There are so many issues that make it seem both unlikely and unnecessary. First, the biological problems of very long term space flight may be unsolvable. Second, the expense goes up exponentially over robots. Third, the seemingly wasteful nature of spending that much money just so a human could go, is a tough sell. Fourth, the distances and times are too great. Short of freezing people solid, you would add in a vast array of new problems that needed to be solved to keep people from atrophying away while cooled down but not frozen. It just isn't practical, even if it makes for fun movies.
Actually, I don't care what they think, I was trying, apparently in vein, to make a joke. But I will also add that on some smaller sites that have only a few non-animated ads I will turn ad blocker off. I expect a battle of ad blockers being blocked, or big companies paying the ad blocker programs to white list them, and then new ad blockers coming out. When money is involved, people get very motivated and devious. But then again, that is what capitalism is all about these days. It used to be that companies cared about their products, took pride in them, and wanted to provide the best product available for a fair price. Those days are long gone. Now it is morphing into the Google economy with everyone trying to make money off of crap, crappy targeted ads, tracking and selling info. So I agree with you.
That sounds like an NRA argument, but history is clear, the more well armed a belligerent group is, the more people they can kill. Why do you think ISIS is so interested in getting weapons and ammunition? They aren't looking to buy kitchen knives.
Like I said, we started the fight. We were not attacked by Iraq or Syria prior to us invading. The first thing I would do is stop sending arms to the region, the entire region. No more goodies for Saudis Arabia, Israel, Egypt or any rebel group. No ammo either. Then I would work out an arms embargo with Russia, Europe and China, to make sure that the arms flow stopped. Let's see how long they can fight without guns, parts and ammo.
That would be my first step. And unlike your seemingly genocidal suggestion, the plan I outlined could work fairly quickly. Or hadn't you thought of that?
We could start by not fomenting war in the region. We played the key role in forming ISIS in the first place. We invaded Iraq on false pretenses, and disbanded the army and police force. Many of them are now in ISIS. Then we gave weapons and money to "rebel groups" in the area, as well as the fake Iraqi army we put together. ISIS took their weapons and ammo. Then we helped the rebel groups in Syria in a vein attempt to overthrow Assad, and that backfired too. It's all blowback for our wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I would start by not continuing to do the same things that got us into this mess in the first place. So what did you expect, no blowback from bombing the crap out of third world countries on the other side of the world? If people from the middle east had invaded the US and taken over our country, wouldn't you fight back? Put yourself in other people's shoes. Engage those empathy circuits that have withered in your brain.
Nice try, but your solution a) wouldn't work biologically and b) if it did work as you say, it is going to target many non-ISIS members with similar genes (that's the part about where your empathy circuits need some tuning). You would sterilize a huge swath of innocent people based on their genes. That doesn't sound like something the "good guys" would do. In case you hadn't noticed, you are advocating biological warfare against a whole group of people, most of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing, which really means you need to work on the empathy thing.
So you didn't read a single thing I wrote. I said multiple times that other/.ers were more than welcome to try. I just said that it almost certainly isn't going to work. Lots of things people try never end up working the way people envision. That doesn't mean people don't learn things while trying and failing.
So the part of your brain that should allow you to put yourself in other people's shoes is not working. well. And when that virus mutates and kills your family and everyone else, then everything will be fixed. That sounds like a very typical conservative mindset. By the way, making people in ISIS sterile will not prevent them from recruiting more people to their cause, or didn't you think of that?
Everything that has been listed here is straight out of sci-fi movies and books. I am a neuroscientist, and I have a very strong sense from what I know that human cryogenics isn't going to work. The brain of a frog is so completely different from that of a human. It may be possible in the distant future, but I wouldn't bet on it. I really would love to see how you test whether humans can be frozen solid (which is what it would take) and be thawed out and be just fine, you know, like a frog or a carp. Frogs and carp evolved to be able to freeze solid, humans did not. Cryogenics is not about "suspended animation", it is about freezing living material solid at -80 or lower. I am not volunteering, but other/.ers are welcome to give it a go.
What an incredibly useful suggestion. So when robots go to other planets, how is that any different from exploring the solar system. And by the way, do you always talk about killing people who disagree with you? Oh, that was supposed to be funny?
Not with humans. Too far, and no we are not going to develop FTL travel. Just because sci-fi writers come up with these things doesn't mean you could actually do them. But everyone is free to try and make warp drives if they want to give it a go. Good luck with that.
I really think that sci-fi stories have some made people think anything is possible. Well, that is not how physics, chemistry and biology work. Only some things are possible, and FTL travel for human beings, just like replicators, just aren't real world phenomena.
