The Marshall Plan was created to build up Germany and Japan
The Marshall Plan was offered to all nations in Europe (yes, even to the satellite states of the Soviet Union), with slightly worse conditions for Germany than for everyone else.
Twenty years ago I remember when a "state of the art" game was one that wasn't entirely text-based.
Should have gotten something that was meant for games then. 20 years ago, PCs were not that thing. Amigas and Atari STs had GUIs, mice, nice enough graphics and all that stuff.
I still don't see that much more "fun" in todays games, even with 1000x the RAM and 1000x the processing power. Sure, there's more fluff, more graphics, more movies, higher resolution textures, but it's hard to find games that are actually more fun that the old classics.
It has been proven experimentally that people do most often choose the moral course. In fact, rather than selfishness, most people are motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity.
Maybe after a few generations of authority based morale, the worst offenders have already been eliminated from the gene pool.
Authority based morality always fails, because there are so many authorities to choose from, and one always gets to pick and choose how one interprets one's chosen authority.
Isn't that the same for any other type of morality ? Is there only one type of non-authority-based morality ?
Society is a support network, taking from society weakens my own support network.
It does give you a distinct advantage, though.
As a rational being, I know that if everyone does that, society will collapse, which I don't want. Therefore, I don't do things to weaken society.
You could also argue that as a rational being, you know that the other rational beings will, mostly, do not do things that weaken society, and capitalize on this for your own advantage. What prevents you from doing so ?
Besides, with time a cartel becomes less and less innovative/efficient, for lack of competition, so it gets easier.
With time, a cartel amasses enough cash reserves to price-dump any potential competitor out of existence.
Got any real-world examples of cartels that were built without help of government (so no railway, phone, gas, water...), where there actually is no competition?
Medieval guilds.
A certain diamond mining company.
There aren't that many contemporary examples thanks to antitrust laws.
I'm no engineer/beta scientist. Hence, all the smoke and mirrors surrounding Cold Fusion confuse me; How does it relate to 'hot' Fusion? (i.e. what are the difference, besides the completely obvious)
Hot fusion overcomes the electrostatic repulsion between the nuclei by sufficient kinetic energy (i.e. the two nuclei are smashed together at high speed, which means that the medium in which the fusion process takes place is going to be extremely hot - millions of Kelvin. The actual volume in which this temperature exists can be minimal, though). Cold fusion uses some other, unexplained process.
It's not easy, but generally possible. If there's no state intervention that shuts down honest competition, a cartel isn't generally too sustainable, long-term.
I would argue that a cartel becomes more and more self-sustaining as it exists, as it amasses power and wealth and creates a web of dependencies.
Also, the cartel will use the means that are at its disposal to suppress the competition. Price dumping, lawsuits, all that stuff.
Many futurists argue that the logical end state for a stellar civilization is to surround the star with solar collectors and capture all that energy which is otherwise wasted.
As appealing as the idea might be - I doubt it for a number of reasons:
1. If industrial-scale fusion cannot be achieved, it is going to be extremely hard to build this system.
2. It might not be economical to completely surround the star. If it isn't completely surrounded, the system of solar collectors might just look like a random dust cloud to us.
3. If industrial-scale fusion can be achieved, what's the point in building this monstrosity ? It is far more convenient just to siphon some fuel off the nearest gas giant, or maybe even the star itself. That way, you're not tethered to living near a star.
4. Fusion might not be the end as far as energy generation goes. If a 100% matter-energy conversion can be achieved, the energy output of a Dyson sphere might be neglegible compared to it.
His solution was to speed up to about 85/90Mph (50 speed limit) and pull over as soon as the road widened enough to allow so....
Judge asked what experience he had driving at high speeds.
Ehehe. 90 mph and high speed ? Around here, that would make you an annoying, slow moving obstacle to quite a number of drivers. Try 130 mph, and then we're talking high speed. And there'll still be cars behind you trying to pass occasionally.
