Closed captions tell you what the intern in the studio charged with writing them thought he said, not what the script called him to say. Clearly the word is slurred at best.
And you might want to watch that scene again. That line certainly wasn't the first time Batty gave away what he wanted. Tyrell first asks him whats the problem, to which Batty replies "Death". Tyrell responds (rather fearfully) "Death, well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction". Then Roy calls him father/fucker/whatever, and then Tyrell calms down.
Again, not a typical reaction to being called a "fucker".
I always thought he had said "father" in the original, I don't know where people get this "fucker" version. I guess people want to hear curse words all the time. Father makes much more sense; Tyrell is, essentially, his father. And he is going there to negotiate for an extended life, so why would he go ahead and piss him off? Tyrell hardly seems offended (in fact he relaxes after that line), so I doubt he heard it "fucker".
I'm guessing the original script called for "father" and they just cleared that line up in this version.
Well you could always get a mp3 player that rockbox supports and install that. Not only does it support.ogg, but it also supports another feature that is rarely found on mp3 players, true gapless playback.
They certainly used to be bigger and I'm sure once had more than 100 stores, but a few years ago (I think) they closed a lot of them (probably due to the same troubles that is causing this). I know there used to be one in my town, but when I last tried to go there, I found it had been boarded up.
Re:Math is "Free", MY LILY-WHITE ASS.
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 1
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I used Python fairly extensively in my number theory course back in college, it did the job fairly well. Its support for large integers was especially important for that class. And the fact that it was very familiar to me (I was a double major in CS and math), it was very easy for me to crank out an algorithm in it. However, most of the book's examples were in Mathematica, which I ended up getting as well. It was a neat tool, but now that my student license has expired and I don't feel like spending a few grand on another license, everything I wrote in that is useless. However I can still pull out my old Python programs and see what it was I was doing.
" You mean the article's memory leak - where they 'deleted' an object they'd stored and then were surprised to find that the object was still present in the app? If you tried that in C you'd segfault. So, yes, here is an example of a memory leak in Java that would not be present in C. Thus my entire argument is correct."
I haven't developed in C#, but at least in Java you can't delete objects. All you can do is clean out references.
They would have only gotten a segfault had they actually called the deconstructor in C. Which means they would have had to think about the scenario regarding passing obstacles a bit longer. And had they thought of that scenario in the first place, I'm guessing they would have remembered to clean out all references in their C# code.
"My main point was though, that anywhere you have an advanced feature that is billed as letting you get away without thinking, you're going to have to think about it anyway; and less experienced programmers will get themselves into trouble when using it."
Are you trying to imply that less experienced programmers don't screw up with languages like C? Because if so, you are way off. The only difference between an inexperienced programmer writing in C and one writing in Java is that the C programmer is going to have many more memory leaks because there will be a lot more for them to remember.
And lets take your argument to the next logical conclusion. Libraries are billed as things that help people develop while thinking less, but you still have to think about them. You have to think before you use that ArrayList implementation of a collection if it really is the right data structure and not a HashSet. Many times I've seen people who just use ArrayLists (or even Vectors) in Java programs when what they really need is something like a HashSet. So does that mean we should do away with all libraries and force developers to write their own data structures to force them to think about what kind they really need? No, because the less experienced programmers are still going to make the same mistakes, only they will make more of them since they have to develop so much more stuff.
Aside from the fact that, as mentioned, there is current development on real time garbage collection, when did I say GC languages were appropriate for every task?
"NO! It is not a good thing, if a program slowly leaks memory then it just makes it harder to find the bug. If you have to reboot the app every week because it has a little leak, no-one's going to be bothered (except the users who see it slowly getting slower). If it has to be restarted daily then you're going to be looking to fix the bug."
Actually the good companies do debug the slow memory leaks, and the bad ones don't debug the slow ones. Besides, any memory leak in a Java program is possible in a C app, so you are eliminating a class of leaks, not replacing them with harder to find leaks. Thus your entire argument is moot. Furthermore, where are you getting the idea that Java memory leaks are going to be slow while C memory leaks are going to be fast? I've seen slow C memory leaks and fast Java ones. I can think of nothing regarding the nature of garbage collection that would effect the speed of the leak.
"I have a good analogy - Firefox. I use FF a lot, I like it, but it does tend to increase its memory usage over time, and has been rightly criticised for it. Now, I'm sure the 'bug' is an aspect of its design and not a programming bug (and I don't want to start a FF memory discussion - I'm only using it as a real-world example) but just imagine if *every* program was like FF - slowly using more and more RAM over time until you restarted it."
