A camera's just a camera. Sure, a Nikon or Hasselblad will take breathtaking photos, but you can't write books on them. My daughters both have bluetooth keyboards for their tablets, the youngest is using her iPad for college even though she has a laptop.
Apple doesn't have anything to be smug about, period. Phil Schiller is a jerk trying to sell unneeded junk to stupid people. I say "junk" because that's what all machinery eventually becomes.If it does the job you need it to do, you're an idiot for replacing it!
That said, I may buy an iPad. My daughter had hers with her last visit, and it takes REALLY sharp photos.
Chemistry isn't going to be materially different on other planets.
The process of chemistry will be the same, but chemicals may be in different proportions, there are certainly chemicals that don't exist here; they compound new chemicals every year, from drugs to herbicides to fuels, etc. And even on a planet with the exact same chemistry as Earth (Mercury is black because it's covered in carbon) it may need the exact same gravity as Earth, with a satellite exactly like the moon and exactly the same distance so the chemicals will be stirred in the exact same way.
We just don't know -- yet. Maybe the carbon on Mercury's surface is your self-replicating carbon chains.
An atmosphere isn't even necessary, there are extremophiles deep in the oceans. As to Mars, since it was once fit for life, if we find no evidence it was once there that lowers our chances of finding it anywhere.
I'd like to see a lander sent to Europa's oceans. If we don't find life there, there may not be any anywhere.
OTOH we may run across life and not recognise it as such. Not an original idea, SF has discussed this over and over,
We know that life has had billions of years to grow exponentially and once it gets started it's hard to stop, as any hunter or anybody with a weed problem knows, but we have no idea how it began in the first place. But just because it's everywhere on Earth doesn't mean it's everywhere. In fact, the fact that it is everywhere on Earth and we've found no evidence of it anywhere else, so far not even on Mars where it was once hospitable to life, raises the chances that we're it.
That said, I remain agnostic but leaning towards "we're not alone".
You're assuming that the conditions necessary for biogenesis are the same as for life to continue once it happens. I suspect that life is damned hard to get started from dead chemicals but just as hard to stop once it starts.
Thanks for hijacking this thread with an offtopic anti-theist thread that goes on forever. I'd like to discuss the fucking article if you fake nerds don't mind.
This is something I've argued for a long time: WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR LIFE ARE. I'm agnostic on the subject. As far as we know the universe could be teeming with life, but in our galaxy we're the only one. It's possible that, as this guys simulations show, this is the universe's only life.
People THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT AND EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOUR RELIGIOUS COMMENTS ARE OFF TOPIC. This has nothing whatever to do with religion.
Fucking high school dropouts... slashdot is turning into facebook.
My dad was color blind, and he hated that term. âoeI can see colors,â he would say, âoeJust not the same ones as you.â
He was one of the five percent of males with the red/green color blindness, as was his brother Bill. They couldn't tell the difference between red and green at all.
When I was small, stop signs in Illinois were yellow. Dad was mad as hell when they changed all of them to red, because the red stop sign stands out against a green background for most people, but for someone with this type of color deficiency the sign becomes practically invisible when there are green plants around.
He got a ticket for running a red light once in Arizona. For you and me, green means go, red means stop. To him, the light on the top means stop and the light on the bottom means go. They had installed the traffic light upside down! He still had to pay the ticket, even though it was the city's fault that he ran the light.
Now, imagine not color deficiency like my dad had, but a true color blindness, where a truly color blind person could see no color at all, only shades of gray.
Imagine a world where half of the people were truly color blind and could only see gray. How could you describe âoeredâ to such a person? I don't think it's possible; one needs a referent, and there would be none.
People who could see color would know for sure that color exists, even though they couldn't explain color to someone who couldn't see color. But what would a color blind person believe? Probably half, who have half of the people they know able to see color and half who donâ(TM)t telling them that color exists, and they would believe that they were lacking in this useless ability.
A very large percentage of the color blind population would believe that those who believe in color were fools or insane.