And still, physics don't change, neither does your reaction time. Going 47 mph in a 30 mph zone doesn't require "tactical driving" or any such BS, but the ability to stop when little Jimmy runs out of the driveway. No amount of training is going to help you when "reaction time (~1 second) + time required to decelerate to a stop" is larger than "Time until impact".
Since it means half (rather than all) the biosphere hasn't been exposed to lethal levels of radiation.
It also means that the other half of the biosphere is going to be exposed to the toxic soup that the atmosphere on the other half got turned into pretty soon. And the ozone layer will be gone, too.
The earth's magnetic field will provide exactly zero protection against gamma rays.
Since living in one location deletes resources and forces you to either range farther afield to forage or move, there is really only one choice Colonization.
Well, in the "late game", there's only one important resource: Energy.
And the solar system should hold enough of the stuff (hydrogen, once we get fusion working) to last us until the sun goes red giant.
The evidence for this is very strong. For one, there is the fact that we see no evidence for them at all.
Maybe they've got rules against littering.
For two, life on Earth shows us that the kind of intelligence that builds spacecraft is extremely unlikely to evolve.
So far, we've got one confirmed planet with life on it, and one confirmed planet whose inhabitants have the technical skills to build spacecraft (note that I'm not implying intelligence here). Looking at Earth doesn't tell us a lot about the probabilities.
Our ancestors were a marginal species of mediocre tool users for hundreds of thousands of years before we suddenly started on our current course about fifty thousand years ago, with the Upper Paleolithic Revolution.
That is a very short timespan, and at some point our capabilities start growing pretty much exponentially, which indicates some sort of positive feedback mechanism. Positive feedback mechnisms amplify even the smallest input signals pretty much infinitely.
If intelligence was even just ten times harder to evolve than eyes and wings, it would have occurred more than once in the entire history of the Earth.
We're only halfway through the history of the Earth, though.
1. Never leave Earth and become extinct very soon.
2. Never leave the solar system and become extinct somewhat later.
3. Never leave the galaxy and become extinct quite a bit later.
4. Never leave the universe and be the last to become extinct.
It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct.
I think that boils down to two choices:
Colonize the galaxy, or remain on Earth and become extinct.
Of course, at the end of the Universe we'll still become extinct, unless we manage to figure out how to survive it. We still got a few billion years, though.
Re: Photon gathering (and x-rays, RF, IR, etc.)
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
Why ever turn such a system off?
As soon as the system starts considering Earth the next addition to the telescope, I'd say we pull the plug while we still can.
Re:Humans can handle more than 1 G
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
Archimedes Principle - humans can undergo many many G, provided they travel while suspended in water. Think of swinging your goldfish bowl around @20G; the goldfish is effectively weightless inside the water in the bowl.
However, once you stop swinging your goldfish bowl around (because swinging it around does not get the darn thing anywhere) and strap it to a rocket, the poor fish is going to be squished just like any other biological object.
Suspending something in fluids helps against short duration transients, but only delays the squishing process caused by longer acceleration phases.
And half the Earth is always shielded by several thousand kilometers of rock.
That doesn't help us a lot once half the atmosphere gets turned into a toxic soup.
Re:Before trying to send colonists to another syst
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
A quick read through this article will show you that ice CAN exist on a place like venus given the right enormous pressures and a bit of water.;-)
A quick look at a phase diagram of water shows me that the possibility of water being ice at temperatures above 0.01 degrees celsius is pretty much zero, regardless of the pressure. Also, the freezing point of water gets lower as the pressure increases, which is one of the many things that can be considered an anomaly of water.
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
Both of my parents who were born in the mid 1940s were taught Latin in high school in the early 1960s. I think my father still has one of the textbooks. That was only about 50 years ago.
That still doesn't change the fact that Latin, as a language, is dead as a doornail. It is not used as the primary means of spoken communication in any country or among any ethnic group. Its many children, however, are still alive and kicking.