First, thats not an analogy, thats an example. Second, Firefox is not an application, at least not in this day and age. Today its a platform for web applications which are just vulnerable to memory leaks as any other. If that cool new javascript app that is running on the page you are loading leaks memory, there really isn't a whole lot Firefox can do.
Third, I fail to see your point. Do memory leaks suck? Of course. Is it best to get rid of them? Of course. Will garbage collection get rid of memory leaks? Of course not. Will they make the problem any worse? No, any code that leaks in Java will also leak in C. Will it make it better? Of course, there are types of leaks which simply are not possible in Java. Those will be eliminated resulting in fewer leaks (though it is of course impossible to eliminate the completely).
Just because garbage collection doesn't prevent memory leaks doesn't mean that it isn't a good thing. It does make them harder to create. And given the level of skill the average programmer has, anything that makes memory leaks less likely (though not impossible) has got to be seen as a good thing.
Every half way decent programming language will allow you to leak memory.
Its trivial to show this as long as the language supports some sort of array. Garbage collection is useful, but it does not save you from memory leaks. I don't know how many times I've told some retard JavaScript "programmer" that yes, they do have to be mindful of memory leaks even though their language has a garbage collector.
That argument would only make sense if all members of a party took the same position. But of course that is not true. There is a big difference between McCain and Tancredo, as there is between Pelosi and Libermann (I apologize if I spelled anyone's name wrong). However in order to govern at all, politicians need to somehow drum a majority. Therefore they are forced to form loosely held together factions we call 'parties'. The same thing happens in countries where there are several major parties, even if they don't call those loosely held together factions 'parties'.
Compromise is the essence of a Democracy. Yes, that means you will not always get what you want. Learn to deal with it.
If we had candidates that represented us, then we would have some 300 million candidates running for president. We are a diverse country with diverse ideas. Thats a good thing. But the reason you don't agree 100% with either party isn't because both parties cater too much to special interest groups, its because most people don't agree with you 100% of the time.
I'm getting sick of this "candidates don't represent me" shit. You are not the center of the universe, get used to it.
"Please explain? What are they doing if not testing for ET data propagation?"
A test requires results regardless of whether or not it agrees with your hypothesis. SETI can only be said to have results if it does indeed pick up an alien signal.
"It says something. Namely, life is not propagating information from a specific location in the way we expect it too. So we have at least narrowed it down from "totally unknown" to 1) no ET life or 2) ET life may not broadcast as we expect. That represents new information, no?"
Thats like saying a biologist can look at a 1 foot by 1 foot square of forest for 30 seconds and when they don't see a field mouse hop through it they can conclude that the mouse population is not where they expect it to be. But thats not how biologists do things, and I'm saying that as someone who has spent a Friday night in college out in the forest helping set rodent traps instead of at a bar drinking cheap beer.
"SETI isn't a scientific theory for christ sake so stop treating it like one"
I'm not. The person I was responding to was.
"Show me a program that can carry on a coherent conversation in a human language."
Yes, natural language processing is a fundamentally difficult problem. Hell it takes human brains which are highly adapted to the pattern recognition needed to understand it several years to be able to be able to use at even a very basic level and then decades to master. But thats all it is, a difficult problem.
"Show me a computer that is self aware (which is not the same as introspective)."
Plenty of computer programs are aware of themselves. Any that has to communicate with other applications or computers has to have some understanding of itself as being separate from the ones surrounding it. Regurgitating abstract concepts and pretending they represent some magical power that only human brains can do doesn't prove a thing. Self awareness is a good test of intelligence in animals (which with the exception of some primates and elephants do have trouble recognizing themselves), not computers.
"But most of all show me a computer that is intelligent on a general purpose level."
Plenty are. Oh, you mean a computer that is intelligent in the same areas as human beings (which is very different from "intelligent on a general purpose level"). Well as I said, there are plenty of problems out there (like pattern recognition) which human brains with their highly parallelized neural networks optimized for just that type of thing are currently better at. Just as there are plenty of problems out there (like calculating floating point arithmetic) which computers with their highly optimized integrated circuits are better at (and have been better at for a long time now).
"Who cares about statistical analysis "
Well, considering how much money has been spent on IT infrastructure for that, apparently a lot of people.
"I want a chess program that says 'You know what, I feel like checkers today' and KNOWS what this means. "
Do you know what it means when you say that? If you think it is something like a reflection of your free will or some similar hippie crap, you don't.
