You see then, this is why people have to argue so strongly that every word in the Bible is literal. Because as soon as we say that one story or another is an allegory, then the rest of the world immediately claims that the entire work must therefore be fiction. Apparently, it is not possible for a book to contain allegories and illustrations without becoming a complete work of fiction. I guess all my science books are fiction as well, since they all contain similes, allegories and the like in the aid of explaining scientific principles. There's actually a much better way to rationalize how a book like "The Bible" is able to contain fact & fiction at the same time... The word "bible" (not "The Bible"), comes from a plural form of biblion. Biblion (singular) meant papyrus writings (which was the equivalent of a book back then). Thus, "a bible" means "a collection of books".
Now look at "The Bible".... Book of John, Book of Matthew, Book of -- HOLY SHIT!!! The Bible is a collection of books too!!
That's what we programmers call "encapsulation". When one part of a program's code has a design flaw, the whole thing isn't gonna sink like the Titanic. Encapsulation means the work as a whole is modular and flaws are only local problems. (This also means relevance is local, so that snake in Genesis is quite arguably *not* the devil, but rather just an asshole snake, since the devil is only mentioned in other books (to the best of my knowledge)).
So when the Book of Leviticus says that dwarfs, hunchbacks, people with defects of eye sight are all abominations (or whatever), I can easily toss it aside, invalidate the credibility of the Book of Leviticus, and it has absolutely no bearing on anything outside of the rest of the book. (Just because some of the preloaded software on a computer may suck doesn't mean *all* the preloaded software sucks, right?)
It also means that not everything has to be read the same way. It's a modular-work. Parts were created at different times, and very different places. Even in different languages. So of course you can take one part literally and another figuratively. For a modular work as big as that written in so many times & places to be read the same way the whole way through would should seem a bit improbable.
Being all cool and slack, the Apple store does not take appointments Try going to here: http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/ Under "Genius Bar Reservations", select from the popup-button a state & store.
Yes, I am familiar with that analogy. According to common thinking, the speed of gravity is equal to C, the speed of light.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity However, Isaac newton said that gravity acts instantaneously. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gravity_speed_030116.html
I don't think anyone cares about what Isaac Newton said anymore (in the context of theoretical physics). It's been proven he was wrong about multiple things related to the subject. For example, he thought time moved at the same rate everywhere, but we've *experimentally proven* that time-dilation does happen if you travel fast or are affected by gravity, which is predicted by General Relativity. Have you considered that instantaneous gravity may violate causality by going faster than light (and thus offer the possibility of sending information backwards in time)?
Instant gravity violates Einstein's relativity, since in any frame of reference, gravity would be faster than C. This is supported by black holes.
[Citation Needed]. I've never heard/read any physicist claim this. (With all due respect,) I think you just misunderstand the physics. Frankly, I think it's the opposite. Black holes were not discovered experimentally. We didn't find it then explain it. We predicted their existence using only General Relativity. If black holes & general relativity were in conflict, then how did we predict it on paper first, then find astronomical data that confirmed it? Did every physicist doing the calculations make the exact same mistake & still correctly predict their existence?
For the moment let me assume the idea of instant-gravity is correct. If so, then all matter in the universe is gravitating on all other matter in existence, all at the same time. Wouldn't all matter in the universe have a tendency to gravitate to a common-center? Consider the implications it may have on the universe's formation. It's not a simple thing to change the speed of gravity.
Since light is not fast enough to escape a black hole, yet the effects of that black hole's gravity can be felt anywhere near it. If gravity followed Einstein's Laws than black holes would have no gravitational influence on any matter near them, since if Light can not escape them, then obviously gravity traveling at C, in EVERY frame of reference, would also not be able to influence anything.
I think you're trying to mix-&-match stuff from a General Relativity model & Quantum-Mechanics and tossing them recklessly into the same model thinking it'll make sense.
Under General Relativity, gravity isn't traveling through curved spacetime, it IS the curved spacetime. When you mention the idea of gravity escaping anything, it implies gravity is a "thing" that moves away or is emitted from something, which says to me this model is using particles to describe the forces, BUT, that would be quantum-mechanics.
If you wanna go that route, we can: You're basically saying "gravity shouldn't be able to escape gravity". You think a graviton emitted by a black-hole should be able to hit a graviton it emitted a 3 nanoseconds ago? Wether the gravity's speed is instant or c, when 2 things going the same speed & in the same direction, they aren't going to touch eachother.