You can still learn lots of dead languages today (dead doesn't mean they are lost). That doesn't make them alive.
Before trying to send colonists to another system:
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 4, Insightful
We should:
a) Find a better/cheaper way into space than chemical rockets. Space elevator / maglev launch system / whatever. As long as it doesn't involve strapping huge amounts of volatile chemicals to our payload.
b) Colonize some of the non-Earth objects in out own solar system to gain insights into how to live best on asteroids (plents of 'em out there, a dime a dozen), rocky worlds that need major terraforming (Venus/Mars), moons of gas giants, and dwarf planets. The chances of our would-be interstellar colonists finding any of the above at their destination are almost infinitely higher then the chance of finding another Earth. And, hey, there's plenty of real estate in our own solar system to spread to. One step at a time - not colonizing our solar system before heading to another would be like Columbus trying to get to the moon instead of sailing west.
c) Manage to send an unmanned probe to another star system, to get the kinks in the propulsion/astronavigation/etc systems worked out.
d) Get energy-positive fusion working. Seriously. Without it, doing anything major outside the orbit of Mars is going to be a royal pain in the ass.
Also, we should not:
a) Totally trash Earth before we're ready to haul our collective asses to some other place. Once we need to spend the majority of our resources on just surviving, our chances of getting to anywhere outside our solar system are about as good as finding an ice cube on Venus.
Global warming is going to fix a lot these points. Well, maybe not the one about the railway or the one about the drinking. And I hope you've stocked up on moquito repellent.
Your average Westerner's mindset is "if I have to pay X for this crap, they should pay X as well".
No.
It is: "If they only pay X for this crap, then I should pay X for it as well.". And, if there is such a thing as a free market, then the above statement should be true. Heck, you could just go to the other place and buy your copy for X. That is, unless the maker of the software has some BS EULA/Region codes/whatever in place that keeps the market from being free.
I am pointing out the lack of support for common use devices such as printers and web cams.
Blame it on the manufacturers for (intentionally) not releasing the specs of their devices nor supplying a Linux driver themselves.
If the specs are published, then you'll get a working Linux driver in no time. Heck, even if the specs remain unpublished people will go through the trouble of figuring out how some gadget works and write a driver for it.
Blame WinModems, WinGraphicscards, WinPrinters and other WinHardware on Windows. Not on Linux.
, discussing how you work forever to earn the right to do anything exciting, and must 'prove yourself' by expending tons of your time. From the article: 'So now, thinking about playing an RPG just makes me tired.
Call me old-fashioned, but isn't this the point of most computer games, not just RPGs ? If you want to defeat the boss, you have to play all the levels before it. Or use the cheat code. In CRPGs, the story is often a key point of the game. And in Japanese RPGs, you often start out doing exciting things - Final Fantasy 7/8/.., anyone.
And that's not just in computer games. If you read a novel, you'll have to start at the beginning and read all the pages until the end. If you want to climb a mountain and brag about it, you're not going to take the lift.
Geez, what is it about this young generation that feels entitled to instant gratification ?
Slashdot Mirror
The Marshall Plan was offered to all nations in Europe (yes, even to the satellite states of the Soviet Union), with slightly worse conditions for Germany than for everyone else.
Should have gotten something that was meant for games then. 20 years ago, PCs were not that thing. Amigas and Atari STs had GUIs, mice, nice enough graphics and all that stuff.
I still don't see that much more "fun" in todays games, even with 1000x the RAM and 1000x the processing power. Sure, there's more fluff, more graphics, more movies, higher resolution textures, but it's hard to find games that are actually more fun that the old classics.
Maybe after a few generations of authority based morale, the worst offenders have already been eliminated from the gene pool.
Authority based morality always fails, because there are so many authorities to choose from, and one always gets to pick and choose how one interprets one's chosen authority.
Isn't that the same for any other type of morality ? Is there only one type of non-authority-based morality ?
Society is a support network, taking from society weakens my own support network.
It does give you a distinct advantage, though.
