Quite possibly, but I thought it was just an innate human thing to be in awe of a starry sky? I mean I can understand that some people aren't interested in computers, cars, music, whatever. I suppose there could be people who are too preoccupied with their lives to take much notice.. it doesn't seem likely that anyone other than a highly cynical bastard would deny that it is amazing that humans could reach another planet - and even if he does deny that it is cool, he's probably lying;)
Nah I was just trying to think of an example where it would be preferable to control imports, but I guess it is different because it's the receiver blocking imports rather than the sender blocking exports..
There are certainly white people in South Africa, though the conditions may be a bit better there. I'd say being brought up in a third world country makes someone a 'third world person', not the colour of their skin.
The all white countries have plenty of troubles too, just because people bring in different issues doesn't mean that they are any less worthy of life, or even being in America than all the other Americans who have only got there relatively recently as well. I'm sure the native americans were happier without all those pesky white folks.
I'm not from the US btw. My country isn't being destroyed by immigrants. There are plenty of them but everything seems okay to me at the moment. I'm not scared of being called a racist, because I'm not racist. I don't like political correctness much either, but putting someone into a category just because of their skin colour is dumb. There are plenty of white scum in the UK, just as there are scummy people in Africa (most of them in government or militia cells..). You're pretty retarded if you think that a society, nation and even a continent will never change or develop. There is plenty of pointless in-fighting in Africa, once they sort that out then they will be able to get on with living life.
I'm not the one who says that black people automatically are gang-bangers who beat up kids, I kind of think that makes you the asshole. The whole ghetto culture is pretty sucky, and there are plenty of black racists too who don't like people just for being white, but there are plenty of problems with predominantly white societies as well. I certainly wouldn't want to live in the deep south with all those bigoted assholes around.. scared of anything that is 'different', whether that's blacks, gays, whatever..
Hmm so basically you are moving slower but light still seems to be going at the speed of light? What would happen if you shone the light back in the opposite direction? Everything would still appear to be the same as when you are at a standstill?
I didn't mean that any life forms on Mars specifically would benefit us technologically, just that it may give us more info on the conditions that life needs to start or survive. The existence of evolving beings on another planet would do a lot to change the views of some religious groups (despite what the Roman Catholic church was saying about aliens recently). We are developing our own tech at an amazing rate - it wasn't that long after we flew the first plane that we landed on the moon! So why do you not think that we or another race will not eventually develop technology for faster than light travel, or at least long term space travel? The possibility of meeting aliens in the vastness of space is pretty slim I admit, but I wouldn't call it 'pure fantasy'. The chances of us being the most advanced race in the universe aren't that great if we find out that life exists on other planets too. While finding life on Mars doesn't change the odds of finding life on other planets, it gives us a slightly better idea as to what those odds are.
Well, the company I work for is building a 1MW tidal turbine that is around 25 metres tall, not sure exactly how large the vent is, but to me that says that solar energy is pretty diffuse compared to the tides. Sunlight isn't that predictable during the day either unless you can get rid of all the clouds?
Well, general purpose cores aren't the best for graphics processing, you want massively parallel floating point calculation and very fast buffers for graphics stuff - specialised graphics hardware will likely always give better bang for your buck.
Yeah I mentioned that in another post, I did already get that. I guess that's why I said 'legal' instead of legal up there too. I don't think they should be allowed to stifle a free market in that way for things like music and video. When it comes to more dangerous stuff like vehicles I guess you'd want to be pretty stringent about what you let into the country, but I can't see a good case for limiting entertainment imports.
Yeah, people saying stuff like that is always pretty funny and depressing at the same time. The consumers just keep lapping it up.. even companies that you'd think would be fairly tech-savvy seem to fall for this stuff - I remember when the Wii came out it had some kind of encryption on the CPU output to stop modchips piggybacking onto it, but that must have been cracked too as when I see comments about people modding their Wiis, I'm pretty sure they're referring to the consoles. The PS3's babysitting OS also doesn't let Linux on the PS3 use 3D acceleration - I'd like to see someone crack that open:)
Fair enough. Playback protection IMO should be illegal as they're just trying to exploit certain markets by charging them far more than would be acceptable or affordable in other markets. Letting the market choose shouldn't really be illegal, at least in the case of entertainment. Other things like food could maybe affect the economy or stability of a country (if you are expecting to go to war then you'll probably be wanting to grow your own food!)
