You can expect a lot of people saying that scientists got it wrong (remember you can only talk about probabilities of impact), undermining the action as a "wasted effort"; until we will be able to determine the probability much better, and it will be quite late then.
Not absolutely too late though. But deniers will follow through, since the action is so much harder now and there's still no "certainty"; it's easier than admitting (in your own eyes! That's most important!) that you were wrong.
Asteroid is: a) Not necessarily a threat (it might be a benefit for your area! When "enemies" will get hit the worst) b) Not a near enough threat anyways (it's a problem that will eventuate in another generation, hardly a 10 year problem; the window between detection and action (when it's possible) will be huge...and anyways, it's a semi-constant occurrence on Earth, we'll be fine (when it comes to impactors we have a hope of deflecting at all)) c) Something that while a PITA to live through, is survivable. Impacts are happening all the time. We hardly even noticed Tunguska.
Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs? The ones doing the job of deflection, naturally.
And there will another complicating factor - expect quite a bit of people actually working against the efforts, with their expectation of incoming Rupture/Ragnarok/punishment from gods/whatever. Especially if the impact site seems to target their "enemies", though probably also when it targets them..."punishment from allowing the world to fall"/etc.
Quite a bit of unrest generally, on top of what's already there. Escalation of conflicts. All while trying to launch something very sophisticated, quite delicate operation...
I don't think any big browser can afford to be shipping openly with adblocker (Opera somehow does, but the visible part of it is purely manual, site-specific; that it can use a list like Adblock is not readily apparent...)
Such browser would be likely blocked outright by large portion of websites.
...and yet you suddenly forget, on Slashdot, that other browsers had a hard time largely due to practices of MS.
And no, it isn't a case of "well, but only Opera has such pitiful market share of all the alternatives" BS. You seem to also forget that Europe is not US; there are countries here where Opera is far ahead of FF, for example. And Safari generally doesn't exist.
But why do you limit yourself only to "techno" kind of phobia in determining whether somebody is an idiot? Why not all kind of phobias? After all, whatever the problem people have with their particular kind of phobia is, it's surely a matter of being close minded, right?
And purely of their making, no outside circumstances have influenced this...
I still suspect this might be, overall, too limiting.
First and foremost, you don't compare it with biological systems, you compare it with organic biological systems. Only from one planet to boot;). Our kind of sentience...that indeed looks almost like an accident of evolution, but it's not necessarily synonymous with intelligence. We can't really grasp how, for example, hive minds would "think" (heck, can we really grasp how a cat thinks?). Certainly there would be totally different meaning to culture, mating, sexual selection. Essentially you seem to be looking at it from too anthropocentric position; I'm not sure that's helpful when dealing with such vastly different "universe" and "laws of physics" as inside of technical artifacts.
You even say that we can't quite pinpoint which sequence of events results in intelligence...well, apply also in this case.
That said, suspecting that such botnets might lead to intelligence almost certainly will prove wrong. I'm saying, mostly, that in however way AI will arise (if ever) it might get us by surprise a bit. If we even notice it.
Most importantly, it isn't the first time when mobile Gecko is supposed to forever change mobile browsing experience. Unfortunately Mozilla seems to think that hardware improvements will nullify their inability to fit Gecko into phones...meanwhile Webkit and Opera, among others, are doing it successfully for quite some time.
Don't bet on it much...how many times Mozilla promised "revolutionizing" mobile browsing? Remember MiniMo? How their conclusion from that project was "we'll wait until the hardware gets more powerful"...and again they ended up with bloated pig.
In the meantime, Webkit and Opera Mini are doing much good for mobile web for a few years already.
You still haven't addressed how over half of Europe ended up using alternative browsers already (BTW why do you limit yourself and those you're trying yo convert to FF?...) and through very gradual process.
The way you draw the distinction idiots vs. non-idiots (does that make you feel better?) paints the issue of browser share as virtually impossible to modify.
That has one great disadvantage of blinding also you... (well, one might rely on a network of small unmanned sensor spacecraft, I imagine) And I guess it can be done more easily by detonating a nuke not far from you, from time to time; with bonus points if you know, roughly, where your enemy is and can do it more or less between you and them.