Mars is the last target worth doing this with. I really don't think people are going to terraform one of the moons around the gas giants. So Mars is at the limits of where it is worth humans going to. If people do stop blowing each other up, and star exploring the solar system more, robots can do all of the outer planet mining. People are not needed there, and would not fare well there.
Plenty of eager engineers here at/., but not many biologists. Since FTL travel will remain science fiction forever, just like replicators, any travel beyond Mars will be biologically and psychologically problematic at best. It isn't worth spending that much time in a small metal projectile just to see dead planets in person. Everything that needs to be done can be done by robots, once you engineers get them up to speed. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for sending humans except that it "sounds cool". It really won't be at all cool for the people stuck for years in the metal projectile.
Forget about eggs and artificial wombs. Ain't gonna be used to send pre-people to the planets. Why? Because there is absolutely no reason to whatsoever. People are story driven creatures, and often some people take sci-fi stories far too seriously.
This is not really much to be concerned about in any way. They put a gene into the brains of mouse embryos, and got the brain cells in a specific part of the brain to develop differently than they would have normally, without the gene put in. Not a surprising finding. It is not something you could do to a person, and it isn't going to be used for anything other than research purposes. They aren't going to try and do this to people, since changing the developmental fate of neurons during development this way won't do anything useful.
That one I hid right away back when it first popped up. This was one of the other later ones from sometime in October. Uninstalled all the recent optional updates (last 5 weeks), and finally got rid of it. Very disturbing practice. A complete change in OS with major changes in the EULA do not seem like an update.
Just had another Windows 7 machine here pop up with the start menu indicator that an update was going to install on shutdown. Checked, and it was Windows 10 upgrade, which I have shut off twice previously on that same machine. Now I am on "notify me, but do not download or install" on all Windows 7 machines. Still it seems to sneak through occasionally. So no more optional updates ever. Now it is security only. And even then I have my worries that MS will try to sneak it in that way at some point. I don't want the Windows version with the ad banner and app store bolted to the start menu, reminding me of Windows 8. Not going there. My Windows 7 Ultimate copy is paid for, and so far ad and Metro free (and Cortana too).
I'd rather break up all the too big to fail companies and fix the government, rather than get rid of the "huge government departments". Right now many government agencies, especially watchdog agencies like the FDA and USDA, have been taken over (captured) by big business. They are stacked with industry insiders, so they no longer properly perform their watchdog function. We need to bring back the watchdog function, because the rubber stamping is going to be the death of us all.
Well, you aren't going to get an argument from me that crony capitalism is not a very good way of divvying up the results of human effort, in fact it is probably the worst conceivable way. But with the kind of people that voters are electing to run governments in many developed countries I don't see much chance for going back to something more regulated and more equitable (like the Eisenhower era tax code, and all those regulations that politicians have been stripping away from corporations over the last 30 years). But that is why I am voting for Bernie Sanders (had to get a Bernie plug in there somewhere).
Agreed. Plus, it is a much bigger problem when a company starts paying one group of workers much higher wages than the average worker in the area, like some IT people in San Francisco. That's when rental rates go sky high, not when you give poor people a barely living stipend. So if you are going to complain that giving people enough money to not starve is going to cause this, then you have to admit the problem with companies paying workers a much higher salary than average is an even bigger problem. In fact, it is a good reason to pay all workers more, and then if rent goes up, so what, people have more money to spend on rent. People happy, landlords happy, local shop owners happy. Starving people is never good for the economy, or the people. It's pretty simple. Now if you are going to complain about inflation, then all I can say is inflation is better than people starving, and if everyone has more money, then the inflation really isn't a problem. Having most people in the middle range of income earning is far preferable than having lots of poor people just to keep the rent down.
That happens is market bubbles, and would not happen generally if everyone got a bare minimum living wage. It would of course happen still in areas of high demand with people who have more money than average people, but it would not work in other areas where everyone had similar low wages. So there would still be housing bubbles in places like San Francisco and NYC, but not in most places.
Agreed. The money will quickly flow back through the system anyway, and will end up as a profit for some company somewhere. People don't just sit on their meager cash.
If everyone in the world got a survivable benefit package for their region, we would be in a lot better shape than we are with the current crony capitalism system.
No response from Aigherach who wrote "I would indeed that want to argue that this problem exists in biomedical research..." while talking about poor writing styles in others. We are still waiting for you to show us your trove of scientific publications at PubMed Aighearach. What I don't understand is where your level of arrogance is coming from, and why you can't have a civil discussion.
