Well, I've been used to the idea since I read my first science fiction book at age 8 in 1965. Enough already. They can visit if they want to.
Hell, I'll open the first alien dating service.
Single green female entity seeks human male for 1000 year long parasitic relationship. Must be healthy and of blood type O. Must want my several thousand children who will eat him alive from the inside at the end of our relationship. My pic gets yours.
As sucky as hydrogen is, it could still be a reasonable transportation fuel.
What it would take is a lot of very, very, cheap electricity, the kind which might be generated through a series of thousands of small and medium sized hydropower stations built alongside (but not in) America's rivers and stored in the recently mentioned sulfur sodium batteries (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/07/022250). Using this proven, if unexciting technology, enough power could be generated to create hydrogen and fuel the transportation sector. It's not a perfect solution, but it requires no great technical breakthroughs, merely money (OK, so maybe not so merely), political will and enough smarts to do it without destroying the river ecologies of the USA.
Do you work in Utah or something? I'm afraid that in all areas where I worked (banks in San Francisco, software houses in Houston and New Mexico), a certain amount of profanity made its way into normal daytime conversation, particularly when the circumstances became unusually frustrating.
Look, I understand that my position threatens a lot of you, but I'm fairly typical of many people who've had management jobs and simply don't have a lot of tolerance for either gross incompetence or erratic prima donnas. I've fired both types before, and probably will again. I'd rather have a mediocre guy who comments his code in readable English, makes the code readable and maintainable, and comes to work regularly than a genius who writes brilliant but unmaintainable code, comments nothing and wants to work at home ALL the time.
So if you want, walk out the door. Please. You're doing me the favor of not having to bother to fire you later or try and untangle the "brilliant" code/hairball left for us lesser mortals.
I have multiple browsers on my systems always. When FF (my favorite) fails, I use Opera or Chrome as backups. Opera is particularly robust, working in conditions where the others don't.
And as someone who codes, and has hired coders, I would reply "Please don't let the door hit you on the way out, and by the way, there are 199 other people waiting to interview for that position. Please try and stay out of their way as you go down the stairs."
And by the way, the fact that you didn't get that "write something for free" means, a small, noncommercial piece of sample code that demonstrates that you know how to create class foo with a member function that loops from 1 to 10, exits appropriately and returns a string that says "I'm finished." is indication number two that you are a f***ing lamebrain with neither perspective nor common sense.
In short, you just lost the job due to stupidity, an overblown sense of entitlement and childish arrogance. I have time for none of these.
On the net at least. Usually on rentacoder or such. I've tried to work with some of these guys and Oy! There are exceptions, thank goodness, but the majority of them are um, questionable at best.
You get what you pay for. You want a good coder? Look at their code. Make them take some written tests and an oral exam. Have them write you something small for free. Make sure they have a decent overall education (important!) and can communicate. Where I work, our coders tend to be excellent, but we put them through the wringer to work here.
What happened was the same thing that happened to all large empires. We reached a point of diminishing economic returns with manufacturing and conquest. Then the economy was kept "expanding" by increasing the money supply through debt spending on the military while exporting the real manufacturing base to other countries, which is what's really destroying our economy, long term.
And now there's not enough left for public services or projects, including the shuttle and soon space exploration and soon after that, sanitary water and sewage disposal.
on a large scale, it's indefensible. If we had a thousand dams with many thousands of small generators, many thousand solar installations on every structure in the country where it made sense, many thousands of tiny wind farms, many thousands of small geothermal generators, and so on, with passive protection from overload for all, this wouldn't be an issue. For that matter, neither would fuel shortages, at least as far as electricity goes.
it hints perhaps that the drive to try is far more important than natural ability.
I strongly agree. My degree is in psychology. I sucked at math in high school. These days I design automated testing system code frameworks and write control systems in.net. To me, the drive to try is everything.
This has been the teacher and administrator MO since I was in school in the 60s. Actually it's worse than that. The teacher/administrator just wants the problem to go away so they tend to persecute and isolate the *victim* rather than the perpetrator (Johny gets bullied by a group of 5 kids on the playground so we'll keep *Johny* inside while all the kids go out to play). This usually ostracizes the victim further by pointing him/her out as the weak odd kid.
