Space X used private funding to develop all of their space launch vehicles (of course, their largest paying customer is the Government, but they are paying by the launch like everyone else) . They are significantly cheaper than the alternative rockets which had been developed by defense contractors with government funds and cost-plus contracts. They are developing a system for launching people into space (again, using private funds but assuming the government will eventually pay by the launch to get astronauts into space). So you are wrong.
I am curious as to how you think a society could stage an invasion across interplanetary distances *without* being dramatically more technologically advanced and capable than we are toady ?
The only thing you need to stage an invasion across interplanetary distances is a way to get there. We have no idea how that could be achieved, so we have no idea what technologies would be necessary to make it work.
You are looking at the task and assuming that we don't know how to do it because it is very difficult. But the task may be anywhere from completely impossible to very easy. We have no idea how difficult it would be, because we have no theoretical understanding of how it could be possible.
There were no major scientific developments that lead to the industrial revolution, the tehoritical basis for the steam engine (and some working models) had existed for thousands of years. The enlightenment and all the associated scientific advancements happened hundreds of years before the industrial revolution. The only major scientific breakthroughs since then have been in theoretical physics (QM and relativity). All other advancements have been incremental (gaining new information, not dramatically changing the way we look at the world).
So the steam engine is really just a clever arrangement of parts that changed almost every aspect of our lives, but it did not result from any game-changing scientific advancements.
Only when they're operating under ridiculous - in the context of outright conquest - constraints on what they can and can't do.
Just look into this some more. There are plenty of examples of warfare between industrialized and non industrialized nations where the non-industrialized nation was victorious. Most of them were not lost over rules of engagement.
What interstellar travel requires is manufacturing and energy generation capacities that are damn near incomprehensible to our society. *That* is why they would win in a fight.
You think based on what you know. A person from a non-industrialized society may look at many modern civil engineering achievements and reach the conclusion that we are a race powerful giants. But they would be wrong.
People believe it was faked because they don't want to believe we were capable of something 40 years ago that we are not capable of today. They want to have hope for the future, but the moon landing is an obvious sign of decline (or rather, the fact that it happened so long and we can't do it today is an obvious sign of decline).
Think of the steam engine. It is a single invention that caused and made possible the entire industrial revolution. What it did was it allowed people to have more free time to construct infrastructure, and in made such construction projects easier to accomplish. But fundamentally, we do not know a lot more today than we knew then.
Likewise, highly industrialized nations routinely get their asses handed to them by less industrialized nations, simply because the people in those nations are fighting for their lives.
So while an alien civilization may have a much better scientific understanding than us, the ability to travel from star to star does not require this. And even if they were more industrialized, it doesn't mean they'd win in a fight.
Ok, here's what I'm saying: this software is used by the operator to determine who is making a phone call.
It is inaccurate by up to 13 meters. So if there are two houses next to each other, they can't know if a call is coming from one house or the other. I know that they target houses for missile attacks, because I've read about it in the news. That makes this is a plausible scenario.
Also, suppose they trace a phone call from a militant who is observing US forces and planning an ambush. The use this software to determine the location of the caller, and they see a person making a phone call. But the person actually making the call is 13 meters away, hidden from sight. So instead of targeting the person making the phone call, they target an innocent bystander who happened to be making a call at the same time. This is also a plausible scenario.
Once in the target area, remote operators designate the target on the video feed, which is to say (in this phone call scenario) the operators designate the person making the phone call on the TV screen.
This is where I'm saying the problem is. The operator may select the wrong target due to the system's inaccuracy. They may be looking in the wrong place, or choose the wrong person if there are two people making phone calls. They may select the wrong house if the call is being made inside a building.
If my understanding is correct, this software was used to determine the locations of people making phone calls. So if it's off by 13 meters, the operator may chose the wrong target. The missile being laser guided doesn't help you if you're laser guiding it to the wrong place.
Is it really ok to call it rape if they "did not consent"? It's better to only call it rape if they actually objected. There are a lot of situations where consent can be a difficult condition to ascertain (it's not exactly sexy to ask someone to sign a consent form).
The best strategy is to avoid taking risks with people who have difficulty setting clear boundaries, because they may decide later that they didn't like what happened and have difficulty accepting personal responsibility (like these two women).
As a society, however, we shouldn't be setting a precedent that it's another person's responsibility to know your boundaries (you are the only one who knows what you are comfortable with, and it's your responsibility to let other people know). I'd say that a lot of people are calling things rape which are really just poor boundaries and poor communication. It's not fair to accuse someone of a crime unless they have willfully committed it. Being confused and engaging in unwanted sexual activity as a result of that confusion is not willful and it shouldn't be a crime.