As a rational being, I know that if everyone does that, society will collapse, which I don't want. Therefore, I don't do things to weaken society.
You could also argue that as a rational being, you know that the other rational beings will, mostly, do not do things that weaken society, and capitalize on this for your own advantage. What prevents you from doing so ?
With time, a cartel amasses enough cash reserves to price-dump any potential competitor out of existence.
Got any real-world examples of cartels that were built without help of government (so no railway, phone, gas, water...), where there actually is no competition?
Medieval guilds.
A certain diamond mining company.
There aren't that many contemporary examples thanks to antitrust laws.
... my right arm on them being able to regrow and fully reattach complete limbs any time soon.
Hot fusion overcomes the electrostatic repulsion between the nuclei by sufficient kinetic energy (i.e. the two nuclei are smashed together at high speed, which means that the medium in which the fusion process takes place is going to be extremely hot - millions of Kelvin. The actual volume in which this temperature exists can be minimal, though). Cold fusion uses some other, unexplained process.
What kind of fusion project is ITER?
Hot fusion.
I would argue that a cartel becomes more and more self-sustaining as it exists, as it amasses power and wealth and creates a web of dependencies.
Also, the cartel will use the means that are at its disposal to suppress the competition. Price dumping, lawsuits, all that stuff.
As appealing as the idea might be - I doubt it for a number of reasons:
1. If industrial-scale fusion cannot be achieved, it is going to be extremely hard to build this system.
2. It might not be economical to completely surround the star. If it isn't completely surrounded, the system of solar collectors might just look like a random dust cloud to us.
3. If industrial-scale fusion can be achieved, what's the point in building this monstrosity ? It is far more convenient just to siphon some fuel off the nearest gas giant, or maybe even the star itself. That way, you're not tethered to living near a star.
4. Fusion might not be the end as far as energy generation goes. If a 100% matter-energy conversion can be achieved, the energy output of a Dyson sphere might be neglegible compared to it.
Judge asked what experience he had driving at high speeds.
Ehehe. 90 mph and high speed ? Around here, that would make you an annoying, slow moving obstacle to quite a number of drivers. Try 130 mph, and then we're talking high speed. And there'll still be cars behind you trying to pass occasionally.
And still, physics don't change, neither does your reaction time. Going 47 mph in a 30 mph zone doesn't require "tactical driving" or any such BS, but the ability to stop when little Jimmy runs out of the driveway. No amount of training is going to help you when "reaction time (~1 second) + time required to decelerate to a stop" is larger than "Time until impact".
It also means that the other half of the biosphere is going to be exposed to the toxic soup that the atmosphere on the other half got turned into pretty soon. And the ozone layer will be gone, too.
The earth's magnetic field will provide exactly zero protection against gamma rays.
Well, in the "late game", there's only one important resource: Energy.
And the solar system should hold enough of the stuff (hydrogen, once we get fusion working) to last us until the sun goes red giant.
Maybe they've got rules against littering.
For two, life on Earth shows us that the kind of intelligence that builds spacecraft is extremely unlikely to evolve.
So far, we've got one confirmed planet with life on it, and one confirmed planet whose inhabitants have the technical skills to build spacecraft (note that I'm not implying intelligence here). Looking at Earth doesn't tell us a lot about the probabilities.
Our ancestors were a marginal species of mediocre tool users for hundreds of thousands of years before we suddenly started on our current course about fifty thousand years ago, with the Upper Paleolithic Revolution.
That is a very short timespan, and at some point our capabilities start growing pretty much exponentially, which indicates some sort of positive feedback mechanism. Positive feedback mechnisms amplify even the smallest input signals pretty much infinitely.
If intelligence was even just ten times harder to evolve than eyes and wings, it would have occurred more than once in the entire history of the Earth.
We're only halfway through the history of the Earth, though.
1. Never leave Earth and become extinct very soon. 2. Never leave the solar system and become extinct somewhat later. 3. Never leave the galaxy and become extinct quite a bit later. 4. Never leave the universe and be the last to become extinct.