"Thruth is that currently no one has formalized how the human brain works. No one even has a workable idea how one might go about this! "
Truth is, we have. No, we don't have the exact wiring worked out (we are talking about one of the most complex machines in the world, and yes, I did use the word 'machine' to describe the human brain), but the general architecture is relatively well understood.
"SETIs foundation is the testable theory that life exists in this universe."
Except you can only draw a conclusion from that test in the highly unlikely chance that it finds something. A hypothesis is scientifically testable iff you can draw a conclusion from the test regardless of whether or not it supports the hypothesis. A scientific test that fails teaches us something, SETI failing to find a signal teaches us nothing. Thus it is not scientifically testable.
"Speaking of true AI..."
Your mention of "True AI" just underscores that you have watched too many Hollywood movies. Computer scientists are not searching for a magical program that makes computer become alive like in The Matrix. They are currently actively developing programs that can solve problems man made computers couldn't solve before. Intelligence is not some black and white thing which beings (either biological or machine) have or do not have. It is a quality that exists over a wide spectrum. A human is more intelligent than a chimp, which is more intelligent than a lizard. Deep Blue's chess program is more intelligent than my chessmaster game which is more intelligent than my old chess computer from the late 80s. Yes, many (though much fewer among those actually involved in the research) will not consider a computer program "AI" until it reaches what is often called strong (not true) AI, or intelligence which can be mistaken for human intelligence. But that isn't because there is anything special about humans, we just provide a convenient benchmark. And already there are many things computers can do much better than humans, and other things like pattern recognition are coming along pretty quickly.
"No. Either it can be figured out, or it can't. It's the same yes/no solution set that SETI faces. Signal, or no signal? Viable fusion reactor, or not?"
First, you have a very simplistic understanding of research on nuclear fusion.
Second, a failed experiment in nuclear fusion will result in a conclusion. That can't be said for SETI. No signal from that star system doesn't allow you to conclude anything.
"That isn't what I said. I said cure."
Generally most people would think a surgical procedure that removes a tumor counts as a cure.
If you were talking about a single cure for all cancer, then its clear you have very little understanding regarding medical research. If it wasn't already clear...
"If you want to go for less than 100% win, then in regard to SETI, we got better search algorithms, the first really broadly distributed computing platform, research into quieter RF amps..."
SETI isn't a research project into search algorithms, its a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes, it can motivate scientific research, but that doesn't mean it is scientific research.
The war in Iraq has motivated much more research than SETI, do you consider it a scientific experiment?
"As is frequent in the pursuit of such long shot goals, much tangential knowledge is gained during the experiment, often it overshadows the original purpose."
Yes, long term goals often result in knowledge. That doesn't automatically result in them being considered scientific research. Otherwise the war on terror would be considered a scientific experiment because of all the new technology that was developed for it.
"Are you stuck on some notion you have about the probability of success?"
The probability of success has nothing to do with it. Scientific experiments fail all the time. But when they follow the scientific method, we gain information from those failures by ruling out the tested hypothesis. We don't get that with SETI, as the fact that we didn't get a signal from that corner of the sky doesn't really tell us anything.
Key word part. The scientific method requires a lot more than just observation. I can observe the cheerleaders at a football game, but I'm not performing scientific research when I do that.
Virtually everything uses engineering and science (which are very different things, mind you). However, SETI is not performing scientific research. That is the key.
And I'm not complaining about SETI's budget; if Paul Allen wants to invest a lot of money in it, I don't really care. What I am concerned about about is this assertion that SETI is scientific research program which teaches people like the original poster the wrong idea of what science is.
"Um-hmmm. And Fusion reactor research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a fusion reactor."
Sure they can, as long as they follow the scientific process and break it down into smaller testable parts (as opposed to the SETI process which would involve simply putting a bunch of things together in a box, looking for a fusion reaction, and if it doesn't occur move on to another combination).
"And cancer research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a cure for cancer. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. And AI research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get an artificially intelligent computer or other construct."
And this just proves you don't know what you are talking about. We get better treatments for cancer and more advanced AI applications each year. You want to know why? Researchers in those fields are using the scientific method (well, cancer researchers are, AI is more of a mathematical discipline so its approach is rather different, but still not the pseudo-science SETI method).
Slashdot Mirror
I guess some people just hear what they want to hear and then there is no convincing them otherwise.
Closed captions tell you what the intern in the studio charged with writing them thought he said, not what the script called him to say. Clearly the word is slurred at best.
