Or the aliens would simply use relativistic kinetic kill vehicles arriving some time before the fleet proper. That way the biosphere (if they even want it) will recover, but there will no civilisation to speak of...if any humans at all.
Many people (also porbably disproportionally highly represented on Slashdot) dedicated their lives to studying bodies and minds of different organisms present on our planet. They find those creatures curious despite having superior intelligence. Heck, many would make great sacrifices for the opportunity to study extraterrestrial lifeforms.
Not saying it must be the case for "aliens"...but considering they would be highly technologically advanced, they surely have some form of scientific curiosity.
And Earth might be valuable to life similar to us.
Though it was about IBM mainframes (Soviet clones of which the wiki art I linked to descibes - supposedly quite different inside...), not IBM PCs (which btw were very rare in Eastern Block until around mid-90's)
Now imagine that 767 (or more appropriatelly, some large transport) has all the neccesarry equipment to kickstart industrial base onboard. And flies to a place that is all around stable, with nice and also very stable power source.
BTW, "petroleum" is organic but not biological - there is most likely many times more hydrocarbons on Titan than on Earth, to mention only two places...
Our biologies being similar and mostly compatible would be actually a damn good thing for us, IMHO. A reason to avoid contact for both sides (dangerous microorganisms might jump the barrier). OTOH if our biologies are mostly incompatible, the contact is unfortunatelly safe (even "reverse" chirality for example would mostly do; yes, we would be probably toxic to each other, but it would mostly suffice to not eat alien stuff - alien microbes won't be a problem, since the minute amounts landing on mucous membranes (or equivalent structure...) wouldn't have a chance to multiply; oh, and in this case you have a planet that is mostly nice, filled with useless life...)
But TBH, even though I described one possible direction towards cheap disposable storage (and you pointed out a bit different one)...personally I consider it a waste of resources.
I would think and hope that mobile phones with enough storage and connectivity, allowing exchange of files between them (and with PCs; if exchanging files via net is not desirable in given scenario), will become widespread enough for another such storage medium to be unnecessary. Some manufacturers and carriers, even when the technical capability is there, outright block such usage of course...:/
Though we don't have much of a problem with travelling to remote corners of the Earth and possibly, by our exploitation, destroying habitats of some local bacteria (or rather 'organisms', generally)
That's what Hawking is talking about; we might be considered just a nuisance in exploiting a nice, stable planetary system; even with one planet that's remarkably close to habitable ones, only around 50K too cold!
It is safe to assume that any technically advanced life form would be a social life form and would rely on groups as opposed to mere individuals for making leaps in technical progress.
That's a very big assumption. What if the technical advancement arises in hive-like organism? So there's only one "individual".
Are you aware of the "thoughts" and local enviroment of your individual neurons? (yes, you might point out that "hives of neurons" that we are still display so called "morality" towards other "hives of neurons"...but the crucial thing is that we can't merge; different "hives" can't directly communicate; heck, for us the only way to ensure survival of "part" (in a way) of the hive is a frequent and friendly contact with other hives)
All this assumes that alien civilisation is even remotelly similar to ours and hence has similar notions of ethics. But the "good" ethics we take for granted is largely a byproduct of our evolutionary path, which produced fairly intelligent and independently thinking individuals who nonetheless depend on other members of their species to maximize success.
But let us take a look at another possibility - a civilisation modelled after social insects here on Earth. This intellect isn't likely to share much of our goals, exterminating all its neighbours being possibly a good thing (I'd even guess it percieves the world as two distinct categories: 1) 'that which is known = that which is me = good = God' (to use popular human concept) 2) 'unknown = that which is not me = bad = Satan'; there's not much common ground for understanding with such an entity...)
As for very cheap USB drives, there are still some options - look up Data Traveler Mini Slim from Kingston. I'm sure it can be made even simpler / cheaper; with the case using even less material than DT Mini Slim and being one block of plastic, or with controller and flash integrated in one chip.
