Come on, why do you need a bed in space? It's not like springs and matresses are needed to relieve pressure on your weightless spine. Just wrap yourself in a blanket and tie corners to a wall to avoid floating away. Save the space for an eleptical machine to keep your muscles from atrophying instead.
I need a bed (or the zero-g equivalent) because I'm a human, and humans are territorial creatures. As such I'm not comfortable sleeping in a spot which isn't "mine" in some hard-to-define sense. Sure, I can overcome those instincts, but that is going to cause stress, which is already everpresent in a spaceflight.
Then there's the matter of spaceships not having much room, so there aren't many spots I can leave my sleeping body to without it being on the way. Once such a spot is found, it makes sense to reuse it each time I need sleep; it also makes sense to leave the sheets or whatever there rather than transport them around, so there you have it: a bed, or the zero-g equivalent thereof.
Oh, and I don't need springs on Earth either; they're simply more comfortable. I can sleep just fine on hard floor, as long as it is warm and I have a pillow.
Why couldn't they be made of matter and wielded energy? The wielded energy could then absorb most of the blast -- say 999.9x the Hiroshima blast. Then there would be something of the matter left to look at.
What is "wielded energy" ? And why would it absorb the blast as opposed to adding to it (as energy tends to do) ?
Viruses, RNA chains, proteins (prions), etc, etc, etc.
Viruses don't replicate on their own, but require a living cell to do so. RNA chains do, but without a proteing synthesis machinery (cell) surrounding said chain, two different RNA chains don't differ in their survivability at all, since the information coded in them doesn't do anything without said machinery. Prions might just make it; even so, it is hard to see how a more complex prion would have an evolutionary advantage over a less complex one, since more complex ones are likely to require more complex (and therefore more rare) raw materials to convert.
I'm not going to believe this until a cometary probe comes back contaminated with an alien microbe that destroys all life on the planet.
An alien microbe, having evolved in a completely different environment, would likely not fare well in competition with Earth's native microbes, and would thus be hard-pressed to survive at all, much less go on a killing spree. There's some truth to the "War of the Worlds".
Warfarin will kill a human as well by bleeding you to death, if you take enough of it.
Water will kill you as well by disturbing the electrolyte balance in your blood and therefore stopping your heart if you drink too much of it. There is absolutely no substance in existence which won't kill you if misused in sufficient quantities.
I never got why panspermia was such a compelling theory. It just pushes the real question, "how did life begin", back a little.
The conditions of early Earth can be determined to some degree, and the time between Earth forming and the earliest known signs of life can also be determined. Any theory which states that life began on Earth has to explain how said conditions lead to life in said timeframe. This far none has.
Panspermia, on the other hand, claims that life was born somewhere else at some point after the Big Bang and earliest signs of life on Earth. "Somewhere else" doesn't constrain the possible set of circumstances nearly as much as "on Earth", and the timeframe is far longer too. It is also impossible to prove false.
Given the choice between lots of time-consuming chemistry reasearch and a hypothesis which is impossible to falsify or really even research but allows a lot of poetic pseudo-philosophical nonsense in the vein of "we are children of the stars", "cosmic bortherhood", and "the thrut is out there", which do you think people will choose ?
Soooooo, they used two numbers (mass of clay & # of comets) to generate a 1e24 to 1 odd against life having started here? Seems like they might have left one or two variables out of their equation.
Yes. You have to compare mass of oceans vs. the mass of liquid water in comets which hit the Earth between the time oceans formed and life began to determine the odds, assuming each liquid water droplet has the same odds of having life starting in it spontaneously in a given time period. It doesn't help Earth any if life begins in some comet which never hits the Earth...
If they had these managed languages for GUI development, and C++ for back-end efficiency then I'd be very happy as you'd get the best of both worlds.
Crashing backends and slow GUIs ?
Seriously, it's the backend which doesn't need to be lightning-fast, but absolutely must not choke on any data that's thrown to it. Make the backend with Java or something, and the GUI application with C, and you'll get the best of both worlds.
And yet, even with all that lost intelligence, even with all the horrible, horrible things Clinton supposedly did to our intelligence and national security apparatus... it was still able to provide written warning of pretty much exactly what was going to happen and put it in Bush's hands on August 6th.
Written warning ? The fools ! They should had read it aloud !
Seriously speaking, maybe the intelligence organizations need to take heed of schoolteachers; the person the report is delivered to must submit in return, in a given timeframe, a summary of the reports contents (to prove he has read it) and a summary of actions he has taken concerning it, as well as the reasons he considers said actions adequate. Failure to do so satisfactorily will result in being placed in detention in a secret CIA torture facility.