Yes, I was thinking about the region coding when I said that. The whole point of region coding is to stop people in certain markets copying and selling cheaply to other markets (for example it's often cheaper to import CDs from the US than buy directly from Amazon.co.uk), it's not because there is something inherently wrong with a westerner watching Anime, or a frenchman watching American blockbusters:p
Probably wasn't me, though I do have a weird fascination with the user IDs:p I can't help but think that those with cooler IDs tend to stick around longer, that may just be because I only notice the interesting ones though. It gets even more interesting when people use numbers for their name too. Someone took the username 24601 already, I don't think I've seen the actual user ID 24601 being used though.
Audio/video copying (at least between formats) is usually a form of playback but with some duplication of the playback results. The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.
Since this is the idle channel and I keep seeing your name/ID popping up I'd like to say how cool I think it is:p I wonder if xa maps to 988 in any way. Anyway, I thought you could specify how important stories from different sections are to you? For example for me the gaming stories show the title but not the summary. I can't even remember what the settings were like when I did that, they may have made them more comprehensive by now.
I suck at mornings, but I'm certainly not fat either:) I did start eating breakfast again a few months ago, though I eat it after I get to work rather than before. I hardly ever 'snack' but I do have food quite late in the evenings sometimes.
Come to think of it, the summer when I was best at getting up early for work, was a time when I used to have breakfast (porridge at the time) at home.. interesting. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day!?
I agree overall, I used to think that upgrading my GPU would be the most important thing back when I had my 1GHz Athlon, though eventually when that machine fried, I found out that a faster CPU enabled me to get the most out of my GPU. It's back to the stage again where any 2GHz dual core CPU should be fast enough for anyone with the current generation of games and apps, but I'm sure they'll find some more interesting uses for CPU power in the next few years. The way things are going, maybe everything will keep converging until all processors are highly parallelisable units equally capable of amazing graphics and general calculations.. and including all of the traditional motherboard chipset on the die as well:p
Nah, landing on another planet has got to be cool to ANYONE that has ever seen the sky at night, surely:) I mean some people may have more important issues to worry about, like where their next meal is coming from.. and personally I can't imagine a guy standing on the barren face of Mars being all that interesting to watch, but just the fact that it is happening seems to have some kind of significance for any human:)
Not really, wouldn't the point be to get extra mineral resources and such? We're going to need more metals at some point. And we're going to need space to expand, since that's what we seem to do best. We should do it as soon as we can, and start trying to terraform the place:) Technically there's no point in anything if we're not going to be around to see it, but I guess the nice thing to do is to try and make things more interesting for our descendants:p
such a discovery on Earth would be just as exciting Not really.. we already know that earth has good conditions for life. There are plenty of 'utterly alien' lifeforms in the ocean, though perhaps not many 'advanced' ones. At least there are none that sit there smoking cigars, sipping merleau and debating philosophy..
Any finding on another planet would be exciting as it means that there is a chance that there are other developed races like ours. There are certainly no other civilsations other than human ones on earth.. apart from maybe Oompa Loompas living down near the earth's core. Life existing in other places could be more advanced and intelligent than humans.. they could also be far behind in terms of intelligence (which in this case I'd mostly measure by ability to use tools, in combination with being able to communicate ideas, enabling lifeforms to create ever more complex technology). Any new lifeform we find on earth isn't likely to be able to share interesting technological ideas with us.
Why is it disturbing? Do all aliens have to be feared? Anything evidence of live that we find on Mars is going to be very primitive IMO. If there was every anything more advanced living there then surely there would be more obvious evidence of it?
I wonder if we ourselves will become the race that goes from planet to planet destroying the natural inhabitants to steal their resources:s
Yeah because our overlords are all hiding in underground bunkers on Mars, giggling away and waiting for the moment that a crew lands on Mars, when they will then shout "SURPRIIIISE!" or the equivalent and turn them into their BDSM slaves. The aliens will then fail miserably to try to get back to Earth in whatever craft the crew were sent out in. Unless perhaps they become masters of the art of duck/duct tape.
