" If it was.000001% of the budget then it was nothing."
If it were.000001% of the imperial budget it would be not such a feat to build TWO!
The emperor and his right hand were busily involved in the project and they threw big hopes on its success. Therefore it must eat a big chunk of imperial economy. Since it were considered a good idea, if they could build them for peanuts they would build a thousand, not just two.
"If Obamacare has to pay by law, every drug company should raise their prices 10x. It's free money. They would be stupid not to."
Hummm... it makes sense. If only we could test it real world before putting it in practice in USA...
Hey, wait a second! Now that I think of it, there *are* other countries, a vast majority in fact, that already have socialized healthcare in place. Surely they'll demonstrate your thesis!
Now, wait *another* second: how is it that all those other countries get better prices from big pharma than USA? It can't be coz you are wrong, can it?
"The remoteness of Mars might offer some advantages if you want to lord over your new world as an absolute dictator and reintroduce slavery on a massive scale"
I'll tell you this: 1) Going to Mars because there's no people. 2) Applying massive scale slavery
"One of the biggest and first steps in terraforming Mars is to introduce massive amounts of carbon and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to warm it up on the global scale. We are experts in that field because we are doing it to our own planet at an alarming rate."
Yes, we are experts at introducing greenhouse gasses into an atmosphere... provided there's a lot of cheap oil around to burn.
"It is a fairly simple and straightforward process but it takes a long time."
There's the old saying, "everything is easy, as long it's not me the one having to do it". Terraforming Mars is an easy feat... as long as it's not captjc the one having to do it.
"Mars would offer plenty of living space with little competition from "equal righted" neighbors"
Just adding up Sahara, Gobi and Antarctica you already get about 30% of Mars surface. If that's not enough, you can take open sea bottom for much, much more living space than Mars, also with little competition and much more hospitable conditions too so you can bet it's not living space the pushing force to go to Mars.
"Of all the ways to avoid "the ravages of global warming", going to Mars would be the nuttiest I've heard."
Not forgetting the stupid notion that rich people need to go anywhere to avoid "the ravages of global warming" when the last working air conditioner, the last gallon of oil and the last kobe cow sirloin will be for them anyway.
"The human body can survive in 0% of Earths Gravity (at least for 14 months)"
Not for free.
"so it's not like the body won't adapt to lower gravity"
No, for all that we know up to now, no, the body doesn't successfully adapt to lower gravity. Up to now, living on lower gravity is like living beyond 7000 meters altitude: possible... for a while.
"There may be some long term side effects that shorten (or lengthen) lifespan, but hey, living on Mars is risky enough that a shorter lifespan is practically guaranteed."
The problem with "risks" is that they may happen or not, like car accidents. But here we are talking about deleterius conditions, not simply "risky". Maybe someone could accept lower life expectancy but, only two or three years?
"I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two"
Probably yes but just like you can climb the Everest but not live on top of the Everest you may well go to Mars but not live in Mars.
"So if neutrino interaction was an order of magnitude weaker, we may not have detected it yet, and we'd had called them dark matter."
On one hand, that it makes sense doesn't make it immediately true but just not immediately rejected. On the other, what a lot has Physics changed in recent decades! At least, Pauli and Fermi had the bon sense to consider neutrinos a conjecture till the Cowan-Reynes experiment's success.
"Dark energy and dark matter are two phenomena that as far as we know are not related."
Probably Einstein would have something to say as "anything" energy is always related to "whatever" matter. Anyway, I simply conflated dark matter and dark energy because whatever they are they are logically identical for this discussion's purposes.
"No. Dark energy is just a "name" for the phenomenon, it does not add anything. Aether on the other hand added something on top of the observation - a proposed medium that we should look for empirically."
Yeah, sure... not.
Dark energy/matter are proposed entities to explain some observations of our universe, namely the mass deficit/excessive acceleration we observe. Dark matter/energy is positively a proposed "something" that we should look for empirically, with the added bonus that, by its very definition, we don't even know how to start looking for it.
"The universe is expanding in an accelerating manner"
That's the fact... well, we think what we observe -doppler-fizeau effects and all that, means the universe is expanding in an accelerating manner. Remember that Hubble constant variability with time has received more than one explanation since first proposed.
"and we call this effect "the dark energy""
Of course not. Dark Energy is what has been proposed to explain the universe's expansion rate. Energy and acceleration can't be one and the same thing: they are not even dimensionally congruent!
"Seriously, read up on the stuff you are trying to discuss here."
I wonder *where* did you grasped your concepts on Physics.
"Expecting readers of a tech site to find that the definition of M&A is the first two results of a Google search seems a bit outlandish to me too"
Expecting thousands of people wasting if even 15 seconds each to find what M&A is instead of a single person expending the 5 seconds it takes to explicitly write "mergers & acquisitions" is not only bad taste but infuriating for any engineering-inclined mind.
"Why did the birds survive and not the dinosaurs?"
You know, it was a big meteorite, so when it crashed, it shattered the Earth and dinosaurs' neck broke because of it. Birds, on the other hand, flied into the air when the shattering was coming and thus didn't receive any injury.