You can only produce whatever you can get you target to perpetrate. Otherwise you risk being exposed. Everyone's a little creepy, so you just take what you can get and see if it sticks.
The grand conspiracy theory is a romantic notion that works well in movies, but it doesn't work in real life. It's too complicated, and it requires too much cynicism on the part of the people carrying it out (it's hard to believe in an organization that's ordering you to produce a fake rape victim). It's also completely unnecessary thanks to the stigma associated with sexuality and the fact that pretty much everyone's sexuality is totally screwed up.
That's no joke. There's a law in CA that says that if your building contains materials known to cause cancer in the stat of CA (we have our own, very extensive, list of carcinogens) you have to post a sign at the entrance saying as much. Pretty much any building you go into has a sign saying there are carcinogens. It's ridiculous.
I don't think I've ever seen a study on the long term effects of Alcohol that didn't reach the same conclusion as this study. It's paradoxical since the short term effects can be fatal, and as the article says it's known to cause specific diseases (like cancer). You should read up on it (or at least read the fucking article).
It cracks me up that people say you can prove something is random. To a thinking person, it should be obvious that saying something is random is the same as saying "I don't know". Some people take it further and say "you can't possibly know", but how can you prove that? All you can ever prove is that you don't know, which really is a foregone conclusion, since you've put forth the hypothesis that it is random.
Why would we even want to simulate a human mind? To spare ourselves trouble of thinking? While we're at it, why don't we build a bunch of sex robots to save us the trouble of having sex. Then I guess we'll sit in front of the TV for the rest of eternity. Sounds like a blast.
The problem is assuming that the size of our genome determines complexity of simulating our brain. He is basically saying that if you have an Auto CAD file for a bridge that's 1MB in size, it would take 1 million lines of code to perform a structural simulation of the bridge. It makes no sense at all. The size of the plans have little to do with the complexity of the simulation (and to the extent that they do, they determine the amount of memory required, not the number of lines of code in the software).
After reading this claim, I am starting to doubt that this idiot knows how anything works at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Space X used private funding to develop all of their space launch vehicles (of course, their largest paying customer is the Government, but they are paying by the launch like everyone else) . They are significantly cheaper than the alternative rockets which had been developed by defense contractors with government funds and cost-plus contracts. They are developing a system for launching people into space (again, using private funds but assuming the government will eventually pay by the launch to get astronauts into space). So you are wrong.
The only thing you need to stage an invasion across interplanetary distances is a way to get there. We have no idea how that could be achieved, so we have no idea what technologies would be necessary to make it work.
You are looking at the task and assuming that we don't know how to do it because it is very difficult. But the task may be anywhere from completely impossible to very easy. We have no idea how difficult it would be, because we have no theoretical understanding of how it could be possible.
There were no major scientific developments that lead to the industrial revolution, the tehoritical basis for the steam engine (and some working models) had existed for thousands of years. The enlightenment and all the associated scientific advancements happened hundreds of years before the industrial revolution. The only major scientific breakthroughs since then have been in theoretical physics (QM and relativity). All other advancements have been incremental (gaining new information, not dramatically changing the way we look at the world).
So the steam engine is really just a clever arrangement of parts that changed almost every aspect of our lives, but it did not result from any game-changing scientific advancements.
Just look into this some more. There are plenty of examples of warfare between industrialized and non industrialized nations where the non-industrialized nation was victorious. Most of them were not lost over rules of engagement.
You think based on what you know. A person from a non-industrialized society may look at many modern civil engineering achievements and reach the conclusion that we are a race powerful giants. But they would be wrong.
The first paragraph is true. The second is probably not.
People believe it was faked because they don't want to believe we were capable of something 40 years ago that we are not capable of today. They want to have hope for the future, but the moon landing is an obvious sign of decline (or rather, the fact that it happened so long and we can't do it today is an obvious sign of decline).
Think of the steam engine. It is a single invention that caused and made possible the entire industrial revolution. What it did was it allowed people to have more free time to construct infrastructure, and in made such construction projects easier to accomplish. But fundamentally, we do not know a lot more today than we knew then.
Likewise, highly industrialized nations routinely get their asses handed to them by less industrialized nations, simply because the people in those nations are fighting for their lives.
So while an alien civilization may have a much better scientific understanding than us, the ability to travel from star to star does not require this. And even if they were more industrialized, it doesn't mean they'd win in a fight.
