Does anyone pick up a book about terraforming Mars to listen to people argue for hundreds of pages that it shouldn't be terraformed, because it should be preserved in it's natural state?
I pick up a book for a good story, and the Mars series provided such a story. Do you think that colonizing Mars for real is going to be some kind of fairytale where everything goes according to plan and people live happily ever after?
No, personally I found the books realism was an added bonus. They wouldn't have been as enjoyable if everything went perfectly, human nature will be a huge part of the way that Mars is colonised. It's not often that I find a book that seems to cover both the scientific and the personal areas of the future in as much detail.
My title when I submitted it was a lot less sensational - "NASA machine extracts oxygen on Mars". Theirs was definitely more of an eye-grabber though. And as for the issue of terraforming, algae or bacteria would probably do the trick as long as you set them up to feed off of native material.
Others might respect your trolling, but the only thing that matters in the end is high-karma--and you ain't got it.
I dunno, the trolls are pretty funny and karma is just another game really. Depending on my mood I'll play one or the other. But anyway, this Steven Wosten (and his alter ego, Steven W0sten) really do get people going. And he never comes out of persona either, which is unusual for a troll.
I know I'm not going to get this answered due to the very nature of the question, but I'd still love to know quite how you manage to keep pumping endless amounts of shit out about everything under the sun, and remain in character no matter what people post. And why the Steven W0sten imposter imposters? Damn fine troll anyway:)
Plural subject requires plural predicate... and I would have pluralised 'dog' too, but that's a style issue.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The original post was an imperative, asking everyone and their dog to flame him, not a statement about what happens, so the original poster was correct:)
Fix that indent-based block structure for fuck's sake. The only reason they do it is because it's easier to newbies. Fsck newbies! Well ok not necessarily, but they could at least offer an alternative for us ancient Perl programmers.
They did - a decent programming language:)
Re:As an Englishman ...
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Virtual War
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· Score: 1
As a well-travelled American, I can confidently state that our brutal ignorance of anything that doesn't happen right in front of our faces is one reason why people despise us.
Well, not all of you:) No, you do hit the nail on the head there - there are a lot of Americans who a) don't know and b) don't care about anything outside of their neighbourhood, and yet when their time comes they feel free to spout off about international issues. It's not all of you, hell, it may not be many of you, but it's certainly a loud group, and *really* annoying...
And our next president is...
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Virtual War
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I imagine that would provide us with much different candidates for President than we see now... "Governor Bush? How is your aim compared to the war-trained eye of Senator McCain?"
Come off of it. If Americans had to vote on President based on physical prowess you'd have The Rock in there in no time at all...:)
I don't think that comment is really all that true. In the history of relative research (and in the math behind it) the fact that information can not travel faster than c is the starting point, and all of relativity derives from there.
Yeah, isn't that what I said? It's a postulate, not a piece of data that was proven by experiment. Even though it was used to derive relativity, it does not necessarily have to be true at all. Experimental evidence points to the conclusion that it is, but all it takes is a single piece of proven evidence against it and it'll have to be thrown out.
Note that this does not mean that relativity is wrong, just that it is an approximation to what is really going on. Information at FTL speeds will most likely require quantum effects as well, which is outside of the scope of relativity. Just as Newton's assumption of absolute space and time are fine when using his laws of gravitation, the assumption that information cannot travel faster than c is fine for using Einstein's laws of relativity.
Hmm, I can't remember the exact equation either, but the relevent factor in relativity that differs from Newtonian physics is
gamma = 1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)
which goes to zero when v=c. So relativistic mass increase goes as m = m(rest) * gamma so as v tends to c mass tends towards infinity. Or something like that:)
Whilst the difficulty in this experiment is in interpreting the results, one thing to remember is that the speed limit c for any information is a postulate of relativity, not something that has been proved. It appears to be true so far, but there is nothing to say that it always applies.
Re:I disagree with his anti-corporate stance
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At The Crossroads
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Thanks, it's always nice to see that someone (well apart from those of us on the troll forum) appreaciates the time you spend on a good troll. It seems like most people lump trolls in with the spam, when in reality spam annoys trolls more because it makes it far harder for them to succeed:)
Yeah, I started using it when I got this job - we use it to wrap C++ CORBA objects and then write scripts using those. It's a really useful language that makes writing C++ seem really frustrating...:)
Agreed. A lot of people seem to have a go at him for posting stuff "we already know". Well, duh, that's the point. I always thought that the idea was that Jon would take an idea, write a piece around it, so that it would provoke discussion of the topic. I don't think he was ever intended to be some kind of "visionary".
Possibly the best paragraph JK has written
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At The Crossroads
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This has enormous implications for free speech and intellectual property. Technologies that work have always gotten used, whether they should be or not. It's still true. People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can. People who can use technology to comment freely, distribute code, challenge authority and criticize powerful corporate interests will do so, not only because they have the right but because they are able. This is the immutable reality of cyberspace, the new political consciousness emanating from the Internet.
This is so true, but it is a fact that seems to have totally been missed by government legislators in their rush to compartmentalise and control the net. No matter what regulations they put against doing certain things, people will go and do them anyway because they can.
