Plus, a lot of time would be wasted explaining & investigating things that "look suspicious". We learned that already from the DNC leak fiasco: people with agendas add some creative context to ordinary work lingo, requiring investigation and/or formal explaining and other time-consuming endeavors.
Troubleshooters often need wide ranging interdisciplinary knowledge.
Around here they don't. Their algorithm is simple:
1. Clear browser cache, if not work then... 2. Reboot, if not work then... 3. Google for a solution, if not work then... 4. Delete and re-create user profile, if not work then... 5. Re-baseline the PC, if not work then... 6. Blame it on the software vendor
Indeed. A couple of times I sent a message posing as a random user/customer complaining about the UI. Ironically they often listen more to customers/users than somebody with years of IT experience dealing with customers/users and UI's. Sometimes I get snarky: "Your main screen has too many options and icons; it looks like Liberace's Xmas tree. Move some menus to separate pages."
Most foods are edible way past it's printed expiration date and if it's expired it turns weird colors and smells bad and we have very much evolved noses particularly sensitive to the byproducts of wasting food
I once tested this theory on a 5 year old jar of pickles (newly opened). I got sick so friggen fast. If you believe the above, go ahead and look directly at the sun also.
I don't think it's healthy to eat mold, at least not in volume.
"Foods that are moldy may also have invisible bacteria growing along with the mold. Yes, some molds cause allergic reactions and respiratory problems. And a few molds, in the right conditions, produce "mycotoxins," poisonous substances that can make you sick."
I actually think it is unlikely that even a much more technologically advanced civilization than us would pay any attention to random interstellar detritus [entering system]...there's way too much random junk out there to worry about
That could change if there's a war or terrorists trying to sneak dangerous things through. Scanning may be expensive, but sometimes worth it. Voyager's high metallicity may stand out in such scans.
...if you were to send the largest thing made by humans through the densest part of the Asteroid belt, in all likelihood it would encounter nothing but a few stray atoms...Our mental pictures of space are corrupted by science fiction
C3PO's risk computations are fake news! No wonder Han told him to STFU.
In general defense of sci-fi, they tend to hang out where the "interesting stuff" is, not average space. Even my actual desk is not average (typical) space. Voyager just happens to be a proverbial hillbilly.
The thing we designed several decades ago is estimated to last over a billion years, do you really think we'd do better than that today? Sure maybe we could do the same thing for cheaper (though that may not be the case either to be honest) but I doubt we'd do something that has more longevity.
That's what I'm wondering. The Voyager disk has "wasted material" that is used for merely structural integrity. If every portion of the recording disk/object had info encoded into it, then perhaps it could have more info and/or more redundancy. I'm thinking of some kind of crystal or crystal like structure. Let's say the record had to be no more than 2 ounces in weight. Then you make a crystalline structure(s) where every spot in the 2-ounce crystal encodes data, not just the surface of a disk.
Although the Voyager disk bumps in the groves are rather large by today's "bit-size standards," they are still at risk by not having redundancy. If a micrometeorite hits and makes a 5mm hole in that disk, the info at that hole is gone. But if the same data were repeated in a different portion of the recording substance, there'd be spare copy. A micrometeorite or radiation event would have to hit both to remove all copies. With enough copies, maybe it would last for say 3 billion years instead of 1 (per equivalent data loss). What's the best balance of bit size and redundancy to get the most longevity?
Suppose you had a billion dollars today to make something of equivalent weight and size of the Voyager disk. What would you do different to increase the data capacity and/or longevity?
But the etching choices are probably better now than they were in the 1970's, at least cheaper for NASA/JPL. One can buy laser-etched rocks/glass/metal at consumer prices now, for example. That kind of thing was very expensive in the 70's. In that sense we have progressed.
But I agree that it's different technology and/or a different problem from consumer-oriented products. Longevity is not a consumer manufacture's key concern, and they have thus sacrificed that factor to gain in others. We could say technology has given manufactures more ways to cut corners.
These silly cycles are great for job security*, but it's like eating Chinese food: you don't feel satisfied after a couple of hours. Let Sisyphus enjoy the rock resting at the top for a little while sometimes.
* Until the econ crashes and nobody wants to pay for upgrades anymore, firing half the staff.