Even when you add to the equation an adequate, for home user, backup machine (those small cheap NAS for example)...HDD storage still ends up significantly cheaper; and it should remain so for quite some time. Especially since there is some talk of another upcoming breakthrough in HDD tech (of course who knows if this talk is not also partly to calm investors in times when SSD have arrived)
(plus you should have backup & its added cost with SSD, too)
Plus a boring, repetitive, perhaps even forced work - but nonetheless mental work (and requiring you to be properly fed, etc.) - was a mighty attractive thing in Soviet Union, given some of the alternatives...
But what he spoke about doesn't preciselly follows the quote (really suggesting the chips were rather directly used) with which you started your post. Also the consensus in this article seems to be, well, that Soviet mainframes were original hardware, similar to how few companies made IBM clones. The OS was "stolen", but supposedly later versions were also quite different and original.
In part of the world I live they offer either USB "modems" or, via ridiculous premium, a router with ADSL of their choosing. Of course a model which is a complete shit usually anyway.
Less clutter (also control-wise), less PSUs, less energy used is no gain?
"Copying" is not an appropriate word. Russian mainframes were clones (in vein of few other manufacturers which cloned IBM systems), with quite original hardware.
Some Soviet Block countries indeed built Apple II clones, but the Soviets, as far as home market goes, went largely with ZX Spectrum derivatives. This one for example (yeah, I wonder how much tongue-in-cheek that name was;p )
More interesting are "official" home computers of the Soviet Union (ZX Spectrum clones were of small manufacture later on), compatible PDP-11 architecture and with rather nice operating systems.
But with ternary logic it seems the practice proved its worth. Setun was apparently significantly cheaper to construct (and used less energy) than binary computers of comparable abilities. It's possible that this would give us more efficient usage of CMOS structures, too...since there's no mention of any clear Setun drawbacks apart from being different from what rest of the world was standardizing on.
And on/., you should know that not always the best tech wins. "Best for given circumstances", maybe; the circumstances itself often are quite twisted though.
No, really, I want a direct WRT54GL successor with ADSL, n and USB for external storage or webcam. Its look, its industrial form, is simply too good to abandon...;/
TFS reflects what US didn't know back then, not the current state of knowledge...
Apart from Setun mentioned by other posters (which, although interesting, didn't really influence much the race in technology; about which the pdf is all about) there's also, most importantly, this gem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_(computer) Soviet domestically developed supercomputers. Multiprocessor superscalar RISC machine few years before the report from TFS was written; later VLIW long before the Itanium. Used specifically in "how the hell Soviets are keeping up" areas (the man apparently responsible for them works for Intel for some time now...)
Think of it more as "-1, 0 and 1" instead of typical "0, 1". Apparently gives much better efficiency (Setun machines were replaced with something only equally fast...but few times more expensive)
Though the times of Apollo-Soyuz were already during period when Russians were visiting routinelly their space stations. And not long after the unmanned Progress was ready.
Translucent enough swing (or normal) doors don't have to include glass. Anyway, those placed in present public or semi-public places are usually made from quite heavy-duty one (hey, there's no shortage of public funds for the decor of public offices...); part of the idiocy here is that "classic" glass panel doors have one piece of normal glass (of poor quality and the doors itself of poor construction) filling around 2/3 of them.
Most (all?) of my visible scars come from them, likewise in uncanny number of my friends. It's incomprehensible, really - turns out all of my peers, when the subject is mentioned, don't put such doors in their homes or change them to something more sensible or declare they will do it when the need arises. At the same time "old generation" didn't seem to notice a problem, even when their kids were semi-regularly cut in non-trivial degree...
Slashdot Mirror
Or the aliens would simply use relativistic kinetic kill vehicles arriving some time before the fleet proper. That way the biosphere (if they even want it) will recover, but there will no civilisation to speak of...if any humans at all.