And you might want to watch that scene again. That line certainly wasn't the first time Batty gave away what he wanted. Tyrell first asks him whats the problem, to which Batty replies "Death". Tyrell responds (rather fearfully) "Death, well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction". Then Roy calls him father/fucker/whatever, and then Tyrell calms down.
Again, not a typical reaction to being called a "fucker".
I always thought he had said "father" in the original, I don't know where people get this "fucker" version. I guess people want to hear curse words all the time. Father makes much more sense; Tyrell is, essentially, his father. And he is going there to negotiate for an extended life, so why would he go ahead and piss him off? Tyrell hardly seems offended (in fact he relaxes after that line), so I doubt he heard it "fucker".
I'm guessing the original script called for "father" and they just cleared that line up in this version.
Well you could always get a mp3 player that rockbox supports and install that. Not only does it support .ogg, but it also supports another feature that is rarely found on mp3 players, true gapless playback.
They certainly used to be bigger and I'm sure once had more than 100 stores, but a few years ago (I think) they closed a lot of them (probably due to the same troubles that is causing this). I know there used to be one in my town, but when I last tried to go there, I found it had been boarded up.
Don't forget journals.
I used Python fairly extensively in my number theory course back in college, it did the job fairly well. Its support for large integers was especially important for that class. And the fact that it was very familiar to me (I was a double major in CS and math), it was very easy for me to crank out an algorithm in it. However, most of the book's examples were in Mathematica, which I ended up getting as well. It was a neat tool, but now that my student license has expired and I don't feel like spending a few grand on another license, everything I wrote in that is useless. However I can still pull out my old Python programs and see what it was I was doing.
" You mean the article's memory leak - where they 'deleted' an object they'd stored and then were surprised to find that the object was still present in the app? If you tried that in C you'd segfault. So, yes, here is an example of a memory leak in Java that would not be present in C. Thus my entire argument is correct."
I haven't developed in C#, but at least in Java you can't delete objects. All you can do is clean out references.
They would have only gotten a segfault had they actually called the deconstructor in C. Which means they would have had to think about the scenario regarding passing obstacles a bit longer. And had they thought of that scenario in the first place, I'm guessing they would have remembered to clean out all references in their C# code.
"My main point was though, that anywhere you have an advanced feature that is billed as letting you get away without thinking, you're going to have to think about it anyway; and less experienced programmers will get themselves into trouble when using it."
Are you trying to imply that less experienced programmers don't screw up with languages like C? Because if so, you are way off. The only difference between an inexperienced programmer writing in C and one writing in Java is that the C programmer is going to have many more memory leaks because there will be a lot more for them to remember.
And lets take your argument to the next logical conclusion. Libraries are billed as things that help people develop while thinking less, but you still have to think about them. You have to think before you use that ArrayList implementation of a collection if it really is the right data structure and not a HashSet. Many times I've seen people who just use ArrayLists (or even Vectors) in Java programs when what they really need is something like a HashSet. So does that mean we should do away with all libraries and force developers to write their own data structures to force them to think about what kind they really need? No, because the less experienced programmers are still going to make the same mistakes, only they will make more of them since they have to develop so much more stuff.
"Actually the good companies do debug the slow memory leaks, and the bad ones don't debug the slow ones."
That should have read "Actually the good companies do debug the slow memory leaks, and the bad ones don't debug the fast ones."
Aside from the fact that, as mentioned, there is current development on real time garbage collection, when did I say GC languages were appropriate for every task?
"NO! It is not a good thing, if a program slowly leaks memory then it just makes it harder to find the bug. If you have to reboot the app every week because it has a little leak, no-one's going to be bothered (except the users who see it slowly getting slower). If it has to be restarted daily then you're going to be looking to fix the bug."
Actually the good companies do debug the slow memory leaks, and the bad ones don't debug the slow ones. Besides, any memory leak in a Java program is possible in a C app, so you are eliminating a class of leaks, not replacing them with harder to find leaks. Thus your entire argument is moot. Furthermore, where are you getting the idea that Java memory leaks are going to be slow while C memory leaks are going to be fast? I've seen slow C memory leaks and fast Java ones. I can think of nothing regarding the nature of garbage collection that would effect the speed of the leak.
"I have a good analogy - Firefox. I use FF a lot, I like it, but it does tend to increase its memory usage over time, and has been rightly criticised for it. Now, I'm sure the 'bug' is an aspect of its design and not a programming bug (and I don't want to start a FF memory discussion - I'm only using it as a real-world example) but just imagine if *every* program was like FF - slowly using more and more RAM over time until you restarted it."