A criminal tool is something that a DA can stand in front of twelve randomly chosen citizens with no particular knowledge, and convince them that, not only that it can be used as a criminal tool, but that the defendant should have known that and did it anyway.
Unless he's accused of terrorism. Then the pen was clearly meant to be used as a murder weapon by pushing it into someone's brains through their ears; and since it can then be retrieved and used again, it is clearly a mass murder weapon. Assuming he gets a trial at all, of course, which is assuming a lot.
Besides, are the twelve actually chosen randomly, or by the people in the legal system (DA's coworkers) ?
There is no valid reason for a non-military person to be able to own a hand grenade. The grenade cannot be used for any peaceful purpose, nor for self defense, because of it's extremely high collateral damage.
Of course it can be used for self-defense. In fact, if guns are common enough that thugs will shoot you in the back before looting you, the defense against that would be to carry a hand grenade with you, connected to a dead mans trigger. If your heart stops, the grenade explodes, possibly killing the thug and in any case rendering your money and valuables into rubble. White phosphorous grenade would be the best for the latter purpose.
Or imagine being caught in a dark alley by a gang. Can you shoot them all ? No need to - just throw the hand grenade in their midst. Also gives you a good reason to stay in shape, since failing to throw the grenade far enough will have some rather nasty side effects on yourself.
Finally, if we go by the theory that the main reason for armed populace is to be able to overthrow an oppressive government, then surely those weapons need to be military grade. Hand grenades should be the standard equipment for such populace, along with assault rifles, bazookas, and a few cruise missiles. Hell, if you can afford it, go for nukes.
Why do people (especially Slashdotters) put up with it, when there are other options that are so much better?
Games. Wine hasn't ever worked well, and likely never will; this leaves Windows as the only alternative for playing most games or running certain programs (like Poser) on a PC.
This is all a load of egocentric horseshit. Even a comedy writer like Doug Adams understood how unbelievable large the universe really is, and how unbelievably unimportant humans are in the scheme of things.
If we're unimportant in the scheme of things, our egocentrism is equally unimportant, and you've just wasted your time complaining about unimportant matters. Not that that's important, either.
Besides, size is not an indicator of importance. A whale or an elephant are larger than, say, Albert Einstein, but the latter is likely to be far more important (have more influence on) the history of this world than a member of either of said animal species.
Religion and other romanticisms are just a mental sleight of hand to make up for the fact that the universe will uncaringly grind us all to dust.
Please don't get religion into this. We really don't need another pointless flamefest about things which are likely impossible to prove true or untrue this side of grave.
All this talk of consiousness and meaning and the perception of beauty is irrelevant nonsense as we haven't the slightest idea of the true nature and function of the universe.
Determining what is relevant or irrelevant would require knowing the true nature and function of the universe which, as you stated, we don't know. All I know is that consciousness, meaning and beauty are relevant to me.
If in this country you could easily and legally carry around a concealed firearm, criminals would be less inclined to attack you because it's legal and easy for you to have a gun to defend yourself. With the gun laws as they are, the odds are in favor of the law breaking criminal who HAS a concealed weapon who bets you aren't armed.
Um, if the criminal has a gun and thinks you have one too, wouldn't he simply shoot you first from behind and then loot your corpse ?
Which, as a solution, also discriminates against those people without money.
The only lasting solution to this problem will come through the populace exercising their Second Amendment rights:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Except that weapons cost money, therefore the people with money can keep and bear more efficient weapons than the people who don't, or pay other people to bear them for them; in fact, one could consider the current situation, with the US army and US law enforcement working for the exclusive benefit of the rich to be an extreme example of such a situation.
Money is a measure for resources; those with lots of money have lots of resources (by definition), and can therefore cause greater effects than those with less money; therefore they are more powerful (since power means an ability to cause some effect). Those with more power can, in the absence of an outside force which stops them, oppress those with less power; and any such outside force would simply be someone with even more power. The only solutions to this problem are that the resources (and with them, power) is divided equally between everyone (which is likely impossible), that the people on top behave themselves (which isn't bloody likely) or that some force external to humanity enforces such good behavior (which, according to many religions, will eventually happen).
In short, don't hold your breath waiting for social justice.
Anyone who plays eve-o and has stayed in Empire thus far, get your jump clones up to date, hop into a non-implanted one, trick out a cheap rifter or a stabber and go start shooting at people in 0.0. Start teaming up with people, and take recon positions whenever possible. Then try leading small ops. Within a month you'll be having so much fun that the 'spreadsheet life' of Empire will make you feel like a fool for ever enjoying it;)
Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you're trying to lure easy prey/cannon foder within shooting distance ?
The purpose of punishment is not to exact vengeance -- it is to deter crimes and to comfort the victims.