Many people (also porbably disproportionally highly represented on Slashdot) dedicated their lives to studying bodies and minds of different organisms present on our planet. They find those creatures curious despite having superior intelligence. Heck, many would make great sacrifices for the opportunity to study extraterrestrial lifeforms.
Not saying it must be the case for "aliens"...but considering they would be highly technologically advanced, they surely have some form of scientific curiosity.
And Earth might be valuable to life similar to us.
Though it was about IBM mainframes (Soviet clones of which the wiki art I linked to descibes - supposedly quite different inside...), not IBM PCs (which btw were very rare in Eastern Block until around mid-90's)
Now imagine that 767 (or more appropriatelly, some large transport) has all the neccesarry equipment to kickstart industrial base onboard. And flies to a place that is all around stable, with nice and also very stable power source.
BTW, "petroleum" is organic but not biological - there is most likely many times more hydrocarbons on Titan than on Earth, to mention only two places...
Our biologies being similar and mostly compatible would be actually a damn good thing for us, IMHO. A reason to avoid contact for both sides (dangerous microorganisms might jump the barrier). OTOH if our biologies are mostly incompatible, the contact is unfortunatelly safe (even "reverse" chirality for example would mostly do; yes, we would be probably toxic to each other, but it would mostly suffice to not eat alien stuff - alien microbes won't be a problem, since the minute amounts landing on mucous membranes (or equivalent structure...) wouldn't have a chance to multiply; oh, and in this case you have a planet that is mostly nice, filled with useless life...)
Were we more likely to use uninhabited places like Greenland, Antarctic, high mountain ranges, deserts or bottom of the ocean?
But TBH, even though I described one possible direction towards cheap disposable storage (and you pointed out a bit different one)...personally I consider it a waste of resources.
I would think and hope that mobile phones with enough storage and connectivity, allowing exchange of files between them (and with PCs; if exchanging files via net is not desirable in given scenario), will become widespread enough for another such storage medium to be unnecessary. Some manufacturers and carriers, even when the technical capability is there, outright block such usage of course... :/
Though we don't have much of a problem with travelling to remote corners of the Earth and possibly, by our exploitation, destroying habitats of some local bacteria (or rather 'organisms', generally)
That's what Hawking is talking about; we might be considered just a nuisance in exploiting a nice, stable planetary system; even with one planet that's remarkably close to habitable ones, only around 50K too cold!
It is safe to assume that any technically advanced life form would be a social life form and would rely on groups as opposed to mere individuals for making leaps in technical progress.
That's a very big assumption. What if the technical advancement arises in hive-like organism? So there's only one "individual".
Are you aware of the "thoughts" and local enviroment of your individual neurons? (yes, you might point out that "hives of neurons" that we are still display so called "morality" towards other "hives of neurons"...but the crucial thing is that we can't merge; different "hives" can't directly communicate; heck, for us the only way to ensure survival of "part" (in a way) of the hive is a frequent and friendly contact with other hives)
All this assumes that alien civilisation is even remotelly similar to ours and hence has similar notions of ethics. But the "good" ethics we take for granted is largely a byproduct of our evolutionary path, which produced fairly intelligent and independently thinking individuals who nonetheless depend on other members of their species to maximize success.
But let us take a look at another possibility - a civilisation modelled after social insects here on Earth. This intellect isn't likely to share much of our goals, exterminating all its neighbours being possibly a good thing (I'd even guess it percieves the world as two distinct categories: 1) 'that which is known = that which is me = good = God' (to use popular human concept) 2) 'unknown = that which is not me = bad = Satan'; there's not much common ground for understanding with such an entity...)
As for very cheap USB drives, there are still some options - look up Data Traveler Mini Slim from Kingston. I'm sure it can be made even simpler / cheaper; with the case using even less material than DT Mini Slim and being one block of plastic, or with controller and flash integrated in one chip.