âoeProve that your âcolorâ(TM) is real!â
"I can't.â
âoeThen it doesn't exist.â
Now, imagine that God exists. Guess what? He does. I can no more prove that He exists than I can prove that the color red exists. I can prove that the frequency 4Ã--10^14 Hz exists, but I can't prove that I can perceive that frequency as the color red, which is what you want me to prove.
Half of us know God. We donâ(TM)t just believe, we know. We can see his handiwork everywhere, feel his love. Half of us can't, so must either believe me or think I'm full of bovine excrement.
Such is the color of God.
You jest, but that's exactly what happened when the big bang theory was proposed. It matches Genesis, and doesn't in any way match the solid state universe science thought we lived in.
Tried it, hated it, went back to 7 and MS is still nagging me to downgrade to windows 10 (10 is no upgrade). What's with TFS's "will resume"? They never stopped. I'd go Linux-only except all the magazines demand a Word file, and Oo and Lo can't save one properly.
I came here to moderate, but unfortunately slashdot's bug initiation team has made it so I either have to have teeny tiny print or a side scroll. Hey, slashdot, we aren't all using thirty inch monitors! Jesus, even the newspapers (most are the worst sites on the web) don't fuck up this bad.
Really, slashdot, is Dice trying to get rid of you? This is really lame. You really should hang your heads in shame.
See you at Soylent News.
Now, someone else with points please mod me offtopic. Thanks.
No, but he DID speak. This theory is the dumbest theory I've seen coming from someone who should know better for years; it's already been disproven before the dumbass thought of it.
Other apes have language. Prairie dogs have language. Even dogs have language, even though the only three things they say are "I'm hurt", "I'm lonely" and "get off my property before I eat you!" Previous STUDIES have shown this.
Why do these educated morons think vocal cords evolved for in the first place??
Also, the summary is likewise retarded: "If there's one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals, it's our ability to use language."
We may use it better than other species, but this is unproven; whales and dolphins may have more sophisticated language than us, but we can't tell because we can't understand them. It may well be that we're the only species to have abstractions, but that's not proven, either.
Tools aren't even human-only; birds and other animals have been spotted using tools. So what makes us different?
Music, art, and humor. No other species laughs (Hyenas' "laughs" aren't from humor); no other species make art (the elephant doesn't count; do you really think he knows what's going on?), and no other species makes music -- and no, bird "song" isn't music, it's speech (that the idiots coming up with this absurd theory don't understand).
I certainly agree that copyright lengths are way too long, and that the extreme lengths hinder creative expression. I ran across it with Random Scribblings; I had to change Dork Side of the Moon, reducing the lyrics of the two songs to "fair use" snippets, since I can find no way to contact Roger Waters for usage permission. That album is four decades old and should not be under copyright.
You are right, copyright is supposed to encourage creators so their work will belong to everyone after the copyright lapses. How is anyone supposed to get Hendrix or Cocker to perform again?
For movies and video games there is a thousand years worth of public domain sheet music your musicians can perform. You can do anything with Beethoven's music, for instance, that you want. Bend it, shape it, make it fit your game or movie.
That's very true; I spend far more time proofreading and editing than I do writing, but it's like being a bricklayer: the final product is what's important; it's the accomplishment itself that's worthwhile and makes the drudgework part bearable.
If you're writing music that is indeed a concern; I'm sure Seether will be sued for same damned life; its rhythm guitar is note for note identical to the melody to I Will Follow Him (a bad pop song from the early sixties). There's a suit against Led Zeppelin for a guitar riff that sounds vaguely like Stairway to Heaven; I think Zep will win, but it turns out that the guy suing would have had no standing if Zeppelin had never heard the song.
Slashdot Mirror
A camera's just a camera. Sure, a Nikon or Hasselblad will take breathtaking photos, but you can't write books on them. My daughters both have bluetooth keyboards for their tablets, the youngest is using her iPad for college even though she has a laptop.
Apple doesn't have anything to be smug about, period. Phil Schiller is a jerk trying to sell unneeded junk to stupid people. I say "junk" because that's what all machinery eventually becomes.If it does the job you need it to do, you're an idiot for replacing it!