A graviton moving through curved-spacetime is a tad redundant.
Pick a General Relativity model or a Quantum Mechanics model, but don't mix & match parts. We don't have a quantum-theory of gravity yet.
Also the analogy of the bed sheet implies that gravity also acts instantaneously, since the dimple is always there.
Not true! That dimple can only reshape as quickly as the speed-of-light allows it to. The rubber-sheet is made of atoms which can't go faster than C. If you disagree, show me your magical rubber-sheet with faster-than-light-atoms,
1) If you haven't yet, look up The General Theory of Relativity. It models gravity not as a particle, nor a wave, but instead as curvatures in space-time. To refer to an overused analogy, an object with gravity like a bowling ball placed on a stretched rubber-sheet. Try to move straight, but then pass through the depressed region, and regardless of your speed, your direction will be altered. A black hole would be kinda like a boweling ball that ripped through the rubber-sheet, and also ruined the sheet's elasticity in doing so, so there's a sloping depression, which turns into a hole. Stuff that goes in the hole doesn't come back out.
2) If I recall, the speed of light is relative to your "absolute-spacetime". So "c" can change if your spacetime is curved (aka gravity), or if the spacetime is expanding/contracting. C being constant is only if measured locally.
When the plankton dies, that CO2 isn't gonna sink. There are organisms that will ingest & recycle the falling biomatter. Also, decomposition will release gases with carbon.
Now if you get CO2 at an extremely deep & very cold depth, a pressure/temperature at which CO2 can't exist as a gas, it would remain there. But good luck accomplishing that, cause it's not gonna without a lot of effort (which translates into costing money & energy).
"As a side note, I'd like to point out the US has (basically) run out domestic oil. I don't know the full history behind it, but I suspect OPEC is taking notes."
You're right about one part. You don't know the full story behind it. We [in the United States] have not "basically" run out of domestic oil. (A better word could have been "effectively")
We probably import about 60% from the middle east, and as for the remaining 40%, most of that probably comes from deep-sea oil-platforms that drill at the bottom of the oceans. (Those numbers are my very rough guesses, so don't cite them). Deep-sea oil is preferable in many ways since it's extremely difficult for terrorists to attack the platforms, oil-lines, or oil-tankers. Also, politics is less of an obstacle when you're in international waters.
Also, oil-reservoirs are not quite as finite as some think. I've heard a story from reservoir-engineer about a well that was sucked dry and abandoned. Several years later, they tried to take a core-sample of rock from the well to study something nearby and they shockingly discovered its oil AND pressure had returned to normal. They never understood how.
America does have oil-reserves that we could tap into if need be (but they're not big enough in the long-run). The reason we don't use them is because they're supposed to be kept in case we're forced to go cold-turkey off of middle-eastern oil.
Imagine that the Saudi King decides he wants to completely stop selling oil to America (not to juice us up for when he sells again, but rather to ruin us). We would then drill into up our "off-limits" oil reserves in a desperate, but unsustainable effort to compensate. Even if we were to start manufacturing viable hydrogen-fuel cells & cars the day Saudi Arabia abandons us, we probably wouldn't survive.
One of these domestic oil reserves is in the famous/infamous arctic-wildlife-refuge. Sadly, Cheney/Bush want to drill in the arctic-wildlife refuge (and similar places). This isn't sad just because of environmental issues, but mostly because Cheney/Bush are willing to risk our country's long-term survival just so that oil prices will drop, and people will be happy in time for re-election day.
Remember that the next time they claim they're tougher on national-security.
1. "The OS is proprietary, as is the hardware. Expensive and hard to come by." Actually, the OS is only partly proprietary. Darwin (the part that "has teh UNIX!") is open.
2. "The elitist stigma that would come with owning one." Mac users can't be elitists because elitists think they're better. We know we're better. (it's a joke, laugh!)
... StarTrek's appeal basically boils down to its pimp-factor.
Kirk was the alien-lady's-man. The orbital James Bond. A space-cowboy. Capt Pimp. There was not an alien chick he couldn't nail.
STTNG's bald guy is too old to pimp. The guy on the DS9 station doesn't get out enough to pimp. Voyager's captain is a 'strong-woman', so no pimping there.
