Looks pretty easy to play back an 8-track to me! http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=8-track&_sacat=See-All-Categories
Is data really what the parents had in mind though? What are you thinking of putting in there? I liked the idea one of the early posts had about pieces from the wallpaper of the baby room and stuff like that.
Reading all the comments people are writing about developing for Android vs iPhone makes me sad. So much is about getting paid. Ok, I am a programmer for a living, it's my 9 to 5. But what happened to all the open source people who used to be on Slashdot?
I want a phone with a software community behind it. just like my Linux desktop. Yes, I'd be happy to contribute some code myself... that is to a platform which includes CDMA and is getting enough use that I am confident it will not be forgotten tomorrow.
While I see nothing wrong with someone making some money off an app they wrote I am concerned that I don't see the drive to create an oss software suite for cellphones like there was on the desktop.
I think it's creepy that people actually look at a phone platform's store as a feature rather than an artificial limitation imposed by the developer. It's like the desktop from some alternate reality where the OSS movement never happened.
Ah, how true. In high school I worked at a Ford dealership. I was given the keys to a customer's blue Escort to go get it for her. I thought I did so. An hour later I was getting yelled at by the mechanics for taking a car they hadn't finished yet and by the service reps for leaving the customer waiting.
They forgot to number the cars so I had no way to know which one. I didn't notice there were two in the lot and the same key fit both!
Doesn't really support the locking the door argument though. The same key fit the door, that's how I got in!
I'm sorry, were we talking about our capability here and now, or the hypothetical capabilities of more advanced civilizations or even our own potential future capabilities?
As for a single probe lasting the whole time, probably not... then again.. if it keeps it's distance from the center of the solar systems where most of the energy and stuff is then maybe... If it exists mostly in a dormant, frozen state. We have found dust grains which have existed that long without changing. I'm not sure how and when it would wake itself up to take measurements though.
But anyway... my point was it doesn't have to last if it can reproduce. We are the current generation of a line of self replicating stuff from a timespan of billions not millions of years.
I do not in any way think such a probe would be made in the manner which our rovers are constructed, dead metal and plastic molded/ground/welded into shape. Such a technology would be grown and I'm not sure if it's origin would be in artificial nanobots or re-engineered organisms. It would probably be a combination of both.
But why wouldn't you do both?
Build those habitats in solar orbit. Some people will still long to explore the great unknown. Take a large habitat, slap on a propulsion system, load it up with equipment for mining cold asteroids, metal, plastic, etc... working equipment for creating new parts, a really big RTG or other long lasting power source and wish them all a good trip.
If you are already building habitats all across solar orbit you can probably do this.
If flesh can fossilize can an artificial object? Of course, most flesh does not fossilize it rots instead. It would take a lot of probes before the odds of one fossilizing reached a likely number. Although with just 1 probe the odds aren't quite zero.
It may seem 'slow' to the gottahaveitrightnow mindset of today's younguns, but 100 years is a drop in the bucket.
Anyone who says that was probably alive to see human beings walk on another world. Those of us who were not so privileged see "progress" which will probably leave us dead of old age before it even happens again let alone anything beyond that.
The difference between robots and colonists, if this world dies rovers are just rust.
But life is out of equilibrium. Even the most exotic life should stand out as being something that shouldn't exist. Chemicals which should break down. And yet, somehow they repair/reproduce/etc... so that they remain.
That has got to be the best response to the "would we recognize it" argument I have ever read. Thank you!
I could see us failing to recognize alien intelligence. But life?? Come on!!
"The distances alone would make sure whatever reaches the far end of the galaxy would be a completely different species than the originator of the "colonization"."
This assumes the colonists are free to choose their partners and make their babies themselves in the traditional way and evolution is allowed to take it's course. I do not think that would be the case for two reasons:
The number of people required to keep enough genetic diversity to keep the population healthy indefinitely would be too many.
If you could send enough people to get past the first problem then the species which arrives in the end probably wouldn't even be fit to live on a planet at all. They would be adapted to life on the ship. They would probably just keep right on going. Since that wouldn't be the intention of the original ship builders they probably wouldn't do it that way.