That said, I may buy an iPad. My daughter had hers with her last visit, and it takes REALLY sharp photos.
Chemistry isn't going to be materially different on other planets.
The process of chemistry will be the same, but chemicals may be in different proportions, there are certainly chemicals that don't exist here; they compound new chemicals every year, from drugs to herbicides to fuels, etc. And even on a planet with the exact same chemistry as Earth (Mercury is black because it's covered in carbon) it may need the exact same gravity as Earth, with a satellite exactly like the moon and exactly the same distance so the chemicals will be stirred in the exact same way.
We just don't know -- yet. Maybe the carbon on Mercury's surface is your self-replicating carbon chains.
An atmosphere isn't even necessary, there are extremophiles deep in the oceans. As to Mars, since it was once fit for life, if we find no evidence it was once there that lowers our chances of finding it anywhere.
I'd like to see a lander sent to Europa's oceans. If we don't find life there, there may not be any anywhere.
OTOH we may run across life and not recognise it as such. Not an original idea, SF has discussed this over and over,
We know that life has had billions of years to grow exponentially and once it gets started it's hard to stop, as any hunter or anybody with a weed problem knows, but we have no idea how it began in the first place. But just because it's everywhere on Earth doesn't mean it's everywhere. In fact, the fact that it is everywhere on Earth and we've found no evidence of it anywhere else, so far not even on Mars where it was once hospitable to life, raises the chances that we're it.
That said, I remain agnostic but leaning towards "we're not alone".
Hey! I wrote that book!
You're assuming that the conditions necessary for biogenesis are the same as for life to continue once it happens. I suspect that life is damned hard to get started from dead chemicals but just as hard to stop once it starts.
Thanks for hijacking this thread with an offtopic anti-theist thread that goes on forever. I'd like to discuss the fucking article if you fake nerds don't mind.
This is something I've argued for a long time: WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR LIFE ARE. I'm agnostic on the subject. As far as we know the universe could be teeming with life, but in our galaxy we're the only one. It's possible that, as this guys simulations show, this is the universe's only life.
People THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT AND EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOUR RELIGIOUS COMMENTS ARE OFF TOPIC. This has nothing whatever to do with religion.
Fucking high school dropouts... slashdot is turning into facebook.
My dad was color blind, and he hated that term. âoeI can see colors,â he would say, âoeJust not the same ones as you.â
He was one of the five percent of males with the red/green color blindness, as was his brother Bill. They couldn't tell the difference between red and green at all.
When I was small, stop signs in Illinois were yellow. Dad was mad as hell when they changed all of them to red, because the red stop sign stands out against a green background for most people, but for someone with this type of color deficiency the sign becomes practically invisible when there are green plants around.
He got a ticket for running a red light once in Arizona. For you and me, green means go, red means stop. To him, the light on the top means stop and the light on the bottom means go. They had installed the traffic light upside down! He still had to pay the ticket, even though it was the city's fault that he ran the light.
Now, imagine not color deficiency like my dad had, but a true color blindness, where a truly color blind person could see no color at all, only shades of gray.
Imagine a world where half of the people were truly color blind and could only see gray. How could you describe âoeredâ to such a person? I don't think it's possible; one needs a referent, and there would be none.
People who could see color would know for sure that color exists, even though they couldn't explain color to someone who couldn't see color. But what would a color blind person believe? Probably half, who have half of the people they know able to see color and half who donâ(TM)t telling them that color exists, and they would believe that they were lacking in this useless ability.
A very large percentage of the color blind population would believe that those who believe in color were fools or insane.
âoeProve that your âcolorâ(TM) is real!â
"I can't.â
âoeThen it doesn't exist.â
Now, imagine that God exists. Guess what? He does. I can no more prove that He exists than I can prove that the color red exists. I can prove that the frequency 4Ã--10^14 Hz exists, but I can't prove that I can perceive that frequency as the color red, which is what you want me to prove.
Half of us know God. We donâ(TM)t just believe, we know. We can see his handiwork everywhere, feel his love. Half of us can't, so must either believe me or think I'm full of bovine excrement.