If someone kills my children and the legal system fails to get vengeance, I will simply get it myself. That is another aspect to consider. Too weak punishments mean that people won't bother with the courts at all.
If anything could be done to the man to bring his victims back to life, it should be done. But there is nothing we can do...
We can, however, make sure that he never kills anyone ever again by keeping him locked up for the rest of his life. Besides, barbaric as this may sound, I for one want vengeance on those who have wronged me or others; a murderer shouldn't get away with it.
To give those who may not remember a bit more of an idea of what the "CDROM bubble" was like (not that I think that's really a good name for it), in the mid nineties, "CDROM games" were their own category in stores -- you had action games, strategy games, puzzle games, and CDROM games. As if the media a game shipped on somehow defined it.
It did. Or have you forgotten the "interactive movies" ?-)
Could it be that you don't get good grades when you spend 99% of your time thinking how you get laid instead of trying to figure out the math in the book (explaining why so many math geeks are virgins, or, vice versa, why people who got laid ain't so keen on math, which requires quite a bit of abstract thinking, something you can't (well, I at least can't) do when the blood is concentrated in your mid section instead of your brains).
You are being illogical. People who can get laid often don't need to spend 99% of their time thinking how to achieve it. It is those who can't get laid who spend all their time thinking of it.
Who thinks of getting water more: the guy who is dying of thirst in the desert, or the guy who can get a glass any time he wants ?
Besides, it could simply be that the people getting laid regularly have social intelligence - the kind which makes you well liked and helps you get laid regularly - instead of the kind which lets you answer stupid questions, like the ones in the IQ test or school tests. Lucky bastards.
Slashdot Mirror
I need a bed (or the zero-g equivalent) because I'm a human, and humans are territorial creatures. As such I'm not comfortable sleeping in a spot which isn't "mine" in some hard-to-define sense. Sure, I can overcome those instincts, but that is going to cause stress, which is already everpresent in a spaceflight.
Then there's the matter of spaceships not having much room, so there aren't many spots I can leave my sleeping body to without it being on the way. Once such a spot is found, it makes sense to reuse it each time I need sleep; it also makes sense to leave the sheets or whatever there rather than transport them around, so there you have it: a bed, or the zero-g equivalent thereof.
Oh, and I don't need springs on Earth either; they're simply more comfortable. I can sleep just fine on hard floor, as long as it is warm and I have a pillow.
What is "wielded energy" ? And why would it absorb the blast as opposed to adding to it (as energy tends to do) ?
Viruses don't replicate on their own, but require a living cell to do so. RNA chains do, but without a proteing synthesis machinery (cell) surrounding said chain, two different RNA chains don't differ in their survivability at all, since the information coded in them doesn't do anything without said machinery. Prions might just make it; even so, it is hard to see how a more complex prion would have an evolutionary advantage over a less complex one, since more complex ones are likely to require more complex (and therefore more rare) raw materials to convert.
An alien microbe, having evolved in a completely different environment, would likely not fare well in competition with Earth's native microbes, and would thus be hard-pressed to survive at all, much less go on a killing spree. There's some truth to the "War of the Worlds".
Water will kill you as well by disturbing the electrolyte balance in your blood and therefore stopping your heart if you drink too much of it. There is absolutely no substance in existence which won't kill you if misused in sufficient quantities.
The conditions of early Earth can be determined to some degree, and the time between Earth forming and the earliest known signs of life can also be determined. Any theory which states that life began on Earth has to explain how said conditions lead to life in said timeframe. This far none has.
Panspermia, on the other hand, claims that life was born somewhere else at some point after the Big Bang and earliest signs of life on Earth. "Somewhere else" doesn't constrain the possible set of circumstances nearly as much as "on Earth", and the timeframe is far longer too. It is also impossible to prove false.
Given the choice between lots of time-consuming chemistry reasearch and a hypothesis which is impossible to falsify or really even research but allows a lot of poetic pseudo-philosophical nonsense in the vein of "we are children of the stars", "cosmic bortherhood", and "the thrut is out there", which do you think people will choose ?
Yes. You have to compare mass of oceans vs. the mass of liquid water in comets which hit the Earth between the time oceans formed and life began to determine the odds, assuming each liquid water droplet has the same odds of having life starting in it spontaneously in a given time period. It doesn't help Earth any if life begins in some comet which never hits the Earth...
It's been that way for years, for pirated movies don't have unskippable "Piracy is Thief" propaganda in the beginning.
Crashing backends and slow GUIs ?
Seriously, it's the backend which doesn't need to be lightning-fast, but absolutely must not choke on any data that's thrown to it. Make the backend with Java or something, and the GUI application with C, and you'll get the best of both worlds.