It seems IT is moving this way also. In the past, in-house apps were typically developed by app-dedicated teams. Now with MVC and similar architectures, the trend seems to be "layer specialists"; with UI experts, DB experts, security/user-role experts, etc. dedicated to that layer, and more detached from the domain. The jack-of-all-trades developers in general don't seem to be able to keep up with the latest UI trends and fads, and proverbial books are judged by their covers for good or bad.
Or is this maybe internal IT trying to mirror startup trends out of habit and/or a keep-up-with-Jones's thinking? If they pick something that's more practical but less up-to-date, will they lose staff who are afraid of not keeping up? Seems IT moves almost as fast as the fashion industry these days.
This also opens the door to charlatans who hype stuff and make PHB's fear being left behind. IT in practice often is not about cold rational logic and evidence, but involves the sociology of bullshit and FUD.
[...re-do it today if we could come up with better media?] probably something that [doesn't] degrades to unreadable before it leaves our solar system.
Fat chunky "bits" does help longevity. Cosmic rays and faster-than-bullet dust will pummel the disk or any medium. If the info were more compact, then redundancy may be needed to fill in the gaps caused by such space weather. If you get too clever with packaging, the aliens may not be able to figure it out or maybe won't have the patience for "puzzles".
Perhaps the info could be digitally etched into chips made of a tough material, such as platinum or diamond, and add redundancy. They could then be stacked but with something soft in between the layers so they don't fuse over time.
It would be an interesting calculation to see if larger bits or more redundancy on smaller bits gives such chips the greatest survival chance, per volume of info. What's the optimum bit-size/redundancy mix? (Based on expected damage patterns.)
The aliens might be used to 8-track tapes and think the disk is merely a Frisbee;-) (Included is a diagram on how to play it, along with a needle, by the way.)
I do agree if they spend a reasonable amount of time analyzing it, they'd eventually figure out how to "play" it; but the finders may not be so motivated, perhaps because they are in a hurry or have very limited resources when they find it.
Suppose you were wandering in the desert with a small group and your trip has been rough such that you are short of resources. You may encounter a great artifact from antiquity, but you may just toss it aside being you risk draining too many resources to carry and/or analyze it.
God has a backup in his multi-verse forks, but won't share the password with humans. Although, I hear somebody found an old version of Uranus using the password "Covfefe".
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, a lot of time would be wasted explaining & investigating things that "look suspicious". We learned that already from the DNC leak fiasco: people with agendas add some creative context to ordinary work lingo, requiring investigation and/or formal explaining and other time-consuming endeavors.
"Uranus is beautiful!"
Around here they don't. Their algorithm is simple:
1. Clear browser cache, if not work then...
2. Reboot, if not work then...
3. Google for a solution, if not work then...
4. Delete and re-create user profile, if not work then...
5. Re-baseline the PC, if not work then...
6. Blame it on the software vendor
Indeed. A couple of times I sent a message posing as a random user/customer complaining about the UI. Ironically they often listen more to customers/users than somebody with years of IT experience dealing with customers/users and UI's. Sometimes I get snarky: "Your main screen has too many options and icons; it looks like Liberace's Xmas tree. Move some menus to separate pages."
At least you have the pleasure of knowing you have no taxes and no regulations as the saber-tooth tiger gulps you down. Make Caves Great Again!
Some local govt's require the requester to pay for the cost of searching. This reduces frivolous requests, but also favors wealthy requesters.
In civilization you don't get 100% control over everything. Go back to caves or deal.
I once tested this theory on a 5 year old jar of pickles (newly opened). I got sick so friggen fast. If you believe the above, go ahead and look directly at the sun also.
FTFY
I don't think it's healthy to eat mold, at least not in volume.
"Foods that are moldy may also have invisible bacteria growing along with the mold. Yes, some molds cause allergic reactions and respiratory problems. And a few molds, in the right conditions, produce "mycotoxins," poisonous substances that can make you sick."
( https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/... )
That could change if there's a war or terrorists trying to sneak dangerous things through. Scanning may be expensive, but sometimes worth it. Voyager's high metallicity may stand out in such scans.
C3PO's risk computations are fake news! No wonder Han told him to STFU.
In general defense of sci-fi, they tend to hang out where the "interesting stuff" is, not average space. Even my actual desk is not average (typical) space. Voyager just happens to be a proverbial hillbilly.
At that point the probe should be renamed from "Voyager" to "Comcast".