The very first episode (pilot episode) of ST was about the captain being kept in a menagerie, "forced" to mate with beautiful ladies. Those horrible aliens!
Lets return StarTrek back to its roots: [strings playing ST-theme while viewing our solar system] These are the missions of the star ship Enterprise. It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly pimp where no pimp has pimped before. [inset cheap porno-remix of ST-theme]
"...the fact that you have 10x or even 100x as many voters shouldn't matter..."
Don't assume that. In America there things like voting districts and the electoral college. Bush lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college. Voting districts aught to be abolished too. If you don't know why, look up the term jerry-mandering.
The voting system was designed a very long time ago, when it was quite difficult to collect massive numbers of votes. Because voting, and thus the voting system, was (is?) central to the American philosophy, it is a core item that is very difficult to rewrite.
To any Europeans reading this: Please, please, forgive us.
Even if the lab-made singularities did have plenty of time to exist, they wouldn't "suck" anything because their mass isn't large enough to cause that kind of gravity.
High gravity causes black holes. Not the other way around.
I'm hesitant to even use the term "black-hole" regarding lab-made singularities because I'm not sure if they even have an event-horizon.
Geek: New update... geek urge... rising... must resist... temptation to be update early...
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin: (whispering) From our hiding spot behind this potted plant, we can get a good view of a geek trying to resist his instinct to update his computer. One has to be extremely careful when handling a common Windows geek, since they quite often carry diseases like worms, but this geek appears to come from either a Linux or Mac colony. It looks like this one is fairly calm, possibly domesticated, since he's been showing some self-control...
But watch what happens when I yell "new features"...
There is one clear advantage to "techno" soldiers.
Imagine this: You're taking fire, Jim's been hit bad, 6 terrorist assholes are closing in on your position all at once. Even worse, the only ammo you have left is 1 grenade-round.
You hope for the best and take the shot and duck down. The moment the round explodes, you hear...
"
Not only did you prove your parent post right, but made yourself look like an ass at the same time."
My parent post claimed that a robotic mission is only good when preparing for a similar human mission. Myself, on the other hand, said that unmanned missions are good even if humans don't ever plan on trying to follow.
You quoted me saying "Unmanned missions also help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.", but that shouldn't suggest that I think Unmanned missions only help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.
So what makes you think I proved his point?
"
that's a simpler goal? I'd love to hear that one."
Neither you or I could presume to know how hard it would be to save the planet versus space colonization. Without math, evaluating what's-simpler-than-what is largely based on opinions and assumptions. For example, I could assume that colonizing other planets would require resources that we might not have without preservation efforts. If goal A=preservation and goal B=preservation+colonization, A would be simpler.
My point: That was a silly thing to contest, (but did you love hearing it anyway?)
Don't worry about time and technology. By the time asteroids or supernova become a problem, the technology will have been documented for a long time (although we may not have enough resources to implement it).
I think our decedents will be able to put Earth's finite resources to far better use than we can. If we start too early we could stunt our growth. It would be very sad if the final generation had to be extinguished because we drove too many SUVs.
We also need to develop socially. The last thing we need is terrorists sabotaging the exodus because they're afraid of being left behind.
Despite being a shitty movie, Lost In Space is probably the most accurate portrayal of the problems humanity will face while trying to exodus (resources & terrorists).
I thought this was a very low-level functionality inside of Darwin. If so, it's worth noting since it's possible to run Darwin outside of Apple hardware.
"And unmanned missions aren't worth the trouble. If we aren't going to go there ourselves, why bother? So we learn that Mars had water once? Whoop-de-do! Doesn't matter a hill of beans what there is to be learned in space if men aren't going to go there."
Lets take a look at manned missions versus unmanned missions, shall we?
Manned orbital missions: Scored a social, political, and engineering success, but scientific discoveries amounted to humans can handle low gravity okay.
Manned Moon missions: Scored a social, political, and engineering success, but the scientific discoveries amounted to moon rock == earth rock. If it had been possible, we'd probably have sent a robot first.
Next, look at the stuff that "doesn't matter a hill of beans".
Hubble Telescope: Despite being remote-controlled, it has discovered many new (and beautiful) things and it has also helped us find proof that our science is correct (black holes, general relativity, etc).