I once wrote a kind of menu system which mixed Basic and BAT shell scripts, running on DOS, of course. Which category would it belong to ?-)
I wonder if save/load functionality will be added to the next version ?
Written warning ? The fools ! They should had read it aloud !
Seriously speaking, maybe the intelligence organizations need to take heed of schoolteachers; the person the report is delivered to must submit in return, in a given timeframe, a summary of the reports contents (to prove he has read it) and a summary of actions he has taken concerning it, as well as the reasons he considers said actions adequate. Failure to do so satisfactorily will result in being placed in detention in a secret CIA torture facility.
Make a Virtual Machine which swaps data and code in and out through the cable as needed ;).
Unless he's accused of terrorism. Then the pen was clearly meant to be used as a murder weapon by pushing it into someone's brains through their ears; and since it can then be retrieved and used again, it is clearly a mass murder weapon. Assuming he gets a trial at all, of course, which is assuming a lot.
Besides, are the twelve actually chosen randomly, or by the people in the legal system (DA's coworkers) ?
Of course it can be used for self-defense. In fact, if guns are common enough that thugs will shoot you in the back before looting you, the defense against that would be to carry a hand grenade with you, connected to a dead mans trigger. If your heart stops, the grenade explodes, possibly killing the thug and in any case rendering your money and valuables into rubble. White phosphorous grenade would be the best for the latter purpose.
Or imagine being caught in a dark alley by a gang. Can you shoot them all ? No need to - just throw the hand grenade in their midst. Also gives you a good reason to stay in shape, since failing to throw the grenade far enough will have some rather nasty side effects on yourself.
Finally, if we go by the theory that the main reason for armed populace is to be able to overthrow an oppressive government, then surely those weapons need to be military grade. Hand grenades should be the standard equipment for such populace, along with assault rifles, bazookas, and a few cruise missiles. Hell, if you can afford it, go for nukes.
Games. Wine hasn't ever worked well, and likely never will; this leaves Windows as the only alternative for playing most games or running certain programs (like Poser) on a PC.
If we're unimportant in the scheme of things, our egocentrism is equally unimportant, and you've just wasted your time complaining about unimportant matters. Not that that's important, either.
Besides, size is not an indicator of importance. A whale or an elephant are larger than, say, Albert Einstein, but the latter is likely to be far more important (have more influence on) the history of this world than a member of either of said animal species.
Please don't get religion into this. We really don't need another pointless flamefest about things which are likely impossible to prove true or untrue this side of grave.
Determining what is relevant or irrelevant would require knowing the true nature and function of the universe which, as you stated, we don't know. All I know is that consciousness, meaning and beauty are relevant to me.
Um, if the criminal has a gun and thinks you have one too, wouldn't he simply shoot you first from behind and then loot your corpse ?
Except that weapons cost money, therefore the people with money can keep and bear more efficient weapons than the people who don't, or pay other people to bear them for them; in fact, one could consider the current situation, with the US army and US law enforcement working for the exclusive benefit of the rich to be an extreme example of such a situation.
Money is a measure for resources; those with lots of money have lots of resources (by definition), and can therefore cause greater effects than those with less money; therefore they are more powerful (since power means an ability to cause some effect). Those with more power can, in the absence of an outside force which stops them, oppress those with less power; and any such outside force would simply be someone with even more power. The only solutions to this problem are that the resources (and with them, power) is divided equally between everyone (which is likely impossible), that the people on top behave themselves (which isn't bloody likely) or that some force external to humanity enforces such good behavior (which, according to many religions, will eventually happen).
In short, don't hold your breath waiting for social justice.
Nah. Procedural programming is indeed what made a project of this complexity possible. Just try to program Spore in line-number Basic, I dare you.
Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you're trying to lure easy prey/cannon foder within shooting distance ?
If someone kills my children and the legal system fails to get vengeance, I will simply get it myself. That is another aspect to consider. Too weak punishments mean that people won't bother with the courts at all.
We can, however, make sure that he never kills anyone ever again by keeping him locked up for the rest of his life. Besides, barbaric as this may sound, I for one want vengeance on those who have wronged me or others; a murderer shouldn't get away with it.
It did. Or have you forgotten the "interactive movies" ?-)
You know, combining these two ideas gives a plan worthy of Japanese hentai artists...
You are being illogical. People who can get laid often don't need to spend 99% of their time thinking how to achieve it. It is those who can't get laid who spend all their time thinking of it.
Who thinks of getting water more: the guy who is dying of thirst in the desert, or the guy who can get a glass any time he wants ?
Besides, it could simply be that the people getting laid regularly have social intelligence - the kind which makes you well liked and helps you get laid regularly - instead of the kind which lets you answer stupid questions, like the ones in the IQ test or school tests. Lucky bastards.