This means that strictures aimed at preventing certain people from doing something (e.g. pirating music through Napster) will do little to prevent those who want to do it, but instead will restrict and hamper those who have legal and valid reasons for doing the same.
Under a structure as open as the net there is never going to be a way to 100% police what everybody is doing, and the people that are going to get around such barriers are those who the barriers are there to stop. The only people regulation harms are those who are doing nothing wrong.
It's written in Python. If you read ESR's piece in Linux Journal last month, this is no surprise at all, but the reception on the kernel list was decidedly cool, on balance.
"Do you own a computer?" or "Do you have an internet connection?" could be the new basis for sequestering a jury/juror, or dismissing one entirely. So called Non-techs could wind up being the ones making decisions on increasingly technical crimes.
And yet we here on/. post our opinions about anything and everything whether or not we have the slighest clue about them with no sense of the irony and hypocrasy of it.
People in the jury aren't meant to be experts, otherwise they'd get in a bunch of forensic scientists, lawyers and so on rather than regular people. Whether or not they are technically competent should make no difference to their chance of selection - this is the essence of democracy after all.
Did you read my post? As you even included in your post, I said that Cuba's only danger was being used by the Russians as a staging ground for a Cold War conflict, which is what happened during the Cuban missile crisis. Now that there is no Communist Russia anymore I don't think Cuba poses much of a threat to the country with the largest military in the world does it?
but I would imagine since Cuba is only a short boat ride away from the USA and China is way across the Pacific ocean, Cuba could pose a more serious direct threat than the Chinese.
Cuba a threat to the US? How? The only threat they ever posed to the US was as a staging ground for the Russians, which is hardly the case any more. It's not like they could invade the US is it?
Plus, wasn't the embargo placed back in the 60's when we WERE having problems with Cuba?
So we should keep it in place now? This seems to be what you're implying.
It's not the fact that they're communist moreso as to how they treat their citizens and how much of a threat they are to the USA.
From what I've read and seen Cuba, although extremely poor, does not treat its citizens badly. They get free education and health care, and in fact they produce a lot of doctors which work across South and Central America.
It looks to me like you've fallen for the anti-Red propaganda which was used during the Cold War to justify US "action" against Cuba, but which is sadly outdated today.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone pick up a book about terraforming Mars to listen to people argue for hundreds of pages that it shouldn't be terraformed, because it should be preserved in it's natural state?
I pick up a book for a good story, and the Mars series provided such a story. Do you think that colonizing Mars for real is going to be some kind of fairytale where everything goes according to plan and people live happily ever after?
No, personally I found the books realism was an added bonus. They wouldn't have been as enjoyable if everything went perfectly, human nature will be a huge part of the way that Mars is colonised. It's not often that I find a book that seems to cover both the scientific and the personal areas of the future in as much detail.
My title when I submitted it was a lot less sensational - "NASA machine extracts oxygen on Mars". Theirs was definitely more of an eye-grabber though. And as for the issue of terraforming, algae or bacteria would probably do the trick as long as you set them up to feed off of native material.
What happens when Microsoft decides linux isnt a trademarkable name and releases NT6.0 under the name Microsoft Linux?
Wouldn't that get shortened to MSUX? Let 'em have it :)
Ooops. They sound the same though :(
Others might respect your trolling, but the only thing that matters in the end is high-karma--and you ain't got it.
I dunno, the trolls are pretty funny and karma is just another game really. Depending on my mood I'll play one or the other. But anyway, this Steven Wosten (and his alter ego, Steven W0sten) really do get people going. And he never comes out of persona either, which is unusual for a troll.
I know I'm not going to get this answered due to the very nature of the question, but I'd still love to know quite how you manage to keep pumping endless amounts of shit out about everything under the sun, and remain in character no matter what people post. And why the Steven W0sten imposter imposters? Damn fine troll anyway :)
And a googleplex is 10^google. Useless info huh?
Plural subject requires plural predicate... and I would have pluralised 'dog' too, but that's a style issue.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The original post was an imperative, asking everyone and their dog to flame him, not a statement about what happens, so the original poster was correct :)
Fix that indent-based block structure for fuck's sake. The only reason they do it is because it's easier to newbies. Fsck newbies! Well ok not necessarily, but they could at least offer an alternative for us ancient Perl programmers.
They did - a decent programming language :)
As a well-travelled American, I can confidently state that our brutal ignorance of anything that doesn't happen right in front of our faces is one reason why people despise us.
Well, not all of you :) No, you do hit the nail on the head there - there are a lot of Americans who a) don't know and b) don't care about anything outside of their neighbourhood, and yet when their time comes they feel free to spout off about international issues. It's not all of you, hell, it may not be many of you, but it's certainly a loud group, and *really* annoying...
I imagine that would provide us with much different candidates for President than we see now...
"Governor Bush? How is your aim compared to the war-trained eye of Senator McCain?"