Maybe...OTOH such massive nuke is much heavier, harder to move, requires much more powerful way of propulsion and/or steering, which would betray its position more readily; bigger target, smaller mass budget for shield against debris or for camouflage (for making it similar to space junk, perhaps hiding internal emissions)
And in space you'd better score a direct hit anyway, probably; there's no atmospheric overpressure effect, minimal shockwave if the bomb detonates "alone". But if it detonates in contact with hostile ship, even kiloton-range warhead will destroy it. One megaton one might flung enough debris around to cripple anything nearby. The major problem is for warhead to survive the impact...
Strong radiation belt; close to a star; disguise yourself as a comet or an asteroid and keep the power down. The last one would be probably better than painting black - in space there's practically whole EM spectrum at your disposal, it's not trivial to find a paint which would be "black" in most of it.
Even with very efficient means of propulsion, why fight against orbital mechanics when you can exploit it? Or to put it another way: which side do you think will win - the one exploiting it, or the one not doing it?
This of course assumes roughly equal technological level. A fair assumption IMHO, because in most of scenarios when that isn't the case (civilizations alien to each other), the difference might be such great that it would be no contest - alien civilizations are likely to be millions of years "out of synch", so even assuming hard limits of physics, one of those civs is bound to be much more finesse.
@kinetic impactors - slight deflection or even head on obstacle in their way might be an effective defense?
More powerful weapons, with greater range. Any direct hit with intended kind of weapon knocks out of the action at the least. Mostly only active countermeasures are effective, unless you can exploit the environment somehow or are good at camouflage. Never stay put. One big cat & mouse game. And so on.
The factors that shaped this will be even more pronounced in space, with the added fun of predicting position (speed of light limit). Which makes majority of SciFi depictions that more disappointing; limited in popular formats to somewhere between WW1 and WW2 state of affairs.
But also there might be too many "what if" scenarios to draw definite conclusions. For example...defensive measures getting also more "intelligent". Or crackdown of botnets promoting more decentralized, autonomous mechanisms.
And drawing direct biological parallels is exactly what I was trying to point out as too limiting our perspective. What actually is the equivalent of an ant or neuron in a cybernetic being? Yes, there are simulations or even direct analogues we use (neural networks, agent systems), but that still might be too limiting. As is, perhaps, looking at primate neocortex as a benchmark.
Reminds me of saying "the question whether an AI can think is no more interesting whether a submarine can swim"
Though...the ones that would start to autonomously search for new vulnerabilities (however crude that will be initially), could conceivably gravitate towards something which we can intelligence, don't you agree? And could be possibly more fit... (but of course there's no way of telling that; perhaps biological pattern of parasites being "simple" is more efficient also in this case)
You seem convinced what mechanism will prove more fit without seeing actual outcome. Evolution cares only about the latter.
And I wouldn't necessarily agree about lack of computing power for strong AI. I do agree that we probably don't have the means of emulating human brain...but what would be the point in that, from the perspective of AI?
Isn't this essentially what ZRTP/Zfone accomplishes? VoIP to work at all should be quite resistant to packet loss, and in this case it is even encrypted...and available to anyone. I can't imagine somebody with few millions to spare having troubles dealing with similar problem.
First result. 2005. Not the only story throughout the years which touched on this of course.
PS. And it was you who made the claim - that this was something new. Without actually spending less than 1 minute to verify your impression. So I'm confused; your UID says otherwise, but you act like you discovered the internet this month.
In case of Google it's quite justified - their ads are the only widespread ones which consistently don't seem to be annoying to vast majority of people.
When was the last time you've heard somebody being fed up with them? (vs. eye-raping GIFs or similar Flash ones? The latter often slow, loud or covering the webpage proper)
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite...
You can expect a lot of people saying that scientists got it wrong (remember you can only talk about probabilities of impact), undermining the action as a "wasted effort"; until we will be able to determine the probability much better, and it will be quite late then.
Not absolutely too late though. But deniers will follow through, since the action is so much harder now and there's still no "certainty"; it's easier than admitting (in your own eyes! That's most important!) that you were wrong.