Even when you add to the equation an adequate, for home user, backup machine (those small cheap NAS for example)...HDD storage still ends up significantly cheaper; and it should remain so for quite some time. Especially since there is some talk of another upcoming breakthrough in HDD tech (of course who knows if this talk is not also partly to calm investors in times when SSD have arrived)
(plus you should have backup & its added cost with SSD, too)
So many failures...Betacam, CD, Hi8, miniDV, HDV, DAT, S/PDIF, AIBO; (some in collaboration)
Why would they edit MP3s? It's a single song, at optimum quality, with lots space on present phones, and each transcoding lowering its quality.
Plus a boring, repetitive, perhaps even forced work - but nonetheless mental work (and requiring you to be properly fed, etc.) - was a mighty attractive thing in Soviet Union, given some of the alternatives...
But what he spoke about doesn't preciselly follows the quote (really suggesting the chips were rather directly used) with which you started your post. Also the consensus in this article seems to be, well, that Soviet mainframes were original hardware, similar to how few companies made IBM clones. The OS was "stolen", but supposedly later versions were also quite different and original.
Plus there's Setun and Elbrus.
In part of the world I live they offer either USB "modems" or, via ridiculous premium, a router with ADSL of their choosing. Of course a model which is a complete shit usually anyway.
Less clutter (also control-wise), less PSUs, less energy used is no gain?
"Copying" is not an appropriate word. Russian mainframes were clones (in vein of few other manufacturers which cloned IBM systems), with quite original hardware.
Some Soviet Block countries indeed built Apple II clones, but the Soviets, as far as home market goes, went largely with ZX Spectrum derivatives. This one for example (yeah, I wonder how much tongue-in-cheek that name was ;p )
More interesting are "official" home computers of the Soviet Union (ZX Spectrum clones were of small manufacture later on), compatible PDP-11 architecture and with rather nice operating systems.
But with ternary logic it seems the practice proved its worth. Setun was apparently significantly cheaper to construct (and used less energy) than binary computers of comparable abilities. It's possible that this would give us more efficient usage of CMOS structures, too...since there's no mention of any clear Setun drawbacks apart from being different from what rest of the world was standardizing on.
And on /., you should know that not always the best tech wins. "Best for given circumstances", maybe; the circumstances itself often are quite twisted though.
No, really, I want a direct WRT54GL successor with ADSL, n and USB for external storage or webcam. Its look, its industrial form, is simply too good to abandon... ;/
Wasn't there even some cross-pollination between Amiga and OS/2? (IBM licensing REXX in exchange of some GUI tech, something liek that)
TFS reflects what US didn't know back then, not the current state of knowledge...
Apart from Setun mentioned by other posters (which, although interesting, didn't really influence much the race in technology; about which the pdf is all about) there's also, most importantly, this gem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_(computer)
Soviet domestically developed supercomputers. Multiprocessor superscalar RISC machine few years before the report from TFS was written; later VLIW long before the Itanium. Used specifically in "how the hell Soviets are keeping up" areas
(the man apparently responsible for them works for Intel for some time now...)
Think of it more as "-1, 0 and 1" instead of typical "0, 1". Apparently gives much better efficiency (Setun machines were replaced with something only equally fast...but few times more expensive)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer
^"ternary logic's elegance and efficiency is predicted by Donald Knuth to bring them back into development in the future"
Though the times of Apollo-Soyuz were already during period when Russians were visiting routinelly their space stations. And not long after the unmanned Progress was ready.
Translucent enough swing (or normal) doors don't have to include glass. Anyway, those placed in present public or semi-public places are usually made from quite heavy-duty one (hey, there's no shortage of public funds for the decor of public offices...); part of the idiocy here is that "classic" glass panel doors have one piece of normal glass (of poor quality and the doors itself of poor construction) filling around 2/3 of them.
Most (all?) of my visible scars come from them, likewise in uncanny number of my friends. It's incomprehensible, really - turns out all of my peers, when the subject is mentioned, don't put such doors in their homes or change them to something more sensible or declare they will do it when the need arises. At the same time "old generation" didn't seem to notice a problem, even when their kids were semi-regularly cut in non-trivial degree...