Voyager probes: Sent back images that helped further our understanding of the jovian moons (like Europa), Saturn's rings, etc. Also helped prove to ourselves that we can achieve major feats of engineering and course-planning. I think we also might have put some earth-stuff in the 2nd voyager just in case aliens find it. If so, it might not advance our science, but it could easily advance theirs, which is still a helluva achievement.
Martian probes: Has (and are still) helping us learn about what Mars has to offer (hopefully resources that will support colonization, which would justify a manned mission). The history books carried in the backpacks of students living on Mars wont think those "unmanned missions [weren't] worth the trouble".
It looks to me as if our manned missions didn't do a whole lot more than prove "it can be done". Compare that to the scientific & cosmological discoveries of our unmanned probes. Unmanned missions also help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.
If it turns out that we can't live on mars, a manned mission will create little more than boot-patterns in the dirt, which will be blown away by the next martian wind.
"If the manned space program dies, then the rest of it might as well die as well - since we'll be deciding to sit back and play video games till the next asteroid smacks us." Survival shouldn't require abandoning Earth. Even if we can live elsewhere, it's not like we can allow asteroids to hit the motherland anyway.
There's nothing wrong with being content with simpler goals like preserving the Earth. Some people think it's too humble a goal for humanity, but often the humble route is a sign of maturity.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess all my science books are fiction as well, since they all contain similes, allegories and the like in the aid of explaining scientific principles. There's actually a much better way to rationalize how a book like "The Bible" is able to contain fact & fiction at the same time...
The word "bible" (not "The Bible"), comes from a plural form of biblion. Biblion (singular) meant papyrus writings (which was the equivalent of a book back then). Thus, "a bible" means "a collection of books".
Now look at "The Bible"
That's what we programmers call "encapsulation". When one part of a program's code has a design flaw, the whole thing isn't gonna sink like the Titanic. Encapsulation means the work as a whole is modular and flaws are only local problems. (This also means relevance is local, so that snake in Genesis is quite arguably *not* the devil, but rather just an asshole snake, since the devil is only mentioned in other books (to the best of my knowledge)).
So when the Book of Leviticus says that dwarfs, hunchbacks, people with defects of eye sight are all abominations (or whatever), I can easily toss it aside, invalidate the credibility of the Book of Leviticus, and it has absolutely no bearing on anything outside of the rest of the book. (Just because some of the preloaded software on a computer may suck doesn't mean *all* the preloaded software sucks, right?)
It also means that not everything has to be read the same way. It's a modular-work. Parts were created at different times, and very different places. Even in different languages. So of course you can take one part literally and another figuratively. For a modular work as big as that written in so many times & places to be read the same way the whole way through would should seem a bit improbable.
Under "Genius Bar Reservations", select from the popup-button a state & store.
Yes, I am familiar with that analogy.
According to common thinking, the speed of gravity is equal to C, the speed of light.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity
However, Isaac newton said that gravity acts instantaneously. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gravity_speed_030116.html
I don't think anyone cares about what Isaac Newton said anymore (in the context of theoretical physics). It's been proven he was wrong about multiple things related to the subject. For example, he thought time moved at the same rate everywhere, but we've *experimentally proven* that time-dilation does happen if you travel fast or are affected by gravity, which is predicted by General Relativity. Have you considered that instantaneous gravity may violate causality by going faster than light (and thus offer the possibility of sending information backwards in time)?
Instant gravity violates Einstein's relativity, since in any frame of reference, gravity would be faster than C. This is supported by black holes.
[Citation Needed]. I've never heard/read any physicist claim this. (With all due respect,) I think you just misunderstand the physics.
Frankly, I think it's the opposite. Black holes were not discovered experimentally. We didn't find it then explain it. We predicted their existence using only General Relativity. If black holes & general relativity were in conflict, then how did we predict it on paper first, then find astronomical data that confirmed it? Did every physicist doing the calculations make the exact same mistake & still correctly predict their existence?
For the moment let me assume the idea of instant-gravity is correct. If so, then all matter in the universe is gravitating on all other matter in existence, all at the same time. Wouldn't all matter in the universe have a tendency to gravitate to a common-center? Consider the implications it may have on the universe's formation. It's not a simple thing to change the speed of gravity.