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Quite possibly, but I thought it was just an innate human thing to be in awe of a starry sky? I mean I can understand that some people aren't interested in computers, cars, music, whatever. I suppose there could be people who are too preoccupied with their lives to take much notice.. it doesn't seem likely that anyone other than a highly cynical bastard would deny that it is amazing that humans could reach another planet - and even if he does deny that it is cool, he's probably lying ;)
Nah I was just trying to think of an example where it would be preferable to control imports, but I guess it is different because it's the receiver blocking imports rather than the sender blocking exports..
There are certainly white people in South Africa, though the conditions may be a bit better there. I'd say being brought up in a third world country makes someone a 'third world person', not the colour of their skin.
The all white countries have plenty of troubles too, just because people bring in different issues doesn't mean that they are any less worthy of life, or even being in America than all the other Americans who have only got there relatively recently as well. I'm sure the native americans were happier without all those pesky white folks.
I'm not from the US btw. My country isn't being destroyed by immigrants. There are plenty of them but everything seems okay to me at the moment. I'm not scared of being called a racist, because I'm not racist. I don't like political correctness much either, but putting someone into a category just because of their skin colour is dumb. There are plenty of white scum in the UK, just as there are scummy people in Africa (most of them in government or militia cells..). You're pretty retarded if you think that a society, nation and even a continent will never change or develop. There is plenty of pointless in-fighting in Africa, once they sort that out then they will be able to get on with living life.
I'm not the one who says that black people automatically are gang-bangers who beat up kids, I kind of think that makes you the asshole. The whole ghetto culture is pretty sucky, and there are plenty of black racists too who don't like people just for being white, but there are plenty of problems with predominantly white societies as well. I certainly wouldn't want to live in the deep south with all those bigoted assholes around.. scared of anything that is 'different', whether that's blacks, gays, whatever..
Hmm so basically you are moving slower but light still seems to be going at the speed of light? What would happen if you shone the light back in the opposite direction? Everything would still appear to be the same as when you are at a standstill?
I didn't mean that any life forms on Mars specifically would benefit us technologically, just that it may give us more info on the conditions that life needs to start or survive. The existence of evolving beings on another planet would do a lot to change the views of some religious groups (despite what the Roman Catholic church was saying about aliens recently). We are developing our own tech at an amazing rate - it wasn't that long after we flew the first plane that we landed on the moon! So why do you not think that we or another race will not eventually develop technology for faster than light travel, or at least long term space travel? The possibility of meeting aliens in the vastness of space is pretty slim I admit, but I wouldn't call it 'pure fantasy'. The chances of us being the most advanced race in the universe aren't that great if we find out that life exists on other planets too. While finding life on Mars doesn't change the odds of finding life on other planets, it gives us a slightly better idea as to what those odds are.
It's cloudy in Scotland, you insensitive clod!
:)
Actually, the weather has been really nice here for a couple of weeks now
Well, the company I work for is building a 1MW tidal turbine that is around 25 metres tall, not sure exactly how large the vent is, but to me that says that solar energy is pretty diffuse compared to the tides. Sunlight isn't that predictable during the day either unless you can get rid of all the clouds?
Well, general purpose cores aren't the best for graphics processing, you want massively parallel floating point calculation and very fast buffers for graphics stuff - specialised graphics hardware will likely always give better bang for your buck.
Not really.. http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/hackersextractedwiisencryptionkeys.shtml . There is encryption on the chip, it's just that they managed to get the keys so that they can sign any code they want and run it on the processor. Sad that (presumably) some of the CPUs resources are being wasted on decryption.
Yeah I mentioned that in another post, I did already get that. I guess that's why I said 'legal' instead of legal up there too. I don't think they should be allowed to stifle a free market in that way for things like music and video. When it comes to more dangerous stuff like vehicles I guess you'd want to be pretty stringent about what you let into the country, but I can't see a good case for limiting entertainment imports.
Yeah, people saying stuff like that is always pretty funny and depressing at the same time. The consumers just keep lapping it up.. even companies that you'd think would be fairly tech-savvy seem to fall for this stuff - I remember when the Wii came out it had some kind of encryption on the CPU output to stop modchips piggybacking onto it, but that must have been cracked too as when I see comments about people modding their Wiis, I'm pretty sure they're referring to the consoles. The PS3's babysitting OS also doesn't let Linux on the PS3 use 3D acceleration - I'd like to see someone crack that open :)
Fair enough. Playback protection IMO should be illegal as they're just trying to exploit certain markets by charging them far more than would be acceptable or affordable in other markets. Letting the market choose shouldn't really be illegal, at least in the case of entertainment. Other things like food could maybe affect the economy or stability of a country (if you are expecting to go to war then you'll probably be wanting to grow your own food!)