Asteroid is:
a) Not necessarily a threat (it might be a benefit for your area! When "enemies" will get hit the worst)
b) Not a near enough threat anyways (it's a problem that will eventuate in another generation, hardly a 10 year problem; the window between detection and action (when it's possible) will be huge...and anyways, it's a semi-constant occurrence on Earth, we'll be fine (when it comes to impactors we have a hope of deflecting at all))
c) Something that while a PITA to live through, is survivable. Impacts are happening all the time. We hardly even noticed Tunguska.
Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?
The ones doing the job of deflection, naturally.
And there will another complicating factor - expect quite a bit of people actually working against the efforts, with their expectation of incoming Rupture/Ragnarok/punishment from gods/whatever. Especially if the impact site seems to target their "enemies", though probably also when it targets them..."punishment from allowing the world to fall"/etc.
Quite a bit of unrest generally, on top of what's already there. Escalation of conflicts. All while trying to launch something very sophisticated, quite delicate operation...
Hm, you have a point; we should also throw in identity-phobia...
I don't think any big browser can afford to be shipping openly with adblocker (Opera somehow does, but the visible part of it is purely manual, site-specific; that it can use a list like Adblock is not readily apparent...)
Such browser would be likely blocked outright by large portion of websites.
Ahh, yes, because it's so hard to imagine the world is not homogeneous...
Ukraine, Opera is the number one browser with 35%, ahead of IE:
http://www.ranking.com.ua/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html
Russia, number one among alternatives to IE, with 27%
http://www.rankingru.com/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html
And in most of the countries in ma backyard, flags of which you can see at the top of above webpages, it is between 5 and 10%, quite respectable.
And in all except one Safari almost doesn't exist, with sub 1% share.
...and yet you suddenly forget, on Slashdot, that other browsers had a hard time largely due to practices of MS.
And no, it isn't a case of "well, but only Opera has such pitiful market share of all the alternatives" BS. You seem to also forget that Europe is not US; there are countries here where Opera is far ahead of FF, for example. And Safari generally doesn't exist.
That actually might be an effort to give something which is decisively different from "good enough" DVD.
And hoping people will like it, of course.
Sorry, missed change of poster ;)
But why do you limit yourself only to "techno" kind of phobia in determining whether somebody is an idiot? Why not all kind of phobias? After all, whatever the problem people have with their particular kind of phobia is, it's surely a matter of being close minded, right?
And purely of their making, no outside circumstances have influenced this...
I still suspect this might be, overall, too limiting.
First and foremost, you don't compare it with biological systems, you compare it with organic biological systems. Only from one planet to boot ;). Our kind of sentience...that indeed looks almost like an accident of evolution, but it's not necessarily synonymous with intelligence. We can't really grasp how, for example, hive minds would "think" (heck, can we really grasp how a cat thinks?). Certainly there would be totally different meaning to culture, mating, sexual selection. Essentially you seem to be looking at it from too anthropocentric position; I'm not sure that's helpful when dealing with such vastly different "universe" and "laws of physics" as inside of technical artifacts.
You even say that we can't quite pinpoint which sequence of events results in intelligence...well, apply also in this case.
That said, suspecting that such botnets might lead to intelligence almost certainly will prove wrong. I'm saying, mostly, that in however way AI will arise (if ever) it might get us by surprise a bit. If we even notice it.
Be vigilant, don't get caught off guard! ;)
Most importantly, it isn't the first time when mobile Gecko is supposed to forever change mobile browsing experience. Unfortunately Mozilla seems to think that hardware improvements will nullify their inability to fit Gecko into phones...meanwhile Webkit and Opera, among others, are doing it successfully for quite some time.
Don't bet on it much...how many times Mozilla promised "revolutionizing" mobile browsing? Remember MiniMo? How their conclusion from that project was "we'll wait until the hardware gets more powerful"...and again they ended up with bloated pig.
In the meantime, Webkit and Opera Mini are doing much good for mobile web for a few years already.
You still haven't addressed how over half of Europe ended up using alternative browsers already (BTW why do you limit yourself and those you're trying yo convert to FF?...) and through very gradual process.
The way you draw the distinction idiots vs. non-idiots (does that make you feel better?) paints the issue of browser share as virtually impossible to modify.