Since light is not fast enough to escape a black hole, yet the effects of that black hole's gravity can be felt anywhere near it.
If gravity followed Einstein's Laws than black holes would have no gravitational influence on any matter near them, since if Light can not escape them, then obviously gravity traveling at C, in EVERY frame of reference, would also not be able to influence anything.
I think you're trying to mix-&-match stuff from a General Relativity model & Quantum-Mechanics and tossing them recklessly into the same model thinking it'll make sense.
Under General Relativity, gravity isn't traveling through curved spacetime, it IS the curved spacetime.
When you mention the idea of gravity escaping anything, it implies gravity is a "thing" that moves away or is emitted from something, which says to me this model is using particles to describe the forces, BUT, that would be quantum-mechanics.
If you wanna go that route, we can:
You're basically saying "gravity shouldn't be able to escape gravity".
You think a graviton emitted by a black-hole should be able to hit a graviton it emitted a 3 nanoseconds ago? Wether the gravity's speed is instant or c, when 2 things going the same speed & in the same direction, they aren't going to touch eachother.
A graviton moving through curved-spacetime is a tad redundant.
Pick a General Relativity model or a Quantum Mechanics model, but don't mix & match parts. We don't have a quantum-theory of gravity yet.
Also the analogy of the bed sheet implies that gravity also acts instantaneously, since the dimple is always there.
Not true!
That dimple can only reshape as quickly as the speed-of-light allows it to. The rubber-sheet is made of atoms which can't go faster than C. If you disagree, show me your magical rubber-sheet with faster-than-light-atoms,
1) If you haven't yet, look up The General Theory of Relativity.
It models gravity not as a particle, nor a wave, but instead as curvatures in space-time.
To refer to an overused analogy, an object with gravity like a bowling ball placed on a stretched rubber-sheet. Try to move straight, but then pass through the depressed region, and regardless of your speed, your direction will be altered.
A black hole would be kinda like a boweling ball that ripped through the rubber-sheet, and also ruined the sheet's elasticity in doing so, so there's a sloping depression, which turns into a hole. Stuff that goes in the hole doesn't come back out.
2) If I recall, the speed of light is relative to your "absolute-spacetime".
So "c" can change if your spacetime is curved (aka gravity), or if the spacetime is expanding/contracting. C being constant is only if measured locally.
When the plankton dies, that CO2 isn't gonna sink. There are organisms that will ingest & recycle the falling biomatter. Also, decomposition will release gases with carbon.
Now if you get CO2 at an extremely deep & very cold depth, a pressure/temperature at which CO2 can't exist as a gas, it would remain there. But good luck accomplishing that, cause it's not gonna without a lot of effort (which translates into costing money & energy).
If you want to criticize the US environmental movement, do please distinguish between the different proponents of environmental policy change.
Tree Hugger != Environmental Scientist.
Lumping their efforts together as one doesn't do justice to the many scientists and their very practical efforts toward progress.
That's nothing, check this out...
Google search for "China censorhip" and then compare that to the number of results of an Accoona search for "China censorhip"
You all know what happened with "litigious bastards".
Lets make sure the Expurgating bastards get the message.
"...the PEG also mucks with signalling so that the death of a few cells doesn't lead to apoptosis (cell death) in nearby structures."
Now all we need is an Umbrella Corp. and we can finally realize our dream of fighting an army of pissed off, murderous, bioengineered undead.
Resident Evil, here we come!
"As a side note, I'd like to point out the US has (basically) run out domestic oil.
I don't know the full history behind it, but I suspect OPEC is taking notes."
You're right about one part.
You don't know the full story behind it. We [in the United States] have not "basically" run out of domestic oil.
(A better word could have been "effectively")
We probably import about 60% from the middle east, and as for the remaining 40%, most of that probably comes from deep-sea oil-platforms that drill at the bottom of the oceans. (Those numbers are my very rough guesses, so don't cite them). Deep-sea oil is preferable in many ways since it's extremely difficult for terrorists to attack the platforms, oil-lines, or oil-tankers. Also, politics is less of an obstacle when you're in international waters.
Also, oil-reservoirs are not quite as finite as some think. I've heard a story from reservoir-engineer about a well that was sucked dry and abandoned. Several years later, they tried to take a core-sample of rock from the well to study something nearby and they shockingly discovered its oil AND pressure had returned to normal. They never understood how.
