Without any idea of how life started HERE, we have no way of making any meaningful conjecture about how common life may be out there. Drake's equation, for all its apparent elegance, is essentially meaningless. Basically, we only know that somewhere between 1 and 10-to-the-12-power planets in the universe support life. This is all we can know now, and until we can understand conclusively how life began here, it's all just masturbation.
Museums used to have a term for this effect:"The Power of the Authentic." People value something authentic over a reproduction even if they can't objectively tell the difference between the two. So someone who can't even tell the difference between an actual Picasso and a reproduction will still bask in awe of whichever one he or she BELIEVES is the real one, and think that it looks better than the one they think is the reproduction (based soley on what some authority figure TELLS them is the real one and which is the fake)
I too seriously doubt these will ever actually make it to any theoretical 19 year mark. Lightening strikes, energy spikes, environmental factors (like extreme temperature changes and humidity), etc. will all take their toll in any real world scenario long before then. I've never seen a CFL last anywhere near its 7 year rating in my house either, especially in my bathroom, which seems to go through them like crazy (no doubt due to the humidity, which seems to reek havoc on anything electrical I put in there for any long period of time). So I suspect that LED's are still nowhere near the value "sweet spot" of the CFL in normal household use. They might be useful for particularly hard-to-reach areas, though (like lights in vaulted ceilings).
Shouldn't you be flattered that MS recognized how useful this was and incorporated it into their own OS? The whole point of open source is that anyone is free to adopt its innovations, after all.
And seriously, "M$"? Is anyone still using that in 2009?
The most annoying to me is at the movies. I pay $10 to see a movie, and still I have to watch 15 minutes of car ads and Coke commercials before I can even get to the movie trailers (which are also ads). I could come 30 minutes late and not miss a minute of the actual movie that I *paid* to see (and I would if it didn't cost me a decent seat).
My only issue is cost. I have no problem with paying for content as long as they're reasonable (i.e. no more than a few cents per story). But I have a funny feeling they won't be reasonable. I suspect the clueless newspapers will try to charge $1 or more for a single story, trying to railroad everyone into an overpriced "all you can eat" subscription.
The sexbots are built. They're just trying to bring down the costs to make them practical. They already compare favorably with a real woman on cost--no ring, no mooching brother-in-law, no screaming kids to put through college. But they still need to be a lot cheaper for mass production.
Once again, NASA throws a childish temper tantrum when anyone dares threaten their own narrow vision of what the ISS should be (i.e. a PR vehicle for NASA).
NASA's continuing petty Cold-War-relic bitterness against the Russians embarrasses me as an American. It was bad enough they had to be so petty back in the day (failing to acknowledge the Soviet's amazing accomplishments in space with anything more than a childish "Oh yeah, well we'll beat those bastards eventually!"). But to still be continuing that childish tradition so far beyond the Cold war is almost beyond comprehension (yet another of many, many signs that NASA has been flying on autopilot since the 1970's).
Historians and archivists see this sort of thing all the time. People work closely with something, learn to take it for granted, and never give any thought to preserving it for posterity. Individuals always assume someone else is saving it "for the record." So copies get lost, people involved die and their relatives their copies out, there is no coherent plan in place to preserve anything, etc. Pretty soon the archivists come along and realize their are either no copies of something important left, or no complete copies.
NASA was likely so focused on getting Apollo to the moon that they never thought about any sort of archival plan for materials (and most of them probably never expected Apollo to be mothballed or NASA's funding to be cut so drastically afterward). And after their funding got cut, it was all just PR low-orbit stuff like the shuttle. They just didn't make the effort to preserve what they had, and so they lost it.
If you could build a true human-like AI, truly capable of such higher thought as existential angst, human emotions, and the like, it would more likely just immediately commit suicide as soon as it realized that it was actually a disembodied machine. I believe Greg Egan dealt with the subject rather cleverly in his novel Permutation City.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be more accurate to say "No life, as we know it, without water and raw materials."
And to think I sent you all that anti-Malaria medicine for nothing.
Without any idea of how life started HERE, we have no way of making any meaningful conjecture about how common life may be out there. Drake's equation, for all its apparent elegance, is essentially meaningless. Basically, we only know that somewhere between 1 and 10-to-the-12-power planets in the universe support life. This is all we can know now, and until we can understand conclusively how life began here, it's all just masturbation.