Ok, here's what I'm saying: this software is used by the operator to determine who is making a phone call.
It is inaccurate by up to 13 meters. So if there are two houses next to each other, they can't know if a call is coming from one house or the other. I know that they target houses for missile attacks, because I've read about it in the news. That makes this is a plausible scenario.
Also, suppose they trace a phone call from a militant who is observing US forces and planning an ambush. The use this software to determine the location of the caller, and they see a person making a phone call. But the person actually making the call is 13 meters away, hidden from sight. So instead of targeting the person making the phone call, they target an innocent bystander who happened to be making a call at the same time. This is also a plausible scenario.
Yes. Especially those of us standing near the people getting shot with missiles.
This is where I'm saying the problem is. The operator may select the wrong target due to the system's inaccuracy. They may be looking in the wrong place, or choose the wrong person if there are two people making phone calls. They may select the wrong house if the call is being made inside a building.
If my understanding is correct, this software was used to determine the locations of people making phone calls. So if it's off by 13 meters, the operator may chose the wrong target. The missile being laser guided doesn't help you if you're laser guiding it to the wrong place.
That's why both are charged.
You should seriously consider losing some weight.
I'd hate to hear what they think of people who post in Slashdot forums.
He's talking about the WTC bombing.
Is it really ok to call it rape if they "did not consent"? It's better to only call it rape if they actually objected. There are a lot of situations where consent can be a difficult condition to ascertain (it's not exactly sexy to ask someone to sign a consent form).
The best strategy is to avoid taking risks with people who have difficulty setting clear boundaries, because they may decide later that they didn't like what happened and have difficulty accepting personal responsibility (like these two women).
As a society, however, we shouldn't be setting a precedent that it's another person's responsibility to know your boundaries (you are the only one who knows what you are comfortable with, and it's your responsibility to let other people know). I'd say that a lot of people are calling things rape which are really just poor boundaries and poor communication. It's not fair to accuse someone of a crime unless they have willfully committed it. Being confused and engaging in unwanted sexual activity as a result of that confusion is not willful and it shouldn't be a crime.
You can only produce whatever you can get you target to perpetrate. Otherwise you risk being exposed. Everyone's a little creepy, so you just take what you can get and see if it sticks.
The grand conspiracy theory is a romantic notion that works well in movies, but it doesn't work in real life. It's too complicated, and it requires too much cynicism on the part of the people carrying it out (it's hard to believe in an organization that's ordering you to produce a fake rape victim). It's also completely unnecessary thanks to the stigma associated with sexuality and the fact that pretty much everyone's sexuality is totally screwed up.
That's no joke. There's a law in CA that says that if your building contains materials known to cause cancer in the stat of CA (we have our own, very extensive, list of carcinogens) you have to post a sign at the entrance saying as much. Pretty much any building you go into has a sign saying there are carcinogens. It's ridiculous.
I don't think I've ever seen a study on the long term effects of Alcohol that didn't reach the same conclusion as this study. It's paradoxical since the short term effects can be fatal, and as the article says it's known to cause specific diseases (like cancer). You should read up on it (or at least read the fucking article).
It cracks me up that people say you can prove something is random. To a thinking person, it should be obvious that saying something is random is the same as saying "I don't know". Some people take it further and say "you can't possibly know", but how can you prove that? All you can ever prove is that you don't know, which really is a foregone conclusion, since you've put forth the hypothesis that it is random.
Everything you've said here is hypothetical and unprovable. Quantum randomness is a hypotheses, not a theory.
But isn't the claim that decay rates are constant and unaffected by anything else extraordinary in itself? Nothing else we know about works that way.
Why would we even want to simulate a human mind? To spare ourselves trouble of thinking? While we're at it, why don't we build a bunch of sex robots to save us the trouble of having sex. Then I guess we'll sit in front of the TV for the rest of eternity. Sounds like a blast.
You know, the Bible contains plenty of sex and rape too. Those parts of it don't get talked about much for some reason.
The problem is assuming that the size of our genome determines complexity of simulating our brain. He is basically saying that if you have an Auto CAD file for a bridge that's 1MB in size, it would take 1 million lines of code to perform a structural simulation of the bridge. It makes no sense at all. The size of the plans have little to do with the complexity of the simulation (and to the extent that they do, they determine the amount of memory required, not the number of lines of code in the software).
After reading this claim, I am starting to doubt that this idiot knows how anything works at all.
60% of the time, it works every time.