America does have oil-reserves that we could tap into if need be (but they're not big enough in the long-run). The reason we don't use them is because they're supposed to be kept in case we're forced to go cold-turkey off of middle-eastern oil.
Imagine that the Saudi King decides he wants to completely stop selling oil to America (not to juice us up for when he sells again, but rather to ruin us). We would then drill into up our "off-limits" oil reserves in a desperate, but unsustainable effort to compensate. Even if we were to start manufacturing viable hydrogen-fuel cells & cars the day Saudi Arabia abandons us, we probably wouldn't survive.
One of these domestic oil reserves is in the famous/infamous arctic-wildlife-refuge. Sadly, Cheney/Bush want to drill in the arctic-wildlife refuge (and similar places). This isn't sad just because of environmental issues, but mostly because Cheney/Bush are willing to risk our country's long-term survival just so that oil prices will drop, and people will be happy in time for re-election day.
Remember that the next time they claim they're tougher on national-security.
I got mine at a "Fry's" computer store.
You could try seeing if they would ship you one.
You've completely missed my point.
"You forget water is more then just hydrogen.."
That is my point!
Aluminum-oxide is more than just aluminum.
Twice now you've referred to this material as a transparent-aluminum.
My point is that it's not aluminum.
It is aluminum-oxide (aka, Alumina).
This isn't about color additives.
One is a metal, the other is a ceramic!
Knowing this, go back and re-read my first post and then you'll understand what I said a little better.
Yeah, just like how, "technically", ice is transparent frozen-hydrogen with a bit of natural oxygen "tint" added to make it pretty.
Sure buddy, whatever you say.
1. "The OS is proprietary, as is the hardware. Expensive and hard to come by."
Actually, the OS is only partly proprietary. Darwin (the part that "has teh UNIX!") is open.
2. "The elitist stigma that would come with owning one."
Mac users can't be elitists because elitists think they're better. We know we're better. (it's a joke, laugh!)
From what I was taught, Franklin would invent something, then publish the design in his newspaper.
I'm not sure if Edison did that.
If Franklin did obtain patents, he obviously did so to ensure that nobody else would patent it first and keep the specs secret.
... StarTrek's appeal basically boils down to its pimp-factor.
Kirk was the alien-lady's-man. The orbital James Bond. A space-cowboy. Capt Pimp. There was not an alien chick he couldn't nail.
STTNG's bald guy is too old to pimp.
The guy on the DS9 station doesn't get out enough to pimp.
Voyager's captain is a 'strong-woman', so no pimping there.
The very first episode (pilot episode) of ST was about the captain being kept in a menagerie, "forced" to mate with beautiful ladies. Those horrible aliens!
Lets return StarTrek back to its roots:
[strings playing ST-theme while viewing our solar system]
These are the missions of the star ship Enterprise.
It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly pimp where no pimp has pimped before.
[inset cheap porno-remix of ST-theme]
"...the fact that you have 10x or even 100x as many voters shouldn't matter..."
Don't assume that. In America there things like voting districts and the electoral college. Bush lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college. Voting districts aught to be abolished too. If you don't know why, look up the term jerry-mandering.
The voting system was designed a very long time ago, when it was quite difficult to collect massive numbers of votes. Because voting, and thus the voting system, was (is?) central to the American philosophy, it is a core item that is very difficult to rewrite.
To any Europeans reading this: Please, please, forgive us.
Even if the lab-made singularities did have plenty of time to exist, they wouldn't "suck" anything because their mass isn't large enough to cause that kind of gravity.
High gravity causes black holes. Not the other way around.
I'm hesitant to even use the term "black-hole" regarding lab-made singularities because I'm not sure if they even have an event-horizon.
Geek: New update ... geek urge ... rising ... must resist ... temptation to be update early ...
...
...
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin: (whispering) From our hiding spot behind this potted plant, we can get a good view of a geek trying to resist his instinct to update his computer. One has to be extremely careful when handling a common Windows geek, since they quite often carry diseases like worms, but this geek appears to come from either a Linux or Mac colony. It looks like this one is fairly calm, possibly domesticated, since he's been showing some self-control
But watch what happens when I yell "new features"
There is one clear advantage to "techno" soldiers.
...
