole ecosystems; are the food crops sufficient to maintain a viable ecosystem by themselves? Kind of a waste of money, really.
but hydrogen is bullshit.
I'm a little late to the party and will probably never be read, but heres my wild and hairy idea... Hydrogen might have a strong future, as might solar power. The fact of the matter is that there is a near-infinite amount of solar power being pumped out by the sun. We already have the technology to harness this. Its not trivial but far from impossible to set up a satellite that pulls in tens or hundreds of gigawatts of electricity. It doesn't even need to be in geosynch orbit, put it closer to the sun than the earth and in a paralell orbit, and there you have all the energy you could ever need.
The problem then becomes one of storing the energy. There are a few methods that could be used, but production of hydrogen from water is one we can do right now, via electrolysis. So where do we get the water? I'm not sure what the current consensus is on cometary composition, but assuming they contain a significant amount of water, one of those could supply sufficient hydrogen for quite some time. Basically the problem is one of storing heat energy in one form or another. The "beaming power to earth" idea is a non starter I reckon.
Once you have the hydrogen or whatever ingots produced, the next issue to resolve is transportation to earth. This is probably the trickiest part. You need to coat the fuel in some kind of material that will allow re-entry, and then collect it for processing and redistribution (space elevator?). I haven't worked out how that would function yet, but its just an engineering problem, to whit, it is solvable with today's technology.
Even if this is not practical for earth's power supply needs, it certainly would be a valuable asset in exploring and colonising the solar system, both for unmanned drones and for manned colonies. Storing the power and delivering the power are the two tricky parts.
This is slashdot... when in Rome...
You want the nokia 6820, with an even easier to use keyboard than the blackberry, that folds away. I got one about a year and a half ago, and I've never looked back. Amazing device.
Doubling the number of coders will double the number of bugs and double the total time
I recall back in school, we were in English class, and one of our assignments was to write an essay on a particular topic. I wrote a mighty big long dissertation, much to the head shaking disapproval of my classmates, who held that the more you wrote, the more mistakes you would make. Made like 2 errors in 20 pages.
Learn to code better.
This won't stand. Speaking as one of those descendants of Normans, I am very proud of my French ancestry. As for the rest of your tired, old, tedious, racist rant, here is an apt rebuttal. The attention of the audience is drawn in particular to the terms "ungrateful", and "ignorant", both of which apply fully in their rich buttery goodness to you, you troll.
The fact that obvious farce is still going strong after nearly three years speaks volumes.
Yes, the farce is strong in that one...
This isn't so much politics as it is the clash between the dark side of the force, and the good guys, with Sen Orrin Hatch (owns a good deal of SCO stock) as vader, and Maddox under obi wan ashdown. Can pirates use lightsabers?
Yeah they did that to me as well, Zonk both times. The blurb on top bore ZERO resemblance to what I had entered. Mind you note that sometimes they say "user writes" and other times its "user wrote in to mention". Thats the difference I reckon. Eh I was trying to stir up an unholy flame war for jollies both times anyway, so no harm really.
Better string me up, then!
Our apologies to all of our viewers, those responsible have been sacked...
I can't find the site right now because of the extraordinary morass of wine-tasting sites on the internet, gooing up google, but as I recall, some time ago a scientific double blind study was run on groups of volunteers and individuals, testing a variety of wines. No two individuals or groups came up with the same or even slightly similar descriptions of the wines, even when presented with multiple choice options. Bring back the good old days of the Romans, when wine held approximately the same social position as lager! :D
This is how you react when someone says the opposite of what your stereotype tells you they should say?
Nah you are indulging in a practise known as sophistry, complicating matters to obfuscate the process or end result (cf. creationism -> id). You are beating the same tired old drum beat, just playing it on a new set of skins.
See again, not unlike the ID'ers (I'm going to make a leap here and guess you are of the religious persuasion), you have backtracked and completely changed your tune. Not to mention being actually outright wrong. From your original post there...
Now you pooh-pooh those disciplines,
Dementias. Not disciplines. Like anorexia, not eating to make yourself more beautiful, and denying the body what it naturally needs to be healthy.
Also...
It'll be interesting to see how the Condom Generation turns out, and if their understanding of human sexuality ends up building a better tomorrow than our parents' did.
Our parents were the children of the sixties. Condom generation indeed. Nothing like a nice bit of ad hominem to warm an argument up, eh? I've never seen it applied against an entire generation though... would that be some sort of -ism? Condoms have been in use since the time of the Roman empire, even if you ignore the whole "free love" deal of the sixties. I'd pick apart your entire ouroboros-like argument, but to paraphrase a fictional character, I haven't travelled through christmas overindulgence to bandy words with a grandstanding religious. Happy new year.
All you really have to say is, sex is dirty. Let us know when you make it out of the nineteenth century.
Is the crime a crime because your crops failed for the third year running (since thats all the absentee landlord will let you grow) and your wife and children are starving to death by the roadside? The law is, simply put, a system for exacting revenge for wrongdoings. If the law fails in that regard, or worse turns against those it is meant to protect, I would feel fully justified in breaking it, regardless of the letter of the law. Not that the laws back then were meant to protect anyone but the landed gentry; it in fact suited british authorities to deport as many peasants as possible to far-off lands. I'm not talking about taping movies on your VCR, I'm talking about survival.
Are you sure you actually WATCH 24?
Well okay, you got me there, I've never even heard of it. I just wanted to talk about Grace Park.