Here's how I think it would have to work:
The actual people on the ship would only be a small fraction of the gene pool they bring with them. The rest would be a large sperm bank. (b/c sperm take well to freezing and eggs do not). When a woman is ready to have a baby the sperm would be chosen based on a record of the donors physical attributes and with keeping a healthy level of genetic diversity in mind.
If they were so inclined sperm could be chosen which would move the population towards being better acclimated to ship life for the first half of the trip or so. After that they would have to chose that which re-acclimates them to planetary life. Actually I suspect this would be done by computer, programmed by the builders of the ship so at the very least the second half of the program would be back towards original human attributes.
Of course, this is all assuming the colonists don't decide to hijack the effort and reprogram it themselves towards another goal. Then again, they might even chose a whole new destination. I still think they would use this method of reproduction though because otherwise they would all be cousins and siblings within a few generations. That would probably be the one thing that would be worse than what I am about to describe next.
So long as reproduction was kept out of it colonists could still couple up naturally. They could even raise the kids as mother/father pairs, or at least mother/step-father. This leads to the most distasteful but probably necessary part of the process. All adolescent males would probably give their sample and then be sterilized. That way they could carry on with all their "natural relations" without worry of breaking the system.
Yes, this idea is reminiscent of all sorts of racist eugenic programs which have been perpetrated in the past here on Earth but I think it would be necessary if many generations were to survive on a ship. Unless the ship can be very very large. I really don't think there is likely to ever be a ship which could contain enough people to keep a population going strong. Besides, for this purpose choosing genes which are more diverse would be the whole purpose. Even frozen the samples would not survive the whole trip so it would be necessary to keep the population as diverse as possible and cycle their "samples" in as some older ones are cycled out.
I think that is probably pretty variable. Look at all the setbacks our own civilization (or is that civilizations?) has had. Someone else could have had more or less.
"this idea of magical self-replicating, self-repairing technology that can work without supervision for millions of years."
What? I am "self-replicating, self-repairing technology that can work without supervision for billions of years." Or at least I am if you count the result of my replicating.. and that of those who replicated before me. You know what... I bet you are too!!!
Or is this Eliza posting?
"Representatives or publicists will contact us' horrified at the photographs on the site, says Jay Walsh"
All they have to do is put their money where their mouth is. If they want a good photo posted then they can certainly find a good photographer who will sell them the copyright to one. Certainly it's more expensive but it can be done. Then all they have to do is license it CC and send it in. Let the publicist or representative who thinks having a quality pic on Wikipedia pay for it. It's not Wikipedia's problem that they should have to change just so some celeb looks good on the internet. Otherwise, if it's not worth the money then they can just stop talking about it.
Exactly how are they to do that? I realize that in movies every steering wheel has a couple of wires behind it that just any person can pull out with their weak little arms. The insulation just falls right off and touching them together makes a little spark, starts the car and allows one to drive off with it.
Here in the really real world all such wires are inside the steering column which would pretty much take the jaws of life to open. If a crook is equipped to do that a locked door is about as much of an obstacle as wet tissue paper. For that matter, he can probably just cut his way through whatever he is trying to smash.
Unless... you are saying they are going to just push it down a nearby hill into something or something like that. Even then, they can only get it into neutral without the key if it has a manual transmission. I don't know about Australia but here those are getting rare.
Far more common in this part of the world... someone stealing your radio and any loose items you are lazy enough to leave in your car. Sometimes they get the air bag too. I can tell you from experience both ways, when this happens it's better to have your car unlocked. It saves you from replacing a window.
Ok, there are lots of ideas here about what to build. You still need parts to build it out of.
Are you a ham radio operator? If so you probably already know this but if not look for a local Hamfest. http://www.arrl.org/hamfests.html All but the smallest ones usually have vendors selling components at prices very similar to EBay only without the shipping fees. You might not find every part you need for a specific project but you can usually find the majority of them and then you can order the rest later. Often vendors will sell large quantities cheap, sometimes buying a vendor out of an item is cheaper than buying just a few because they don't want to haul it all home. This could work out well for you if you want the whole class to each be able to build their own.