"So, no need to assume a "burst of evolution" when the simpler explanation is a "burst of opened opportunities""
I think you are confusing terms. Evolution is change. A lot of new species did appear: that's a burst of evolution *even* if that doesn't mean an increased rate of mutations or any other biology-related change.
"You're basically describing European cars. Planned Obselecence is a big thing over there. They want to make sure things last just long enough to ride out the warranty period."
I certainly don't know your mileage, but I don't know what you are talking about: ten years for a car and 100K miles with just basic maintenance is the rule, with a majority of cars going well beyond that. Mine, for instance, is 14 y.o., 110K miles and very good health.
"The real sweet spot is maximizing profit-per-consumer"
That's usually right and it is called "Customer Lifetime Value" or CLV for short.
But then, you have to compound it with post-Reagan era corporate politics: on cars, CLV may extend for decades while CEO terms are not, so you will see strategies in place that maximize short term profits even if that will cost dearly to the company in the long run. For a starter, you'll see car builders, and moreso those at midrange-premium (i.e. Germans BMW/Mercs/Porsche) more interested in gaining customers from their competitors than retaining current customers (as it happens in all mature global markets, i.e. also mobile telecom, after all, all of them get their MBAs from the same business schools).
"which often means selling a lot of cars with finance plans luxury extended warranties."
That's a different business, and also one shared in other mature markets: they are financial banks in disguise of telecoms or car builders -too much money from the math-unsavvy mobs to let it go.
"When new, this may perform great. But I guess rust will eat it like any other steel plate. And then it becomes quite important what thickness you started with."
Much the better (for them). Programmed obsolescency out of the box. Big win.
Slashdot Mirror
" If it was .000001% of the budget then it was nothing."
If it were .000001% of the imperial budget it would be not such a feat to build TWO!
The emperor and his right hand were busily involved in the project and they threw big hopes on its success. Therefore it must eat a big chunk of imperial economy. Since it were considered a good idea, if they could build them for peanuts they would build a thousand, not just two.
"If Obamacare has to pay by law, every drug company should raise their prices 10x. It's free money. They would be stupid not to."
Hummm... it makes sense. If only we could test it real world before putting it in practice in USA...
Hey, wait a second! Now that I think of it, there *are* other countries, a vast majority in fact, that already have socialized healthcare in place. Surely they'll demonstrate your thesis!
Now, wait *another* second: how is it that all those other countries get better prices from big pharma than USA? It can't be coz you are wrong, can it?
"Regular karma means he's going to reincarnate as a cockroach."
Hey, that's pretty unjust: being a cockroach twice in a row.
"Other than the outer covering and the hard skeletal part"
Not even that: you can eat deep fried pork rind and bones go into soups.
"and then carefully prepare the minority that is "food""
Minority? Ha!
There's very little you throw away from a pig. Basically everything, from snout to tail, is edible.
"The first few generations will have issues, but evolution will adapt to the lower gravity with each new generation."
You are fricking kidding, don't you?
Just to cast some context, it was Darwin the one that was right, not Lamarck, right?
"The biggest issue with any terraforming is the lack of a magnetosphere."
Not within your (flakey) view of the world: once you think about it, lacking a magnetosphere should be an advantage, not a problem, shouldn't it?
"I never said it was easy, I said it was process was simple and straightforward"
You are so cute!
What's your e-mail list? I certainly want to subscribe to it.
"The remoteness of Mars might offer some advantages if you want to lord over your new world as an absolute dictator and reintroduce slavery on a massive scale"
I'll tell you this:
1) Going to Mars because there's no people.
2) Applying massive scale slavery
See the problem?
"Following Data Leak, HIV Dating App's Developers Threaten Infection"
Does the title even parse?
"That's roughly what my fellow Europeans said when I emigrated to the US. They were wrong."
Did you emigrate in the late XVI century? If so, your fellow Europeans were right; if not, you are not talking even remotely about the same thing.
"One of the biggest and first steps in terraforming Mars is to introduce massive amounts of carbon and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to warm it up on the global scale. We are experts in that field because we are doing it to our own planet at an alarming rate."
Yes, we are experts at introducing greenhouse gasses into an atmosphere... provided there's a lot of cheap oil around to burn.
"It is a fairly simple and straightforward process but it takes a long time."
There's the old saying, "everything is easy, as long it's not me the one having to do it". Terraforming Mars is an easy feat... as long as it's not captjc the one having to do it.
"Mars would offer plenty of living space with little competition from "equal righted" neighbors"
Just adding up Sahara, Gobi and Antarctica you already get about 30% of Mars surface. If that's not enough, you can take open sea bottom for much, much more living space than Mars, also with little competition and much more hospitable conditions too so you can bet it's not living space the pushing force to go to Mars.
"Of all the ways to avoid "the ravages of global warming", going to Mars would be the nuttiest I've heard."
Not forgetting the stupid notion that rich people need to go anywhere to avoid "the ravages of global warming" when the last working air conditioner, the last gallon of oil and the last kobe cow sirloin will be for them anyway.
"The human body can survive in 0% of Earths Gravity (at least for 14 months)"
Not for free.