At least 24 or lost don't have dubious (ham handed attempts to deal with or to set forth, I couldn't figure out which) social agendas or try to appeal to the "enlightenment" crowd. Mind you I'd still watch it for that asian chick, my god I'd hit that like a bag full of hammers. Heres the penthouse pic for those with a pulse.
(aparently Canada fell below Ireland recently.. yikes!)
:D
Whats with the yikes? From the 2005 human development index, Ireland is number 8 in the world in terms of standard of living, and rising, beating out the US at number 10 and the UK at number 15, besides being one of the richest nations on earth. Canadialand is at number 5, so don't worry, you still have a slight edge there.
Sir, I salute you. No apologies are needed, however, I understand that most people in America are rational, reasonable and intelligent. Even so, thats no reason to let the vocal minority get away with it. In fact, that's the main reason to not let them have their say unopposed. Happy christmas!
It's also about 2.2 times the median income of a male your country
Ireland, rank 9 in the world in terms of income per capita. And that was 2004. In 2003, we were at number 11. And in purchasing power parity we are at number 7 in the world. Your ignorance is, well, all there is to say about you really. Not to mention we don't use GBP here, you toolbag. We use euros. Still haven't managed to gather the gonads to sign in? Beh enough troll feeding for one holiday.
I generally don't respond to trolls, but this is like shooting fish in a barrel..
Well, with an entire four year's history of immigration
Yup, and we have still achieved more than America has in four hundred. Maybe you would like to take lessons?
almost as long as Ireland's alliance with the Nazi government
Ireland never had an alliance with the nazis, as an alliance would indicate mutual military operations and shared resources. Italy had an alliance. Ireland had neutrality. I realise that being probably American, you might have to look that one up (note, its not under pinko, french or commie), but its worth the effort.
Perhaps they can start by arranging prestigious jobs driving taxis, which you seem to believe is a model of economic integration.
Taxi drivers pull down 50k a year here, at least. Whats that, about 100k USD, or thereabouts... Maybe you might consider coming over to try it out? I know I could use a driver. Do, I'll get you a work visa.
I understand there's some ethnic strife there
Good to see that your understanding is on a par with the rest of your diatribe. Its religious and political strife, nothing to do with race. Do yourself a favour and google for "plantations" "northern ireland" and "bloody sunday". I doubt your little fat fingers can manage to hit the appropriate keys, but I couldn't be bothered to provide a link. And besides, its funny.
What a fucking laugh.
Well I know I got a good chuckle out of you. Grow some balls, sign in, and take your karma like a man. I dare you.
You made the claim that without science there would be neither media nor civilization
Okay lets get this straight. What you call science is apparently only limited to discoveries made after the widespread use of the scientific method became the de facto standard. That is extremely arrogant and denigrates all the work that lead up to that process. Or do you have visions of iconic figures making leaps and bounds by themselves in a vacuum? Historical inaccuracies ha... Of course the work of Leonardo and Archimedes was nothing to do with science; I mean after all, they didn't wear lab coats. How could they have been scientists?
I'm not going to get into fine grained differences and similarities between the civilisations of the Greeks and the Romans in terms of technology. What was meant was that as compared to the immense technological adnace made in the last century, they are basically exactly similar in their capabilities.
Of course, for most, that would have gone without saying, and indeed it did. I put the odds of running across a pedant at being low enough to justify the use of the generalisation. But once in a while, you do run across the odd aspiring legal secretary that needs help with the long words.
Meh, and I thought the only turkey I would be encountering today would be on the dinner table. I am beginning to see why your sig proclaims your infamity.
they're either going to end up like Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off foreigners living inside their borders
A friend of mine recently returned from an extended stay in the US, I think Boston... he had a lot of stories to tell, but one that caught my attention with regard to this comment was a place called Martin Luther King boulevard (?). He said that's one place where white people don't go. There are many isolated ghettoes and racial divisions in America, so I really wouldn't start holding up the US as a poster child for some kind of cultural utopia.
I assume by your comment also that you are referring to the recent riots in France. I should point out that France is not Europe, nor is Europe a single nation. Which means the EU is the single largest effort to integrate different cultures and nationalities the world has ever seen, with open borders and ostensibly free trade. In my experience, people in Europe tend to treat foreigners warily at first, but still treat them as individuals, to be accepted or rejected on their individual merits.
My own country, Ireland, has seen a massive (and I mean massive) influx of foreign nationals in the last few (4) years, and after a few initial teething problems, foreigners are getting houses next door to Irish people, driving taxis, and teaching in our schools. They are learning the language and joining the culture. One notable incident was when a gentleman down at the post office, upon seeing the large number of black people in the queue, started yelling about foreigners and their ills. The entire staff of the post office as one got up from their posts and left for a few hours, in protest. And this is the main post office for a small city.
Still, you are right about the Japanese.
Eh what does any of that have to do with science vs or in conjunction with the media? Stop being pedantic and keep it on topic.
The scientific method is only a few centuries old.
Yes, the official scientific method and philosophy of same are in fact only a few centuries old. Prior to that, there were few appreciable differences (besides obvious cultural ones) between Medieval, ancient Greek, Sumerian, Incan, or Roman lifestyles and technological capabilities. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying "civilisation as we know it", as in the same civilisation that has put men on the moon and produced computers since the advent of the scientific method. Which merely underlines my point.
I don't think it is going to vanish any time soon
With the advent of blogging, maligned as it is, and the essentially cost free mass publishing brought about by the internet, not to mentions slashdot itself, we may be seeing that decline already beginning. I know I get most or all of my news online by this stage. Likewise thanks for the debate, have a happy christmas!