Museums used to have a term for this effect:"The Power of the Authentic." People value something authentic over a reproduction even if they can't objectively tell the difference between the two. So someone who can't even tell the difference between an actual Picasso and a reproduction will still bask in awe of whichever one he or she BELIEVES is the real one, and think that it looks better than the one they think is the reproduction (based soley on what some authority figure TELLS them is the real one and which is the fake)
But "nazi-ing" Microsoft is okay, right?
After years of living in New Jersey, most of these greaseballs are probably immune to pollution.
Me just play joke.
I can quit anytime I want!
I too seriously doubt these will ever actually make it to any theoretical 19 year mark. Lightening strikes, energy spikes, environmental factors (like extreme temperature changes and humidity), etc. will all take their toll in any real world scenario long before then. I've never seen a CFL last anywhere near its 7 year rating in my house either, especially in my bathroom, which seems to go through them like crazy (no doubt due to the humidity, which seems to reek havoc on anything electrical I put in there for any long period of time). So I suspect that LED's are still nowhere near the value "sweet spot" of the CFL in normal household use. They might be useful for particularly hard-to-reach areas, though (like lights in vaulted ceilings).
Shouldn't you be flattered that MS recognized how useful this was and incorporated it into their own OS? The whole point of open source is that anyone is free to adopt its innovations, after all.
And seriously, "M$"? Is anyone still using that in 2009?
Hush, you fool! Do you want to invite down the wrath of Father Steve?!?!
Thanks a lot Microsoft.
The hell you say!
Obviously you've never met CowboyNeal.
The most annoying to me is at the movies. I pay $10 to see a movie, and still I have to watch 15 minutes of car ads and Coke commercials before I can even get to the movie trailers (which are also ads). I could come 30 minutes late and not miss a minute of the actual movie that I *paid* to see (and I would if it didn't cost me a decent seat).
My only issue is cost. I have no problem with paying for content as long as they're reasonable (i.e. no more than a few cents per story). But I have a funny feeling they won't be reasonable. I suspect the clueless newspapers will try to charge $1 or more for a single story, trying to railroad everyone into an overpriced "all you can eat" subscription.
The sexbots are built. They're just trying to bring down the costs to make them practical. They already compare favorably with a real woman on cost--no ring, no mooching brother-in-law, no screaming kids to put through college. But they still need to be a lot cheaper for mass production.
Once again, NASA throws a childish temper tantrum when anyone dares threaten their own narrow vision of what the ISS should be (i.e. a PR vehicle for NASA).
The first one to patent the idea of "patent trolling" wins.
I was struck by the same thing. Asking for crytographic tools on Facebook is kind of like asking "Does anyone make billboard covers?"
MS better hope not. If everyone in the West is out of work, who'll be left to buy legitimate copies of Windows and Office?
MORE walking.
NASA's continuing petty Cold-War-relic bitterness against the Russians embarrasses me as an American. It was bad enough they had to be so petty back in the day (failing to acknowledge the Soviet's amazing accomplishments in space with anything more than a childish "Oh yeah, well we'll beat those bastards eventually!"). But to still be continuing that childish tradition so far beyond the Cold war is almost beyond comprehension (yet another of many, many signs that NASA has been flying on autopilot since the 1970's).
Historians and archivists see this sort of thing all the time. People work closely with something, learn to take it for granted, and never give any thought to preserving it for posterity. Individuals always assume someone else is saving it "for the record." So copies get lost, people involved die and their relatives their copies out, there is no coherent plan in place to preserve anything, etc. Pretty soon the archivists come along and realize their are either no copies of something important left, or no complete copies.
NASA was likely so focused on getting Apollo to the moon that they never thought about any sort of archival plan for materials (and most of them probably never expected Apollo to be mothballed or NASA's funding to be cut so drastically afterward). And after their funding got cut, it was all just PR low-orbit stuff like the shuttle. They just didn't make the effort to preserve what they had, and so they lost it.
If you could build a true human-like AI, truly capable of such higher thought as existential angst, human emotions, and the like, it would more likely just immediately commit suicide as soon as it realized that it was actually a disembodied machine. I believe Greg Egan dealt with the subject rather cleverly in his novel Permutation City.