First, thats not an analogy, thats an example. Second, Firefox is not an application, at least not in this day and age. Today its a platform for web applications which are just vulnerable to memory leaks as any other. If that cool new javascript app that is running on the page you are loading leaks memory, there really isn't a whole lot Firefox can do.
Third, I fail to see your point. Do memory leaks suck? Of course. Is it best to get rid of them? Of course. Will garbage collection get rid of memory leaks? Of course not. Will they make the problem any worse? No, any code that leaks in Java will also leak in C. Will it make it better? Of course, there are types of leaks which simply are not possible in Java. Those will be eliminated resulting in fewer leaks (though it is of course impossible to eliminate the completely).
Just because garbage collection doesn't prevent memory leaks doesn't mean that it isn't a good thing. It does make them harder to create. And given the level of skill the average programmer has, anything that makes memory leaks less likely (though not impossible) has got to be seen as a good thing.
Every half way decent programming language will allow you to leak memory.
Its trivial to show this as long as the language supports some sort of array. Garbage collection is useful, but it does not save you from memory leaks. I don't know how many times I've told some retard JavaScript "programmer" that yes, they do have to be mindful of memory leaks even though their language has a garbage collector.
That argument would only make sense if all members of a party took the same position. But of course that is not true. There is a big difference between McCain and Tancredo, as there is between Pelosi and Libermann (I apologize if I spelled anyone's name wrong). However in order to govern at all, politicians need to somehow drum a majority. Therefore they are forced to form loosely held together factions we call 'parties'. The same thing happens in countries where there are several major parties, even if they don't call those loosely held together factions 'parties'.
Compromise is the essence of a Democracy. Yes, that means you will not always get what you want. Learn to deal with it.
If we had candidates that represented us, then we would have some 300 million candidates running for president. We are a diverse country with diverse ideas. Thats a good thing. But the reason you don't agree 100% with either party isn't because both parties cater too much to special interest groups, its because most people don't agree with you 100% of the time.
I'm getting sick of this "candidates don't represent me" shit. You are not the center of the universe, get used to it.
Not a scientifically testable one.
"Please explain? What are they doing if not testing for ET data propagation?"
A test requires results regardless of whether or not it agrees with your hypothesis. SETI can only be said to have results if it does indeed pick up an alien signal.
"It says something. Namely, life is not propagating information from a specific location in the way we expect it too. So we have at least narrowed it down from "totally unknown" to 1) no ET life or 2) ET life may not broadcast as we expect. That represents new information, no?"
Thats like saying a biologist can look at a 1 foot by 1 foot square of forest for 30 seconds and when they don't see a field mouse hop through it they can conclude that the mouse population is not where they expect it to be. But thats not how biologists do things, and I'm saying that as someone who has spent a Friday night in college out in the forest helping set rodent traps instead of at a bar drinking cheap beer.
"SETI isn't a scientific theory for christ sake so stop treating it like one"
I'm not. The person I was responding to was.
"Show me a program that can carry on a coherent conversation in a human language."
Yes, natural language processing is a fundamentally difficult problem. Hell it takes human brains which are highly adapted to the pattern recognition needed to understand it several years to be able to be able to use at even a very basic level and then decades to master. But thats all it is, a difficult problem.
"Show me a computer that is self aware (which is not the same as introspective)."
Plenty of computer programs are aware of themselves. Any that has to communicate with other applications or computers has to have some understanding of itself as being separate from the ones surrounding it. Regurgitating abstract concepts and pretending they represent some magical power that only human brains can do doesn't prove a thing. Self awareness is a good test of intelligence in animals (which with the exception of some primates and elephants do have trouble recognizing themselves), not computers.
"But most of all show me a computer that is intelligent on a general purpose level."
Plenty are. Oh, you mean a computer that is intelligent in the same areas as human beings (which is very different from "intelligent on a general purpose level"). Well as I said, there are plenty of problems out there (like pattern recognition) which human brains with their highly parallelized neural networks optimized for just that type of thing are currently better at. Just as there are plenty of problems out there (like calculating floating point arithmetic) which computers with their highly optimized integrated circuits are better at (and have been better at for a long time now).
"Who cares about statistical analysis "
Well, considering how much money has been spent on IT infrastructure for that, apparently a lot of people.
"I want a chess program that says 'You know what, I feel like checkers today' and KNOWS what this means. "
Do you know what it means when you say that? If you think it is something like a reflection of your free will or some similar hippie crap, you don't.