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There are so many issues that make it seem both unlikely and unnecessary. First, the biological problems of very long term space flight may be unsolvable. Second, the expense goes up exponentially over robots. Third, the seemingly wasteful nature of spending that much money just so a human could go, is a tough sell. Fourth, the distances and times are too great. Short of freezing people solid, you would add in a vast array of new problems that needed to be solved to keep people from atrophying away while cooled down but not frozen. It just isn't practical, even if it makes for fun movies.
Actually, I don't care what they think, I was trying, apparently in vein, to make a joke. But I will also add that on some smaller sites that have only a few non-animated ads I will turn ad blocker off. I expect a battle of ad blockers being blocked, or big companies paying the ad blocker programs to white list them, and then new ad blockers coming out. When money is involved, people get very motivated and devious. But then again, that is what capitalism is all about these days. It used to be that companies cared about their products, took pride in them, and wanted to provide the best product available for a fair price. Those days are long gone. Now it is morphing into the Google economy with everyone trying to make money off of crap, crappy targeted ads, tracking and selling info. So I agree with you.
at least one person thinks I'm not a bad person because I don't want to see flashing ads and videos while I am trying to read a story.
That sounds like an NRA argument, but history is clear, the more well armed a belligerent group is, the more people they can kill. Why do you think ISIS is so interested in getting weapons and ammunition? They aren't looking to buy kitchen knives.
Like I said, we started the fight. We were not attacked by Iraq or Syria prior to us invading. The first thing I would do is stop sending arms to the region, the entire region. No more goodies for Saudis Arabia, Israel, Egypt or any rebel group. No ammo either. Then I would work out an arms embargo with Russia, Europe and China, to make sure that the arms flow stopped. Let's see how long they can fight without guns, parts and ammo.
That would be my first step. And unlike your seemingly genocidal suggestion, the plan I outlined could work fairly quickly. Or hadn't you thought of that?
We could start by not fomenting war in the region. We played the key role in forming ISIS in the first place. We invaded Iraq on false pretenses, and disbanded the army and police force. Many of them are now in ISIS. Then we gave weapons and money to "rebel groups" in the area, as well as the fake Iraqi army we put together. ISIS took their weapons and ammo. Then we helped the rebel groups in Syria in a vein attempt to overthrow Assad, and that backfired too. It's all blowback for our wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I would start by not continuing to do the same things that got us into this mess in the first place. So what did you expect, no blowback from bombing the crap out of third world countries on the other side of the world? If people from the middle east had invaded the US and taken over our country, wouldn't you fight back? Put yourself in other people's shoes. Engage those empathy circuits that have withered in your brain.
Nice try, but your solution a) wouldn't work biologically and b) if it did work as you say, it is going to target many non-ISIS members with similar genes (that's the part about where your empathy circuits need some tuning). You would sterilize a huge swath of innocent people based on their genes. That doesn't sound like something the "good guys" would do. In case you hadn't noticed, you are advocating biological warfare against a whole group of people, most of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing, which really means you need to work on the empathy thing.
So you didn't read a single thing I wrote. I said multiple times that other /.ers were more than welcome to try. I just said that it almost certainly isn't going to work. Lots of things people try never end up working the way people envision. That doesn't mean people don't learn things while trying and failing.
So the part of your brain that should allow you to put yourself in other people's shoes is not working. well. And when that virus mutates and kills your family and everyone else, then everything will be fixed. That sounds like a very typical conservative mindset. By the way, making people in ISIS sterile will not prevent them from recruiting more people to their cause, or didn't you think of that?
Everything that has been listed here is straight out of sci-fi movies and books. I am a neuroscientist, and I have a very strong sense from what I know that human cryogenics isn't going to work. The brain of a frog is so completely different from that of a human. It may be possible in the distant future, but I wouldn't bet on it. I really would love to see how you test whether humans can be frozen solid (which is what it would take) and be thawed out and be just fine, you know, like a frog or a carp. Frogs and carp evolved to be able to freeze solid, humans did not. Cryogenics is not about "suspended animation", it is about freezing living material solid at -80 or lower. I am not volunteering, but other /.ers are welcome to give it a go.
And your point is? You didn't make one, so that is why I am asking.
What an incredibly useful suggestion. So when robots go to other planets, how is that any different from exploring the solar system. And by the way, do you always talk about killing people who disagree with you? Oh, that was supposed to be funny?
Not with humans. Too far, and no we are not going to develop FTL travel. Just because sci-fi writers come up with these things doesn't mean you could actually do them. But everyone is free to try and make warp drives if they want to give it a go. Good luck with that.
I really think that sci-fi stories have some made people think anything is possible. Well, that is not how physics, chemistry and biology work. Only some things are possible, and FTL travel for human beings, just like replicators, just aren't real world phenomena.
