I'm sure that you saw something, and I respect your willingness to describe it here. However, to go from that to a conclusion that the origin of the phenomenon was a technological civilization from another start system is a tremendous leap and not a scientific one.
If you accept the points in the essay, FTL is not necessary:
1. "once a species develops computing technology, it is only a matter of a couple of centuries before the nonbiological form of their intelligence explodes."
2. "It permeates virtually all matter in their vicinity, and then inevitably expands outward close to the maximum speed that information can travel." (For this argument, let's say that's the speed of light.)
3. The development of such species around different star systems would be distributed over the billions of years that the galaxy has existed, more than enough time for any one of them, even without FTL, to have saturated it. (Note here that we're not necessarily talking about aliens in spaceships. We're talking about the expansion of intelligence, in what form we cannot entirely know since we are still pre-singularity.)
In his essay, "The Law of Accelerating Returns", Ray Kurzweil concludes that projects like SETI won't find anyone for a simple reason: there's no one to find.
The reasoning behind this is straightforward. If you accept the idea of a technological singularity, and believe that our technology has brought us to the point where we are on the threshold of such an event, and that this is the natural evolution of a technological civilization, then in the blink of an eye, in astronomical terms, our footprint will be everywhere in this galaxy. (That's assuming of course that we can keep from destroying ourselves for a few more decades.) The same would be true for any other technological civilization.
It's the same idea that Enrico Fermi had in mind when he asked: if there are other intelligences in the universe then "where are they?" You wouldn't have to look for them. They'd already be here.
Conclusion: don't bother listening. We've met the spacemen, and they is us.
Yahoo actually has the best filtering, technically speaking. All these companies have decided to go along with Chinese government policy and filter antigovernment content. It just happens that Yahoo's filter works better.
Here we see the downside of Web 2.0. Apps available for the asking? Cool. The problem is that what happens to my data is completely up to the whim of the people running these sites. People are _shocked_ when something that they throw onto someone else's web site is moved around, or removed entirely. Wake up. The bargain you've made for all these freebies is loss of control.
As long as there have been companies selling antivirus software, the rumor has been circulated that they were also developing new viruses to keep themselves in business. In reality, I think that there will always be plenty of "volunteers" to handle this aspect of the business for them.
Google is a corporate entity, yes? In the same way that the New York Times is? So how is Google's decision to include or exclude a "news" site in its news product offering any different than a similar decision by the NYT to carry or not carry a particular story?
If you don't like what the Times includes or excludes, then buy the Post. If you don't like the fact that Google News doesn't carry posts from MyBiasedBlog.com, then become a customer of someone else's news accumulator.
Yes. Forrester or one of the other big research firms recently released a study which concluded that the key to surviving in an I.T. career now is to be "business facing". In other words, very few people will be paid just because they can knock out a complex algorithm in Java. However, if you have domain knowledge relating to, e.g., health care and know Java, you've got a marketable package.
Of course, for a 20-year old, that means either doing it through work experience or education. You have the Catch-22 of needing the experience to get the job and vice versa. I think for most people it ends up being pretty random. In other words, the first programming job someone gets is in the insurance industry, and that ends up being who they become. It's not that the kid arrived at college and said "I want to write insurance software after I graduate."
Nicholas Carter famously, or infamously, said essentially the same thing in the article "IT Doesn't Matter" in the Harvard Business Review a few years ago. The bottom line was that risk aversion with respect to technology was a good thing. Contrary to a bazillion dollars worth of commercial software marketing, being on the bleeding edge of enterprise software didn't confer a competitive advantage on you. It usually ended up hosing you.
This pissed off people like Steve Ballmer no end, because it meant that companies like his couldn't automatically push the "new new thing" at customers. However, it also plays to their agenda to some extent because they are the entrenched thing and the entrenched thing, according to this theory, is exactly what you want.
Slashdot Mirror
... and images of masturbation? You mean to say that SlashDotters participated in this too?
