Perhaps what is needed in highly populated areas is a peer to peer wifi network. Something that makes use of people's cell phones and wireless network devices on laptops and desktops.
I was more referring to small java apps or the such. When I was living in South America my bank over there had a website where you entered your pin via a number pad on the website, only the number pad kept on re-ordering itself randomly so that the numbers all changed their locations, so it would have been quite hard to write any sort of logger to capture that data.
"Second, there are light speed, distances vs. gravitiy issues where the spacecraft are NOT WHERE WE EXPECT THEM TO BE based on the equations we have to calculate for that. In other words, basic, fundamental cosmological questions can be pondered using these things"
Sounds very interesting, can you point us to some sources / further reading?
Yes and that nukes are made not to be used theory is a fine idea until the one time where they are actually used. That's basically going to be the end of history. I can see your point of view, and do agree that nukes are probably what kept the two superpowers from going to war during the cold war, but I can't see that an all loving god would bless either the military or weapons of mass destruction, and more so one particular nation's military.
I could be wrong though. The Bible, especially the first part does have examples of God taking sides in bloody battles. I though Jesus changed all that though.
Almost: Organic chemistry refers to the chemistry of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen etc yes. Things on this planet that are alive, animals, plants etc are alive and their chemistry is organic. Some life form based on another set of atoms would not be organic and yet be alive.
So not everything that is alive is necessarily organic, and not everything that is organic is necessarily alive.
"An extremely low probability is not an impossibility, of course."
I guess that's all I was saying. In the real world of course there is no such thing as probability. Given a certain sequence of events and iterations take place life will occur. In that sense life is not a probability, but a certainty - given the right conditions.
The probability comes into the equation because we don't know what those conditions are. Otherwise we'd be making iLife (TM) in the lab right now. However likley or unlikley it is to happen from what we can see around us it has only happned once on this planet.
Some of the moons of the various planets might be interesting places to look for life though...
What has originality got to do with anything? Who cares about originality, this is just a discussion, and a slashdot one at that.
Yes, perhaps life has evolved many times but through some process(es) *all* the evidence has been removed. Perhaps... but if we're talking one-in-a-million chances you'd expect to see that life on Earth to have multiple origins, rather than the single origin we seem to have.
Slashdot Mirror
What is a 'moment' of time? Is it like an 'atom' of space? Is there a fundamental unit of time?
That's assuming that you can't be in two places at the one time without knowing about it. That's also assuming a lot about time that we don't know.
Perhaps what is needed in highly populated areas is a peer to peer wifi network. Something that makes use of people's cell phones and wireless network devices on laptops and desktops.
Sociopaths as a rule would be selected against. They have less ability to cooperate and thus survive.
Man invents God, who discovers time travel, goes back and invents man?
I was more referring to small java apps or the such. When I was living in South America my bank over there had a website where you entered your pin via a number pad on the website, only the number pad kept on re-ordering itself randomly so that the numbers all changed their locations, so it would have been quite hard to write any sort of logger to capture that data.
Sad times when the discussion about the media and file format is more interesting than the content that they carry.
I predict the sudden rise of on-screen keypads, operated via the mouse.
Another reason was that with ICQ you had to remember some 8 or 9 digit number to access your account. With MSN all you needed was your email address.
"Second, there are light speed, distances vs. gravitiy issues where the spacecraft are NOT WHERE WE EXPECT THEM TO BE based on the equations we have to calculate for that. In other words, basic, fundamental cosmological questions can be pondered using these things"
Sounds very interesting, can you point us to some sources / further reading?
Yes and that nukes are made not to be used theory is a fine idea until the one time where they are actually used. That's basically going to be the end of history. I can see your point of view, and do agree that nukes are probably what kept the two superpowers from going to war during the cold war, but I can't see that an all loving god would bless either the military or weapons of mass destruction, and more so one particular nation's military.
I could be wrong though. The Bible, especially the first part does have examples of God taking sides in bloody battles. I though Jesus changed all that though.
True, but why would god bless such things?
"God Bless America, and God Bless the US Navy."
You sound like a religious nut.
God bless nuclear weapons... sure.
At least artificial life will know that they have no god.
I saw a fucking dictionary once...
What was it called??
Oh yeah, the Kama Sutra.
In the USA you could have had all this (zero cost at point of service medicine for everyone). They decided to have a war in Iraq instead.
Really? Pascal used to start arrays at 1? Man I have a bad memory...
The first real programming language I learned was Pascal.
I think he's taunting visual basic coders.
Nooooooo, he was talking about 19th century London, when people wore top hats and walked with canes, and spontaneously burst into song and dance.
;-)
I'd spend all that money making Linux native versions of applications like Photoshop, Office and the like.
Almost: Organic chemistry refers to the chemistry of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen etc yes. Things on this planet that are alive, animals, plants etc are alive and their chemistry is organic. Some life form based on another set of atoms would not be organic and yet be alive.
So not everything that is alive is necessarily organic, and not everything that is organic is necessarily alive.
FYI, I think the char you were looking for is ^. You use that to represent superscript when on old style text interfaces:
eg. x^2
Does it really matter that kids listen to crap quality recordings of crap music?
"An extremely low probability is not an impossibility, of course."
I guess that's all I was saying. In the real world of course there is no such thing as probability. Given a certain sequence of events and iterations take place life will occur. In that sense life is not a probability, but a certainty - given the right conditions.
The probability comes into the equation because we don't know what those conditions are. Otherwise we'd be making iLife (TM) in the lab right now. However likley or unlikley it is to happen from what we can see around us it has only happned once on this planet.
Some of the moons of the various planets might be interesting places to look for life though...
What has originality got to do with anything? Who cares about originality, this is just a discussion, and a slashdot one at that.
Yes, perhaps life has evolved many times but through some process(es) *all* the evidence has been removed. Perhaps... but if we're talking one-in-a-million chances you'd expect to see that life on Earth to have multiple origins, rather than the single origin we seem to have.