Come off of it. If Americans had to vote on President based on physical prowess you'd have The Rock in there in no time at all... :)
I don't think that comment is really all that true. In the history of relative research (and in the math behind it) the fact that information can not travel faster than c is the starting point, and all of relativity derives from there.
Yeah, isn't that what I said? It's a postulate, not a piece of data that was proven by experiment. Even though it was used to derive relativity, it does not necessarily have to be true at all. Experimental evidence points to the conclusion that it is, but all it takes is a single piece of proven evidence against it and it'll have to be thrown out.
Note that this does not mean that relativity is wrong, just that it is an approximation to what is really going on. Information at FTL speeds will most likely require quantum effects as well, which is outside of the scope of relativity. Just as Newton's assumption of absolute space and time are fine when using his laws of gravitation, the assumption that information cannot travel faster than c is fine for using Einstein's laws of relativity.
Hmm, I can't remember the exact equation either, but the relevent factor in relativity that differs from Newtonian physics is
gamma = 1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)
which goes to zero when v=c. So relativistic mass increase goes as m = m(rest) * gamma so as v tends to c mass tends towards infinity. Or something like that :)
Can be found here at Nature.
Whilst the difficulty in this experiment is in interpreting the results, one thing to remember is that the speed limit c for any information is a postulate of relativity, not something that has been proved. It appears to be true so far, but there is nothing to say that it always applies.
Thanks, it's always nice to see that someone (well apart from those of us on the troll forum) appreaciates the time you spend on a good troll. It seems like most people lump trolls in with the spam, when in reality spam annoys trolls more because it makes it far harder for them to succeed :)
Yeah, I started using it when I got this job - we use it to wrap C++ CORBA objects and then write scripts using those. It's a really useful language that makes writing C++ seem really frustrating... :)
Agreed. A lot of people seem to have a go at him for posting stuff "we already know". Well, duh, that's the point. I always thought that the idea was that Jon would take an idea, write a piece around it, so that it would provoke discussion of the topic. I don't think he was ever intended to be some kind of "visionary".
This has enormous implications for free speech and intellectual property. Technologies that work have always gotten used, whether they should be or not. It's still true. People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can. People who can use technology to comment freely, distribute code, challenge authority and criticize powerful corporate interests will do so, not only because they have the right but because they are able. This is the immutable reality of cyberspace, the new political consciousness emanating from the Internet.
This is so true, but it is a fact that seems to have totally been missed by government legislators in their rush to compartmentalise and control the net. No matter what regulations they put against doing certain things, people will go and do them anyway because they can.
This means that strictures aimed at preventing certain people from doing something (e.g. pirating music through Napster) will do little to prevent those who want to do it, but instead will restrict and hamper those who have legal and valid reasons for doing the same.
Under a structure as open as the net there is never going to be a way to 100% police what everybody is doing, and the people that are going to get around such barriers are those who the barriers are there to stop. The only people regulation harms are those who are doing nothing wrong.
Complie? I'd say that was pretty original. Don't you trust your computer or something?
It's written in Python. If you read ESR's piece in Linux Journal last month, this is no surprise at all, but the reception on the kernel list was decidedly cool, on balance.
Do you have any links for that? Cheers.
"Do you own a computer?" or "Do you have an internet connection?" could be the new basis for sequestering a jury/juror, or dismissing one entirely. So called Non-techs could wind up being the ones making decisions on increasingly technical crimes.
And yet we here on /. post our opinions about anything and everything whether or not we have the slighest clue about them with no sense of the irony and hypocrasy of it.
People in the jury aren't meant to be experts, otherwise they'd get in a bunch of forensic scientists, lawyers and so on rather than regular people. Whether or not they are technically competent should make no difference to their chance of selection - this is the essence of democracy after all.
Did you read my post? As you even included in your post, I said that Cuba's only danger was being used by the Russians as a staging ground for a Cold War conflict, which is what happened during the Cuban missile crisis. Now that there is no Communist Russia anymore I don't think Cuba poses much of a threat to the country with the largest military in the world does it?
but I would imagine since Cuba is only a short boat ride away from the USA and China is way across the Pacific ocean, Cuba could pose a more serious direct threat than the Chinese.
Cuba a threat to the US? How? The only threat they ever posed to the US was as a staging ground for the Russians, which is hardly the case any more. It's not like they could invade the US is it?
Plus, wasn't the embargo placed back in the 60's when we WERE having problems with Cuba?
So we should keep it in place now? This seems to be what you're implying.
It's not the fact that they're communist moreso as to how they treat their citizens and how much of a threat they are to the USA.
From what I've read and seen Cuba, although extremely poor, does not treat its citizens badly. They get free education and health care, and in fact they produce a lot of doctors which work across South and Central America.
It looks to me like you've fallen for the anti-Red propaganda which was used during the Cold War to justify US "action" against Cuba, but which is sadly outdated today.
Beat you to it,
2000-05-22 01:34:47 Grits competition (articles,quickies) (rejected)
but still rejected :( Do the /. crew have no sense of humour? Actually, stupid question...
I prefer the original "Steve Woston". He is quite entertaining.
What original Steve Wosten? Can I have some more info please?