As for a project... In the back of Getting Started with Electronics (another Forrest M Mims III book) there is a little organ that I am kind of partial to. The buttons are the only relatively expensive part. you might find someone selling a sack full of push buttons at a hamfest, if not then you an always use tin strips and screws to make buttons at those power levels. I had an ex-girlfriend some years ago who saw me building stuff and wanted to give it a try. She was in to music and I remembered seeing that in there so I bought all the parts, taught her to solder and she did it. It worked the first try.
At this point no one knows what the chipsets are/will be so assuming there will/will not be Linux drivers is a matter of faith. I really doubt even Apple will design and fabricate their own chips just to keep open software off their hardware. They will no doubt have create some hoops to jump through in the bios similar to jailbreaking an iPhone.
As for what does my comment have to do with the parent comment... That's why someone would want to run Linux on one. Wow, I thought that was clear, even enough for a fanboy to get it.
One might put Linux on it because there really isn't much good hardware available in that form factor but the software side will suck. It will suck because Apple will probably try to lock it's customers into an app store, like the iPhone. There, little of value will be open or free and content will be censored squeaky clean to Apple's, not the user's standards.
It's as though Apple still owns the equipment after you pay for it (and top dollar at that). It only does what Apple wants to let it do and even at that you must pay more money for each function. I just can't fathom the fanboy mindset. It's like people who prefer to be in prison!
Not to mention that Apple's minimalist user interfaces, assumed to be the indisputable end all of user interfaces by fanboys worldwide is at best a matter of opinion. Some might even think that what they do well in looks they completely lack in function. Not that it can be assumed that everyone everywhere even likes their looks at all.
in-orbit smelting seems a bit far fetched, at least for the next few decades but why not build a new station off of the old one? just keep adding modules, eventually start deorbiting old modules. Why build a whole new station every X years?
Slashdot Mirror
Looks pretty easy to play back an 8-track to me! http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=8-track&_sacat=See-All-Categories Is data really what the parents had in mind though? What are you thinking of putting in there? I liked the idea one of the early posts had about pieces from the wallpaper of the baby room and stuff like that.
Reading all the comments people are writing about developing for Android vs iPhone makes me sad. So much is about getting paid. Ok, I am a programmer for a living, it's my 9 to 5. But what happened to all the open source people who used to be on Slashdot? I want a phone with a software community behind it. just like my Linux desktop. Yes, I'd be happy to contribute some code myself... that is to a platform which includes CDMA and is getting enough use that I am confident it will not be forgotten tomorrow. While I see nothing wrong with someone making some money off an app they wrote I am concerned that I don't see the drive to create an oss software suite for cellphones like there was on the desktop. I think it's creepy that people actually look at a phone platform's store as a feature rather than an artificial limitation imposed by the developer. It's like the desktop from some alternate reality where the OSS movement never happened.
Ah, how true. In high school I worked at a Ford dealership. I was given the keys to a customer's blue Escort to go get it for her. I thought I did so. An hour later I was getting yelled at by the mechanics for taking a car they hadn't finished yet and by the service reps for leaving the customer waiting. They forgot to number the cars so I had no way to know which one. I didn't notice there were two in the lot and the same key fit both! Doesn't really support the locking the door argument though. The same key fit the door, that's how I got in!
I'm sorry, were we talking about our capability here and now, or the hypothetical capabilities of more advanced civilizations or even our own potential future capabilities? As for a single probe lasting the whole time, probably not... then again.. if it keeps it's distance from the center of the solar systems where most of the energy and stuff is then maybe... If it exists mostly in a dormant, frozen state. We have found dust grains which have existed that long without changing. I'm not sure how and when it would wake itself up to take measurements though. But anyway... my point was it doesn't have to last if it can reproduce. We are the current generation of a line of self replicating stuff from a timespan of billions not millions of years. I do not in any way think such a probe would be made in the manner which our rovers are constructed, dead metal and plastic molded/ground/welded into shape. Such a technology would be grown and I'm not sure if it's origin would be in artificial nanobots or re-engineered organisms. It would probably be a combination of both.