Imagine this:
You're taking fire, Jim's been hit bad,
6 terrorist assholes are closing in on your position all at once.
Even worse, the only ammo you have left is 1 grenade-round.
You hope for the best and take the shot and duck down.
The moment the round explodes, you hear
doub-tripl-mult-ultr-m-m-m-m-MONSTER KILL!! - godlike!
That would be one helluva morale boost.
My parent post claimed that a robotic mission is only good when preparing for a similar human mission.
Myself, on the other hand, said that unmanned missions are good even if humans don't ever plan on trying to follow.
You quoted me saying "Unmanned missions also help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.", but that shouldn't suggest that I think Unmanned missions only help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.
So what makes you think I proved his point?
Neither you or I could presume to know how hard it would be to save the planet versus space colonization. Without math, evaluating what's-simpler-than-what is largely based on opinions and assumptions. For example, I could assume that colonizing other planets would require resources that we might not have without preservation efforts. If goal A=preservation and goal B=preservation+colonization, A would be simpler.
My point: That was a silly thing to contest, (but did you love hearing it anyway?)
Don't worry about time and technology. By the time asteroids or supernova become a problem, the technology will have been documented for a long time (although we may not have enough resources to implement it).
I think our decedents will be able to put Earth's finite resources to far better use than we can. If we start too early we could stunt our growth. It would be very sad if the final generation had to be extinguished because we drove too many SUVs.
We also need to develop socially. The last thing we need is terrorists sabotaging the exodus because they're afraid of being left behind.
Despite being a shitty movie, Lost In Space is probably the most accurate portrayal of the problems humanity will face while trying to exodus (resources & terrorists).
Are you sure it's a Panther feature?
I thought this was a very low-level functionality inside of Darwin.
If so, it's worth noting since it's possible to run Darwin outside of Apple hardware.
"As much as Apple gains from others' cross-platform applications, they don't generally gain much from making theirs cross-platform."
Except for the fact that popularizing iTunes (no profit) helps iPod sales (major profit).
"And unmanned missions aren't worth the trouble. If we aren't going to go there ourselves, why bother? So we learn that Mars had water once? Whoop-de-do! Doesn't matter a hill of beans what there is to be learned in space if men aren't going to go there."
Lets take a look at manned missions versus unmanned missions, shall we?
Manned orbital missions: Scored a social, political, and engineering success, but scientific discoveries amounted to humans can handle low gravity okay.
Manned Moon missions: Scored a social, political, and engineering success, but the scientific discoveries amounted to moon rock == earth rock. If it had been possible, we'd probably have sent a robot first.
Next, look at the stuff that "doesn't matter a hill of beans".
Hubble Telescope: Despite being remote-controlled, it has discovered many new (and beautiful) things and it has also helped us find proof that our science is correct (black holes, general relativity, etc).
Voyager probes: Sent back images that helped further our understanding of the jovian moons (like Europa), Saturn's rings, etc. Also helped prove to ourselves that we can achieve major feats of engineering and course-planning. I think we also might have put some earth-stuff in the 2nd voyager just in case aliens find it. If so, it might not advance our science, but it could easily advance theirs, which is still a helluva achievement.
Martian probes: Has (and are still) helping us learn about what Mars has to offer (hopefully resources that will support colonization, which would justify a manned mission). The history books carried in the backpacks of students living on Mars wont think those "unmanned missions [weren't] worth the trouble".
It looks to me as if our manned missions didn't do a whole lot more than prove "it can be done". Compare that to the scientific & cosmological discoveries of our unmanned probes. Unmanned missions also help us figure out what manned missions are worth the effort.
If it turns out that we can't live on mars, a manned mission will create little more than boot-patterns in the dirt, which will be blown away by the next martian wind.
"If the manned space program dies, then the rest of it might as well die as well - since we'll be deciding to sit back and play video games till the next asteroid smacks us."
Survival shouldn't require abandoning Earth. Even if we can live elsewhere, it's not like we can allow asteroids to hit the motherland anyway.
There's nothing wrong with being content with simpler goals like preserving the Earth.
Some people think it's too humble a goal for humanity,
but often the humble route is a sign of maturity.
Actually, they do have legitimate grounds to sue Google, but for a different reason.
:-)
I have yet to see even one search turn up anywhere near 10^100 search results, and that is false advertisement.