Such is the color of God.
You jest, but that's exactly what happened when the big bang theory was proposed. It matches Genesis, and doesn't in any way match the solid state universe science thought we lived in.
Well, of course. It may indeed be of help to Doctor Hawking.
Indeed, this would only be helpful to someone who could neither type nor speak. It seems that writing this way would be very time consuming.
I have better things to do with my time than google how to fix Microsoft's fuckups.
Tried it, hated it, went back to 7 and MS is still nagging me to downgrade to windows 10 (10 is no upgrade). What's with TFS's "will resume"? They never stopped. I'd go Linux-only except all the magazines demand a Word file, and Oo and Lo can't save one properly.
I hope English is your second language. Meet Bob.
The plural of company is companies.
Since when is "questionable" a synonym for "evil"?
I came here to moderate, but unfortunately slashdot's bug initiation team has made it so I either have to have teeny tiny print or a side scroll. Hey, slashdot, we aren't all using thirty inch monitors! Jesus, even the newspapers (most are the worst sites on the web) don't fuck up this bad.
Really, slashdot, is Dice trying to get rid of you? This is really lame. You really should hang your heads in shame.
See you at Soylent News.
Now, someone else with points please mod me offtopic. Thanks.
No, but he DID speak. This theory is the dumbest theory I've seen coming from someone who should know better for years; it's already been disproven before the dumbass thought of it.
Other apes have language. Prairie dogs have language. Even dogs have language, even though the only three things they say are "I'm hurt", "I'm lonely" and "get off my property before I eat you!" Previous STUDIES have shown this.
Why do these educated morons think vocal cords evolved for in the first place??
Also, the summary is likewise retarded: "If there's one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals, it's our ability to use language."
We may use it better than other species, but this is unproven; whales and dolphins may have more sophisticated language than us, but we can't tell because we can't understand them. It may well be that we're the only species to have abstractions, but that's not proven, either.
Tools aren't even human-only; birds and other animals have been spotted using tools. So what makes us different?
Music, art, and humor. No other species laughs (Hyenas' "laughs" aren't from humor); no other species make art (the elephant doesn't count; do you really think he knows what's going on?), and no other species makes music -- and no, bird "song" isn't music, it's speech (that the idiots coming up with this absurd theory don't understand).
I certainly agree that copyright lengths are way too long, and that the extreme lengths hinder creative expression. I ran across it with Random Scribblings; I had to change Dork Side of the Moon, reducing the lyrics of the two songs to "fair use" snippets, since I can find no way to contact Roger Waters for usage permission. That album is four decades old and should not be under copyright.
You are right, copyright is supposed to encourage creators so their work will belong to everyone after the copyright lapses. How is anyone supposed to get Hendrix or Cocker to perform again?
It does add challenges to creativity.
I suspect a long period of suffering by most, followed by a French revolution style bloodbath.
For movies and video games there is a thousand years worth of public domain sheet music your musicians can perform. You can do anything with Beethoven's music, for instance, that you want. Bend it, shape it, make it fit your game or movie.
That's very true; I spend far more time proofreading and editing than I do writing, but it's like being a bricklayer: the final product is what's important; it's the accomplishment itself that's worthwhile and makes the drudgework part bearable.
I'm not saying that everyone will have to grow their own food; robots will do the planting, tending, harvesting, and transportation.
The elephant in the room is that capitalism will collapse; in a robotic society, the only workable government will be communism.
If you're writing music that is indeed a concern; I'm sure Seether will be sued for same damned life; its rhythm guitar is note for note identical to the melody to I Will Follow Him (a bad pop song from the early sixties). There's a suit against Led Zeppelin for a guitar riff that sounds vaguely like Stairway to Heaven; I think Zep will win, but it turns out that the guy suing would have had no standing if Zeppelin had never heard the song.
Other art forms don't have that problem.
How is that any different than someone who builds a house and rents it out forever? Or me, after 27 years I'm retired and no longer have to work.
That said, I agree copyrights are WAY too long.