But why wouldn't you do both? Build those habitats in solar orbit. Some people will still long to explore the great unknown. Take a large habitat, slap on a propulsion system, load it up with equipment for mining cold asteroids, metal, plastic, etc... working equipment for creating new parts, a really big RTG or other long lasting power source and wish them all a good trip. If you are already building habitats all across solar orbit you can probably do this.
Don't forget Roanoke!
I think I would sign up to work on that project. Even if all I could get was ground support duty and die with the rest.
If flesh can fossilize can an artificial object? Of course, most flesh does not fossilize it rots instead. It would take a lot of probes before the odds of one fossilizing reached a likely number. Although with just 1 probe the odds aren't quite zero.
We haven't even found all the NEOs yet! How can we expect to know there aren't any probes somewhere in this very large haystack of a solar system.
It may seem 'slow' to the gottahaveitrightnow mindset of today's younguns, but 100 years is a drop in the bucket.
Anyone who says that was probably alive to see human beings walk on another world. Those of us who were not so privileged see "progress" which will probably leave us dead of old age before it even happens again let alone anything beyond that.
The difference between robots and colonists, if this world dies rovers are just rust.
But life is out of equilibrium. Even the most exotic life should stand out as being something that shouldn't exist. Chemicals which should break down. And yet, somehow they repair/reproduce/etc... so that they remain.
That has got to be the best response to the "would we recognize it" argument I have ever read. Thank you! I could see us failing to recognize alien intelligence. But life?? Come on!!
"The distances alone would make sure whatever reaches the far end of the galaxy would be a completely different species than the originator of the "colonization"."
This assumes the colonists are free to choose their partners and make their babies themselves in the traditional way and evolution is allowed to take it's course. I do not think that would be the case for two reasons:
Here's how I think it would have to work:
The actual people on the ship would only be a small fraction of the gene pool they bring with them. The rest would be a large sperm bank. (b/c sperm take well to freezing and eggs do not). When a woman is ready to have a baby the sperm would be chosen based on a record of the donors physical attributes and with keeping a healthy level of genetic diversity in mind.
If they were so inclined sperm could be chosen which would move the population towards being better acclimated to ship life for the first half of the trip or so. After that they would have to chose that which re-acclimates them to planetary life. Actually I suspect this would be done by computer, programmed by the builders of the ship so at the very least the second half of the program would be back towards original human attributes.
Of course, this is all assuming the colonists don't decide to hijack the effort and reprogram it themselves towards another goal. Then again, they might even chose a whole new destination. I still think they would use this method of reproduction though because otherwise they would all be cousins and siblings within a few generations. That would probably be the one thing that would be worse than what I am about to describe next.
So long as reproduction was kept out of it colonists could still couple up naturally. They could even raise the kids as mother/father pairs, or at least mother/step-father. This leads to the most distasteful but probably necessary part of the process. All adolescent males would probably give their sample and then be sterilized. That way they could carry on with all their "natural relations" without worry of breaking the system.
Yes, this idea is reminiscent of all sorts of racist eugenic programs which have been perpetrated in the past here on Earth but I think it would be necessary if many generations were to survive on a ship. Unless the ship can be very very large. I really don't think there is likely to ever be a ship which could contain enough people to keep a population going strong. Besides, for this purpose choosing genes which are more diverse would be the whole purpose. Even frozen the samples would not survive the whole trip so it would be necessary to keep the population as diverse as possible and cycle their "samples" in as some older ones are cycled out.
I think that is probably pretty variable. Look at all the setbacks our own civilization (or is that civilizations?) has had. Someone else could have had more or less.
"this idea of magical self-replicating, self-repairing technology that can work without supervision for millions of years." What? I am "self-replicating, self-repairing technology that can work without supervision for billions of years." Or at least I am if you count the result of my replicating.. and that of those who replicated before me. You know what... I bet you are too!!! Or is this Eliza posting?