"Thruth is that currently no one has formalized how the human brain works. No one even has a workable idea how one might go about this! "
Truth is, we have. No, we don't have the exact wiring worked out (we are talking about one of the most complex machines in the world, and yes, I did use the word 'machine' to describe the human brain), but the general architecture is relatively well understood.
"SETIs foundation is the testable theory that life exists in this universe."
Except you can only draw a conclusion from that test in the highly unlikely chance that it finds something. A hypothesis is scientifically testable iff you can draw a conclusion from the test regardless of whether or not it supports the hypothesis. A scientific test that fails teaches us something, SETI failing to find a signal teaches us nothing. Thus it is not scientifically testable.
"Speaking of true AI..."
Your mention of "True AI" just underscores that you have watched too many Hollywood movies. Computer scientists are not searching for a magical program that makes computer become alive like in The Matrix. They are currently actively developing programs that can solve problems man made computers couldn't solve before. Intelligence is not some black and white thing which beings (either biological or machine) have or do not have. It is a quality that exists over a wide spectrum. A human is more intelligent than a chimp, which is more intelligent than a lizard. Deep Blue's chess program is more intelligent than my chessmaster game which is more intelligent than my old chess computer from the late 80s. Yes, many (though much fewer among those actually involved in the research) will not consider a computer program "AI" until it reaches what is often called strong (not true) AI, or intelligence which can be mistaken for human intelligence. But that isn't because there is anything special about humans, we just provide a convenient benchmark. And already there are many things computers can do much better than humans, and other things like pattern recognition are coming along pretty quickly.
"No. Either it can be figured out, or it can't. It's the same yes/no solution set that SETI faces. Signal, or no signal? Viable fusion reactor, or not?"
First, you have a very simplistic understanding of research on nuclear fusion.
Second, a failed experiment in nuclear fusion will result in a conclusion. That can't be said for SETI. No signal from that star system doesn't allow you to conclude anything.
"That isn't what I said. I said cure."
Generally most people would think a surgical procedure that removes a tumor counts as a cure.
If you were talking about a single cure for all cancer, then its clear you have very little understanding regarding medical research. If it wasn't already clear...
"If you want to go for less than 100% win, then in regard to SETI, we got better search algorithms, the first really broadly distributed computing platform, research into quieter RF amps..."
SETI isn't a research project into search algorithms, its a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes, it can motivate scientific research, but that doesn't mean it is scientific research.
The war in Iraq has motivated much more research than SETI, do you consider it a scientific experiment?
No, I'm saying we cannot, with our current technology, scientifically determine whether or not intelligent alien life exists in the known universe.
"There is a hypothesis that life may exist."
But no way to test it. That is the key.
"As is frequent in the pursuit of such long shot goals, much tangential knowledge is gained during the experiment, often it overshadows the original purpose."
Yes, long term goals often result in knowledge. That doesn't automatically result in them being considered scientific research. Otherwise the war on terror would be considered a scientific experiment because of all the new technology that was developed for it.
"Are you stuck on some notion you have about the probability of success?"
The probability of success has nothing to do with it. Scientific experiments fail all the time. But when they follow the scientific method, we gain information from those failures by ruling out the tested hypothesis. We don't get that with SETI, as the fact that we didn't get a signal from that corner of the sky doesn't really tell us anything.
Key word part . The scientific method requires a lot more than just observation. I can observe the cheerleaders at a football game, but I'm not performing scientific research when I do that.
Virtually everything uses engineering and science (which are very different things, mind you). However, SETI is not performing scientific research. That is the key.
And I'm not complaining about SETI's budget; if Paul Allen wants to invest a lot of money in it, I don't really care. What I am concerned about about is this assertion that SETI is scientific research program which teaches people like the original poster the wrong idea of what science is.
"Um-hmmm. And Fusion reactor research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a fusion reactor."
Sure they can, as long as they follow the scientific process and break it down into smaller testable parts (as opposed to the SETI process which would involve simply putting a bunch of things together in a box, looking for a fusion reaction, and if it doesn't occur move on to another combination).
"And cancer research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a cure for cancer. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. And AI research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get an artificially intelligent computer or other construct."
And this just proves you don't know what you are talking about. We get better treatments for cancer and more advanced AI applications each year. You want to know why? Researchers in those fields are using the scientific method (well, cancer researchers are, AI is more of a mathematical discipline so its approach is rather different, but still not the pseudo-science SETI method).