That's what I'm wondering. The Voyager disk has "wasted material" that is used for merely structural integrity. If every portion of the recording disk/object had info encoded into it, then perhaps it could have more info and/or more redundancy. I'm thinking of some kind of crystal or crystal like structure. Let's say the record had to be no more than 2 ounces in weight. Then you make a crystalline structure(s) where every spot in the 2-ounce crystal encodes data, not just the surface of a disk.
Although the Voyager disk bumps in the groves are rather large by today's "bit-size standards," they are still at risk by not having redundancy. If a micrometeorite hits and makes a 5mm hole in that disk, the info at that hole is gone. But if the same data were repeated in a different portion of the recording substance, there'd be spare copy. A micrometeorite or radiation event would have to hit both to remove all copies. With enough copies, maybe it would last for say 3 billion years instead of 1 (per equivalent data loss). What's the best balance of bit size and redundancy to get the most longevity?
Suppose you had a billion dollars today to make something of equivalent weight and size of the Voyager disk. What would you do different to increase the data capacity and/or longevity?
Just don't make my cheese IOT. I don't want a hacker tricking me into eating mold if I get lazy, drunk, and/or Monday'd.
But the etching choices are probably better now than they were in the 1970's, at least cheaper for NASA/JPL. One can buy laser-etched rocks/glass/metal at consumer prices now, for example. That kind of thing was very expensive in the 70's. In that sense we have progressed.
But I agree that it's different technology and/or a different problem from consumer-oriented products. Longevity is not a consumer manufacture's key concern, and they have thus sacrificed that factor to gain in others. We could say technology has given manufactures more ways to cut corners.
These silly cycles are great for job security*, but it's like eating Chinese food: you don't feel satisfied after a couple of hours. Let Sisyphus enjoy the rock resting at the top for a little while sometimes.
* Until the econ crashes and nobody wants to pay for upgrades anymore, firing half the staff.
It seems IT is moving this way also. In the past, in-house apps were typically developed by app-dedicated teams. Now with MVC and similar architectures, the trend seems to be "layer specialists"; with UI experts, DB experts, security/user-role experts, etc. dedicated to that layer, and more detached from the domain. The jack-of-all-trades developers in general don't seem to be able to keep up with the latest UI trends and fads, and proverbial books are judged by their covers for good or bad.
Or is this maybe internal IT trying to mirror startup trends out of habit and/or a keep-up-with-Jones's thinking? If they pick something that's more practical but less up-to-date, will they lose staff who are afraid of not keeping up? Seems IT moves almost as fast as the fashion industry these days.
This also opens the door to charlatans who hype stuff and make PHB's fear being left behind. IT in practice often is not about cold rational logic and evidence, but involves the sociology of bullshit and FUD.
Fat chunky "bits" does help longevity. Cosmic rays and faster-than-bullet dust will pummel the disk or any medium. If the info were more compact, then redundancy may be needed to fill in the gaps caused by such space weather. If you get too clever with packaging, the aliens may not be able to figure it out or maybe won't have the patience for "puzzles".
Perhaps the info could be digitally etched into chips made of a tough material, such as platinum or diamond, and add redundancy. They could then be stacked but with something soft in between the layers so they don't fuse over time.
It would be an interesting calculation to see if larger bits or more redundancy on smaller bits gives such chips the greatest survival chance, per volume of info. What's the optimum bit-size/redundancy mix? (Based on expected damage patterns.)
The aliens might be used to 8-track tapes and think the disk is merely a Frisbee ;-) (Included is a diagram on how to play it, along with a needle, by the way.)
I do agree if they spend a reasonable amount of time analyzing it, they'd eventually figure out how to "play" it; but the finders may not be so motivated, perhaps because they are in a hurry or have very limited resources when they find it.
Suppose you were wandering in the desert with a small group and your trip has been rough such that you are short of resources. You may encounter a great artifact from antiquity, but you may just toss it aside being you risk draining too many resources to carry and/or analyze it.
Dear aliens, humans often argue over different interpretations involving our vague spoken languages. Please ignore.
The Nigerian Prince still offers it. Just keep an eye on your inbox for an announcement.
FoxPro, best tool ever for ad-hoc data chomping.
God has a backup in his multi-verse forks, but won't share the password with humans. Although, I hear somebody found an old version of Uranus using the password "Covfefe".
I submitted a patent-inspector-one-slap patent.