Yes, I was thinking about the region coding when I said that. The whole point of region coding is to stop people in certain markets copying and selling cheaply to other markets (for example it's often cheaper to import CDs from the US than buy directly from Amazon.co.uk), it's not because there is something inherently wrong with a westerner watching Anime, or a frenchman watching American blockbusters :p
Probably wasn't me, though I do have a weird fascination with the user IDs :p I can't help but think that those with cooler IDs tend to stick around longer, that may just be because I only notice the interesting ones though. It gets even more interesting when people use numbers for their name too. Someone took the username 24601 already, I don't think I've seen the actual user ID 24601 being used though.
Audio/video copying (at least between formats) is usually a form of playback but with some duplication of the playback results. The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.
No no no! They obviously mean Counter Strike: Source
Since this is the idle channel and I keep seeing your name/ID popping up I'd like to say how cool I think it is :p I wonder if xa maps to 988 in any way. Anyway, I thought you could specify how important stories from different sections are to you? For example for me the gaming stories show the title but not the summary. I can't even remember what the settings were like when I did that, they may have made them more comprehensive by now.
I suck at mornings, but I'm certainly not fat either :) I did start eating breakfast again a few months ago, though I eat it after I get to work rather than before. I hardly ever 'snack' but I do have food quite late in the evenings sometimes.
Come to think of it, the summer when I was best at getting up early for work, was a time when I used to have breakfast (porridge at the time) at home.. interesting. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day!?
I agree overall, I used to think that upgrading my GPU would be the most important thing back when I had my 1GHz Athlon, though eventually when that machine fried, I found out that a faster CPU enabled me to get the most out of my GPU. It's back to the stage again where any 2GHz dual core CPU should be fast enough for anyone with the current generation of games and apps, but I'm sure they'll find some more interesting uses for CPU power in the next few years. The way things are going, maybe everything will keep converging until all processors are highly parallelisable units equally capable of amazing graphics and general calculations.. and including all of the traditional motherboard chipset on the die as well :p
Nah, landing on another planet has got to be cool to ANYONE that has ever seen the sky at night, surely :) I mean some people may have more important issues to worry about, like where their next meal is coming from.. and personally I can't imagine a guy standing on the barren face of Mars being all that interesting to watch, but just the fact that it is happening seems to have some kind of significance for any human :)
Not really, wouldn't the point be to get extra mineral resources and such? We're going to need more metals at some point. And we're going to need space to expand, since that's what we seem to do best. We should do it as soon as we can, and start trying to terraform the place :) Technically there's no point in anything if we're not going to be around to see it, but I guess the nice thing to do is to try and make things more interesting for our descendants :p
Any finding on another planet would be exciting as it means that there is a chance that there are other developed races like ours. There are certainly no other civilsations other than human ones on earth.. apart from maybe Oompa Loompas living down near the earth's core. Life existing in other places could be more advanced and intelligent than humans.. they could also be far behind in terms of intelligence (which in this case I'd mostly measure by ability to use tools, in combination with being able to communicate ideas, enabling lifeforms to create ever more complex technology). Any new lifeform we find on earth isn't likely to be able to share interesting technological ideas with us.
Why is it disturbing? Do all aliens have to be feared? Anything evidence of live that we find on Mars is going to be very primitive IMO. If there was every anything more advanced living there then surely there would be more obvious evidence of it?
:s
I wonder if we ourselves will become the race that goes from planet to planet destroying the natural inhabitants to steal their resources
That's an extremely arrogant view IMO.
Yeah because our overlords are all hiding in underground bunkers on Mars, giggling away and waiting for the moment that a crew lands on Mars, when they will then shout "SURPRIIIISE!" or the equivalent and turn them into their BDSM slaves. The aliens will then fail miserably to try to get back to Earth in whatever craft the crew were sent out in. Unless perhaps they become masters of the art of duck/duct tape.