So explain very gradual changes in adoption of browsers other than IE.
That has one great disadvantage of blinding also you... (well, one might rely on a network of small unmanned sensor spacecraft, I imagine) And I guess it can be done more easily by detonating a nuke not far from you, from time to time; with bonus points if you know, roughly, where your enemy is and can do it more or less between you and them.
Maybe...OTOH such massive nuke is much heavier, harder to move, requires much more powerful way of propulsion and/or steering, which would betray its position more readily; bigger target, smaller mass budget for shield against debris or for camouflage (for making it similar to space junk, perhaps hiding internal emissions)
And in space you'd better score a direct hit anyway, probably; there's no atmospheric overpressure effect, minimal shockwave if the bomb detonates "alone". But if it detonates in contact with hostile ship, even kiloton-range warhead will destroy it. One megaton one might flung enough debris around to cripple anything nearby. The major problem is for warhead to survive the impact...
There are more possibilities.
Strong radiation belt; close to a star; disguise yourself as a comet or an asteroid and keep the power down. The last one would be probably better than painting black - in space there's practically whole EM spectrum at your disposal, it's not trivial to find a paint which would be "black" in most of it.
Even with very efficient means of propulsion, why fight against orbital mechanics when you can exploit it? Or to put it another way: which side do you think will win - the one exploiting it, or the one not doing it?
This of course assumes roughly equal technological level. A fair assumption IMHO, because in most of scenarios when that isn't the case (civilizations alien to each other), the difference might be such great that it would be no contest - alien civilizations are likely to be millions of years "out of synch", so even assuming hard limits of physics, one of those civs is bound to be much more finesse.
@kinetic impactors - slight deflection or even head on obstacle in their way might be an effective defense?
More powerful weapons, with greater range. Any direct hit with intended kind of weapon knocks out of the action at the least. Mostly only active countermeasures are effective, unless you can exploit the environment somehow or are good at camouflage. Never stay put. One big cat & mouse game. And so on.
The factors that shaped this will be even more pronounced in space, with the added fun of predicting position (speed of light limit). Which makes majority of SciFi depictions that more disappointing; limited in popular formats to somewhere between WW1 and WW2 state of affairs.
But also there might be too many "what if" scenarios to draw definite conclusions. For example...defensive measures getting also more "intelligent". Or crackdown of botnets promoting more decentralized, autonomous mechanisms.
And drawing direct biological parallels is exactly what I was trying to point out as too limiting our perspective. What actually is the equivalent of an ant or neuron in a cybernetic being? Yes, there are simulations or even direct analogues we use (neural networks, agent systems), but that still might be too limiting. As is, perhaps, looking at primate neocortex as a benchmark.
Reminds me of saying "the question whether an AI can think is no more interesting whether a submarine can swim"
Though...the ones that would start to autonomously search for new vulnerabilities (however crude that will be initially), could conceivably gravitate towards something which we can intelligence, don't you agree? And could be possibly more fit... (but of course there's no way of telling that; perhaps biological pattern of parasites being "simple" is more efficient also in this case)
You seem convinced what mechanism will prove more fit without seeing actual outcome. Evolution cares only about the latter.
And I wouldn't necessarily agree about lack of computing power for strong AI. I do agree that we probably don't have the means of emulating human brain...but what would be the point in that, from the perspective of AI?
Isn't this essentially what ZRTP/Zfone accomplishes? VoIP to work at all should be quite resistant to packet loss, and in this case it is even encrypted...and available to anyone. I can't imagine somebody with few millions to spare having troubles dealing with similar problem.
google: site:slashdot.org intel amd compiler
First result. 2005. Not the only story throughout the years which touched on this of course.
PS. And it was you who made the claim - that this was something new. Without actually spending less than 1 minute to verify your impression. So I'm confused; your UID says otherwise, but you act like you discovered the internet this month.
One of the solutions would not blocking ads from those providers which play perfectly nice (as Google does). This could actually promote them.
In case of Google it's quite justified - their ads are the only widespread ones which consistently don't seem to be annoying to vast majority of people.
When was the last time you've heard somebody being fed up with them? (vs. eye-raping GIFs or similar Flash ones? The latter often slow, loud or covering the webpage proper)