Funny. This article appeared on the top of the Google News page. Now Slashdot has been slashdotted!
They've already taken over Washington.
I'm sure that you saw something, and I respect your willingness to describe it here. However, to go from that to a conclusion that the origin of the phenomenon was a technological civilization from another start system is a tremendous leap and not a scientific one.
1. "once a species develops computing technology, it is only a matter of a couple of centuries before the nonbiological form of their intelligence explodes."
2. "It permeates virtually all matter in their vicinity, and then inevitably expands outward close to the maximum speed that information can travel." (For this argument, let's say that's the speed of light.)
3. The development of such species around different star systems would be distributed over the billions of years that the galaxy has existed, more than enough time for any one of them, even without FTL, to have saturated it. (Note here that we're not necessarily talking about aliens in spaceships. We're talking about the expansion of intelligence, in what form we cannot entirely know since we are still pre-singularity.)
The reasoning behind this is straightforward. If you accept the idea of a technological singularity, and believe that our technology has brought us to the point where we are on the threshold of such an event, and that this is the natural evolution of a technological civilization, then in the blink of an eye, in astronomical terms, our footprint will be everywhere in this galaxy. (That's assuming of course that we can keep from destroying ourselves for a few more decades.) The same would be true for any other technological civilization.
It's the same idea that Enrico Fermi had in mind when he asked: if there are other intelligences in the universe then "where are they?" You wouldn't have to look for them. They'd already be here. Conclusion: don't bother listening. We've met the spacemen, and they is us.
Yahoo actually has the best filtering, technically speaking. All these companies have decided to go along with Chinese government policy and filter antigovernment content. It just happens that Yahoo's filter works better.
Here we see the downside of Web 2.0. Apps available for the asking? Cool. The problem is that what happens to my data is completely up to the whim of the people running these sites. People are _shocked_ when something that they throw onto someone else's web site is moved around, or removed entirely. Wake up. The bargain you've made for all these freebies is loss of control.
As long as there have been companies selling antivirus software, the rumor has been circulated that they were also developing new viruses to keep themselves in business. In reality, I think that there will always be plenty of "volunteers" to handle this aspect of the business for them.
As a shareholder, I think that it only makes good business sense for them to be evil.
UGC? Ugly Google Code?
Why didn't you make it look like Mr. X's Web Page?
If you don't like what the Times includes or excludes, then buy the Post. If you don't like the fact that Google News doesn't carry posts from MyBiasedBlog.com, then become a customer of someone else's news accumulator.
And new boom officially began when the "dot com" search trend crossed the Web 2.0 search trend. (Brought to you by (who else?) Google.
The description makes it sound more like a Pierson's Puppeteer.
Of course, for a 20-year old, that means either doing it through work experience or education. You have the Catch-22 of needing the experience to get the job and vice versa. I think for most people it ends up being pretty random. In other words, the first programming job someone gets is in the insurance industry, and that ends up being who they become. It's not that the kid arrived at college and said "I want to write insurance software after I graduate."
Carrying massive credit card debt is the American way!
Was this sour grapes for having been dissed last night?
2000's - Indian programmers program for major US corporations in India.
2010's - Indian programmers program for major Indian corporations in India.
2020's - Major Indian corporations outsource work to U.S. programmers because wages are so much lower here.
This pissed off people like Steve Ballmer no end, because it meant that companies like his couldn't automatically push the "new new thing" at customers. However, it also plays to their agenda to some extent because they are the entrenched thing and the entrenched thing, according to this theory, is exactly what you want.
Why do you think they call it virus protection?
So we don't need to look to the stars to find new life forms after all.
And an anagram for Bill Gates is "I get balls". I'm not sure what that explains, but it's pretty funny.
Obesity is in fact contagious. The carriers have names like Wendy and McDonald.
You know it's a bubble when people are calling it a "boom".