"Representatives or publicists will contact us' horrified at the photographs on the site, says Jay Walsh" All they have to do is put their money where their mouth is. If they want a good photo posted then they can certainly find a good photographer who will sell them the copyright to one. Certainly it's more expensive but it can be done. Then all they have to do is license it CC and send it in. Let the publicist or representative who thinks having a quality pic on Wikipedia pay for it. It's not Wikipedia's problem that they should have to change just so some celeb looks good on the internet. Otherwise, if it's not worth the money then they can just stop talking about it.
Exactly how are they to do that? I realize that in movies every steering wheel has a couple of wires behind it that just any person can pull out with their weak little arms. The insulation just falls right off and touching them together makes a little spark, starts the car and allows one to drive off with it.
Here in the really real world all such wires are inside the steering column which would pretty much take the jaws of life to open. If a crook is equipped to do that a locked door is about as much of an obstacle as wet tissue paper. For that matter, he can probably just cut his way through whatever he is trying to smash.
Unless... you are saying they are going to just push it down a nearby hill into something or something like that. Even then, they can only get it into neutral without the key if it has a manual transmission. I don't know about Australia but here those are getting rare.
Far more common in this part of the world... someone stealing your radio and any loose items you are lazy enough to leave in your car. Sometimes they get the air bag too. I can tell you from experience both ways, when this happens it's better to have your car unlocked. It saves you from replacing a window.
Ok, there are lots of ideas here about what to build. You still need parts to build it out of.
Are you a ham radio operator? If so you probably already know this but if not look for a local Hamfest. http://www.arrl.org/hamfests.html All but the smallest ones usually have vendors selling components at prices very similar to EBay only without the shipping fees. You might not find every part you need for a specific project but you can usually find the majority of them and then you can order the rest later. Often vendors will sell large quantities cheap, sometimes buying a vendor out of an item is cheaper than buying just a few because they don't want to haul it all home. This could work out well for you if you want the whole class to each be able to build their own.
As for a project... In the back of Getting Started with Electronics (another Forrest M Mims III book) there is a little organ that I am kind of partial to. The buttons are the only relatively expensive part. you might find someone selling a sack full of push buttons at a hamfest, if not then you an always use tin strips and screws to make buttons at those power levels. I had an ex-girlfriend some years ago who saw me building stuff and wanted to give it a try. She was in to music and I remembered seeing that in there so I bought all the parts, taught her to solder and she did it. It worked the first try.
On the plus side, at least this time they can dual boot and/or use virtualization. No need for two boxes.
iPhone users.
At this point no one knows what the chipsets are/will be so assuming there will/will not be Linux drivers is a matter of faith. I really doubt even Apple will design and fabricate their own chips just to keep open software off their hardware. They will no doubt have create some hoops to jump through in the bios similar to jailbreaking an iPhone.
As for what does my comment have to do with the parent comment... That's why someone would want to run Linux on one. Wow, I thought that was clear, even enough for a fanboy to get it.
One might put Linux on it because there really isn't much good hardware available in that form factor but the software side will suck. It will suck because Apple will probably try to lock it's customers into an app store, like the iPhone. There, little of value will be open or free and content will be censored squeaky clean to Apple's, not the user's standards.
It's as though Apple still owns the equipment after you pay for it (and top dollar at that). It only does what Apple wants to let it do and even at that you must pay more money for each function. I just can't fathom the fanboy mindset. It's like people who prefer to be in prison!
Not to mention that Apple's minimalist user interfaces, assumed to be the indisputable end all of user interfaces by fanboys worldwide is at best a matter of opinion. Some might even think that what they do well in looks they completely lack in function. Not that it can be assumed that everyone everywhere even likes their looks at all.
But what if it doesn't entirely burn up? That could create a second Detroit!
hey!! Maybe there's a second ISS already up there???
in-orbit smelting seems a bit far fetched, at least for the next few decades but why not build a new station off of the old one? just keep adding modules, eventually start deorbiting old modules. Why build a whole new station every X years?
"It's not as if those last four years will be more valuable than all of the previous years combined."
Full sized crew.
Focus on using hte station rather than it's construction.
Why shouldn't the last years be the most valuable ones?