"so it's not like the body won't adapt to lower gravity"
No, for all that we know up to now, no, the body doesn't successfully adapt to lower gravity. Up to now, living on lower gravity is like living beyond 7000 meters altitude: possible... for a while.
"There may be some long term side effects that shorten (or lengthen) lifespan, but hey, living on Mars is risky enough that a shorter lifespan is practically guaranteed."
The problem with "risks" is that they may happen or not, like car accidents. But here we are talking about deleterius conditions, not simply "risky". Maybe someone could accept lower life expectancy but, only two or three years?
"I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two"
Probably yes but just like you can climb the Everest but not live on top of the Everest you may well go to Mars but not live in Mars.
"So if neutrino interaction was an order of magnitude weaker, we may not have detected it yet, and we'd had called them dark matter."
On one hand, that it makes sense doesn't make it immediately true but just not immediately rejected. On the other, what a lot has Physics changed in recent decades! At least, Pauli and Fermi had the bon sense to consider neutrinos a conjecture till the Cowan-Reynes experiment's success.
"Dark energy and dark matter are two phenomena that as far as we know are not related."
Probably Einstein would have something to say as "anything" energy is always related to "whatever" matter. Anyway, I simply conflated dark matter and dark energy because whatever they are they are logically identical for this discussion's purposes.
"No. Dark energy is just a "name" for the phenomenon, it does not add anything. Aether on the other hand added something on top of the observation - a proposed medium that we should look for empirically."
Yeah, sure... not.
Dark energy/matter are proposed entities to explain some observations of our universe, namely the mass deficit/excessive acceleration we observe. Dark matter/energy is positively a proposed "something" that we should look for empirically, with the added bonus that, by its very definition, we don't even know how to start looking for it.
"The universe is expanding in an accelerating manner"
That's the fact... well, we think what we observe -doppler-fizeau effects and all that, means the universe is expanding in an accelerating manner. Remember that Hubble constant variability with time has received more than one explanation since first proposed.
"and we call this effect "the dark energy""
Of course not. Dark Energy is what has been proposed to explain the universe's expansion rate. Energy and acceleration can't be one and the same thing: they are not even dimensionally congruent!
"Seriously, read up on the stuff you are trying to discuss here."
I wonder *where* did you grasped your concepts on Physics.
"Expecting readers of a tech site to find that the definition of M&A is the first two results of a Google search seems a bit outlandish to me too"
Expecting thousands of people wasting if even 15 seconds each to find what M&A is instead of a single person expending the 5 seconds it takes to explicitly write "mergers & acquisitions" is not only bad taste but infuriating for any engineering-inclined mind.
"On the contrary. It is nuclear power without most of the risks involved and even without having to mine dangerous materials."
Parent poster didn't say it wasn't safe. He said it's inefficient. Which, well, it is.
You probably didn't notice the whooosh either.
"I said we should set up fake elections for the dumb people, so our elections WORK."
If your surname happens to be Rockefeller or something like that then you don't need to ask. That's been already the case for ages now.
"European cars, not so much. Its rare to find an Astra with 150,000 K's on it, a lot of VW Golfs on their second tranny before 50,000 KM."
Now, I know you are trolling.
"Why did the birds survive and not the dinosaurs?"
You know, it was a big meteorite, so when it crashed, it shattered the Earth and dinosaurs' neck broke because of it. Birds, on the other hand, flied into the air when the shattering was coming and thus didn't receive any injury.
"So, no need to assume a "burst of evolution" when the simpler explanation is a "burst of opened opportunities""
I think you are confusing terms. Evolution is change. A
lot of new species did appear: that's a burst of evolution *even* if that doesn't mean an increased rate of mutations or any other biology-related change.
"You're basically describing European cars. Planned Obselecence is a big thing over there. They want to make sure things last just long enough to ride out the warranty period."
I certainly don't know your mileage, but I don't know what you are talking about: ten years for a car and 100K miles with just basic maintenance is the rule, with a majority of cars going well beyond that. Mine, for instance, is 14 y.o., 110K miles and very good health.
"The real sweet spot is maximizing profit-per-consumer"
That's usually right and it is called "Customer Lifetime Value" or CLV for short.
But then, you have to compound it with post-Reagan era corporate politics: on cars, CLV may extend for decades while CEO terms are not, so you will see strategies in place that maximize short term profits even if that will cost dearly to the company in the long run. For a starter, you'll see car builders, and moreso those at midrange-premium (i.e. Germans BMW/Mercs/Porsche) more interested in gaining customers from their competitors than retaining current customers (as it happens in all mature global markets, i.e. also mobile telecom, after all, all of them get their MBAs from the same business schools).
"which often means selling a lot of cars with finance plans luxury extended warranties."
That's a different business, and also one shared in other mature markets: they are financial banks in disguise of telecoms or car builders -too much money from the math-unsavvy mobs to let it go.
"When new, this may perform great. But I guess rust will eat it like any other steel plate. And then it becomes quite important what thickness you started with."
Much the better (for them). Programmed obsolescency out of the box. Big win.