I think that boils down to two choices:
Colonize the galaxy, or remain on Earth and become extinct.
Of course, at the end of the Universe we'll still become extinct, unless we manage to figure out how to survive it. We still got a few billion years, though.
As soon as the system starts considering Earth the next addition to the telescope, I'd say we pull the plug while we still can.
However, once you stop swinging your goldfish bowl around (because swinging it around does not get the darn thing anywhere) and strap it to a rocket, the poor fish is going to be squished just like any other biological object.
Suspending something in fluids helps against short duration transients, but only delays the squishing process caused by longer acceleration phases.
That doesn't help us a lot once half the atmosphere gets turned into a toxic soup.
A quick look at a phase diagram of water shows me that the possibility of water being ice at temperatures above 0.01 degrees celsius is pretty much zero, regardless of the pressure. Also, the freezing point of water gets lower as the pressure increases, which is one of the many things that can be considered an anomaly of water.
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461541579/Phase_Diagr am_for_Water.html
That still doesn't change the fact that Latin, as a language, is dead as a doornail. It is not used as the primary means of spoken communication in any country or among any ethnic group. Its many children, however, are still alive and kicking.
You can still learn lots of dead languages today (dead doesn't mean they are lost). That doesn't make them alive.
a) Find a better/cheaper way into space than chemical rockets. Space elevator / maglev launch system / whatever. As long as it doesn't involve strapping huge amounts of volatile chemicals to our payload.
b) Colonize some of the non-Earth objects in out own solar system to gain insights into how to live best on asteroids (plents of 'em out there, a dime a dozen), rocky worlds that need major terraforming (Venus/Mars), moons of gas giants, and dwarf planets. The chances of our would-be interstellar colonists finding any of the above at their destination are almost infinitely higher then the chance of finding another Earth. And, hey, there's plenty of real estate in our own solar system to spread to. One step at a time - not colonizing our solar system before heading to another would be like Columbus trying to get to the moon instead of sailing west.
c) Manage to send an unmanned probe to another star system, to get the kinks in the propulsion/astronavigation/etc systems worked out.
d) Get energy-positive fusion working. Seriously. Without it, doing anything major outside the orbit of Mars is going to be a royal pain in the ass.
Also, we should not:
a) Totally trash Earth before we're ready to haul our collective asses to some other place. Once we need to spend the majority of our resources on just surviving, our chances of getting to anywhere outside our solar system are about as good as finding an ice cube on Venus.
b) Get wiped out or wipe ourselves out.
Global warming is going to fix a lot these points. Well, maybe not the one about the railway or the one about the drinking. And I hope you've stocked up on moquito repellent.
No. It is: "If they only pay X for this crap, then I should pay X for it as well.". And, if there is such a thing as a free market, then the above statement should be true. Heck, you could just go to the other place and buy your copy for X. That is, unless the maker of the software has some BS EULA/Region codes/whatever in place that keeps the market from being free.
Blame it on the manufacturers for (intentionally) not releasing the specs of their devices nor supplying a Linux driver themselves.
If the specs are published, then you'll get a working Linux driver in no time. Heck, even if the specs remain unpublished people will go through the trouble of figuring out how some gadget works and write a driver for it.
Blame WinModems, WinGraphicscards, WinPrinters and other WinHardware on Windows. Not on Linux.
The most evil end sequence ever.
Call me old-fashioned, but isn't this the point of most computer games, not just RPGs ? If you want to defeat the boss, you have to play all the levels before it. Or use the cheat code. In CRPGs, the story is often a key point of the game. And in Japanese RPGs, you often start out doing exciting things - Final Fantasy 7/8/.., anyone.
And that's not just in computer games. If you read a novel, you'll have to start at the beginning and read all the pages until the end. If you want to climb a mountain and brag about it, you're not going to take the lift.
Geez, what is it about this young generation that feels entitled to instant gratification ?