Mars is the last target worth doing this with. I really don't think people are going to terraform one of the moons around the gas giants. So Mars is at the limits of where it is worth humans going to. If people do stop blowing each other up, and star exploring the solar system more, robots can do all of the outer planet mining. People are not needed there, and would not fare well there.
Plenty of eager engineers here at /., but not many biologists. Since FTL travel will remain science fiction forever, just like replicators, any travel beyond Mars will be biologically and psychologically problematic at best. It isn't worth spending that much time in a small metal projectile just to see dead planets in person. Everything that needs to be done can be done by robots, once you engineers get them up to speed. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for sending humans except that it "sounds cool". It really won't be at all cool for the people stuck for years in the metal projectile.
Forget about eggs and artificial wombs. Ain't gonna be used to send pre-people to the planets. Why? Because there is absolutely no reason to whatsoever. People are story driven creatures, and often some people take sci-fi stories far too seriously.
This is not really much to be concerned about in any way. They put a gene into the brains of mouse embryos, and got the brain cells in a specific part of the brain to develop differently than they would have normally, without the gene put in. Not a surprising finding. It is not something you could do to a person, and it isn't going to be used for anything other than research purposes. They aren't going to try and do this to people, since changing the developmental fate of neurons during development this way won't do anything useful.
That one I hid right away back when it first popped up. This was one of the other later ones from sometime in October. Uninstalled all the recent optional updates (last 5 weeks), and finally got rid of it. Very disturbing practice. A complete change in OS with major changes in the EULA do not seem like an update.
Just had another Windows 7 machine here pop up with the start menu indicator that an update was going to install on shutdown. Checked, and it was Windows 10 upgrade, which I have shut off twice previously on that same machine. Now I am on "notify me, but do not download or install" on all Windows 7 machines. Still it seems to sneak through occasionally. So no more optional updates ever. Now it is security only. And even then I have my worries that MS will try to sneak it in that way at some point. I don't want the Windows version with the ad banner and app store bolted to the start menu, reminding me of Windows 8. Not going there. My Windows 7 Ultimate copy is paid for, and so far ad and Metro free (and Cortana too).
But in case that never happens, you can just buy a call blocker and hook it up to your phone.
I'd rather break up all the too big to fail companies and fix the government, rather than get rid of the "huge government departments". Right now many government agencies, especially watchdog agencies like the FDA and USDA, have been taken over (captured) by big business. They are stacked with industry insiders, so they no longer properly perform their watchdog function. We need to bring back the watchdog function, because the rubber stamping is going to be the death of us all.
Well, you aren't going to get an argument from me that crony capitalism is not a very good way of divvying up the results of human effort, in fact it is probably the worst conceivable way. But with the kind of people that voters are electing to run governments in many developed countries I don't see much chance for going back to something more regulated and more equitable (like the Eisenhower era tax code, and all those regulations that politicians have been stripping away from corporations over the last 30 years). But that is why I am voting for Bernie Sanders (had to get a Bernie plug in there somewhere).
Agreed. Plus, it is a much bigger problem when a company starts paying one group of workers much higher wages than the average worker in the area, like some IT people in San Francisco. That's when rental rates go sky high, not when you give poor people a barely living stipend. So if you are going to complain that giving people enough money to not starve is going to cause this, then you have to admit the problem with companies paying workers a much higher salary than average is an even bigger problem. In fact, it is a good reason to pay all workers more, and then if rent goes up, so what, people have more money to spend on rent. People happy, landlords happy, local shop owners happy. Starving people is never good for the economy, or the people. It's pretty simple. Now if you are going to complain about inflation, then all I can say is inflation is better than people starving, and if everyone has more money, then the inflation really isn't a problem. Having most people in the middle range of income earning is far preferable than having lots of poor people just to keep the rent down.
That happens is market bubbles, and would not happen generally if everyone got a bare minimum living wage. It would of course happen still in areas of high demand with people who have more money than average people, but it would not work in other areas where everyone had similar low wages. So there would still be housing bubbles in places like San Francisco and NYC, but not in most places.
Agreed. The money will quickly flow back through the system anyway, and will end up as a profit for some company somewhere. People don't just sit on their meager cash.
If everyone in the world got a survivable benefit package for their region, we would be in a lot better shape than we are with the current crony capitalism system.
No response from Aigherach who wrote "I would indeed that want to argue that this problem exists in biomedical research..." while talking about poor writing styles in others. We are still waiting for you to show us your trove of scientific publications at PubMed Aighearach. What I don't understand is where your level of arrogance is coming from, and why you can't have a civil discussion.