In my experience, the most culpable individuals are spineless teachers followed by spineless administrators. Children can't really be blamed. They know no better. Adults do, or should.
Before you start mucking about with geo-engineering the temperature, you'd better make damn sure you can UN-muck it or we're all seriously mucked!
What this means is:
1) Thousands of gyroscopically positionable mirrors in space allowing you to control sunlight = Good!
2) Planting oodles of trees everywhere we can do distribute the heat that we do have = "Well, OK, it'll work for most of the planet as long as you don't plant trees that are disease vectors for other organisms."
3) Throwing thousands of tons of [Insert favorite substance here] into the atmosphere/Ocean/Volcanoes and hoping it works and not having a clue as to the knock-on effects down the road = BAD, BAD, BAD.
Slashdot Mirror
Crazy stories like Geithner's testimony on C-Span?
Well, I've been used to the idea since I read my first science fiction book at age 8 in 1965. Enough already. They can visit if they want to.
Hell, I'll open the first alien dating service.
Single green female entity seeks human male for 1000 year long parasitic relationship. Must be healthy and of blood type O. Must want my several thousand children who will eat him alive from the inside at the end of our relationship. My pic gets yours.
that a fool and his/her money are soon parted.
As sucky as hydrogen is, it could still be a reasonable transportation fuel.
What it would take is a lot of very, very, cheap electricity, the kind which might be generated through a series of thousands of small and medium sized hydropower stations built alongside (but not in) America's rivers and stored in the recently mentioned sulfur sodium batteries (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/07/022250). Using this proven, if unexciting technology, enough power could be generated to create hydrogen and fuel the transportation sector. It's not a perfect solution, but it requires no great technical breakthroughs, merely money (OK, so maybe not so merely), political will and enough smarts to do it without destroying the river ecologies of the USA.
Do you work in Utah or something? I'm afraid that in all areas where I worked (banks in San Francisco, software houses in Houston and New Mexico), a certain amount of profanity made its way into normal daytime conversation, particularly when the circumstances became unusually frustrating.
Look, I understand that my position threatens a lot of you, but I'm fairly typical of many people who've had management jobs and simply don't have a lot of tolerance for either gross incompetence or erratic prima donnas. I've fired both types before, and probably will again. I'd rather have a mediocre guy who comments his code in readable English, makes the code readable and maintainable, and comes to work regularly than a genius who writes brilliant but unmaintainable code, comments nothing and wants to work at home ALL the time.
So if you want, walk out the door. Please. You're doing me the favor of not having to bother to fire you later or try and untangle the "brilliant" code/hairball left for us lesser mortals.
I have multiple browsers on my systems always. When FF (my favorite) fails, I use Opera or Chrome as backups. Opera is particularly robust, working in conditions where the others don't.
And as someone who codes, and has hired coders, I would reply "Please don't let the door hit you on the way out, and by the way, there are 199 other people waiting to interview for that position. Please try and stay out of their way as you go down the stairs."
And by the way, the fact that you didn't get that "write something for free" means, a small, noncommercial piece of sample code that demonstrates that you know how to create class foo with a member function that loops from 1 to 10, exits appropriately and returns a string that says "I'm finished." is indication number two that you are a f***ing lamebrain with neither perspective nor common sense.
In short, you just lost the job due to stupidity, an overblown sense of entitlement and childish arrogance. I have time for none of these.
On the net at least. Usually on rentacoder or such. I've tried to work with some of these guys and Oy! There are exceptions, thank goodness, but the majority of them are um, questionable at best.
You get what you pay for. You want a good coder? Look at their code. Make them take some written tests and an oral exam. Have them write you something small for free. Make sure they have a decent overall education (important!) and can communicate. Where I work, our coders tend to be excellent, but we put them through the wringer to work here.
"Genes don't transfer from bacteria to mammals"
I'm sorry. Did someone suggest that this was necessary? I assumed that the transfer was from ocean bacteria to gut bacteria.
What happened was the same thing that happened to all large empires. We reached a point of diminishing economic returns with manufacturing and conquest. Then the economy was kept "expanding" by increasing the money supply through debt spending on the military while exporting the real manufacturing base to other countries, which is what's really destroying our economy, long term.
And now there's not enough left for public services or projects, including the shuttle and soon space exploration and soon after that, sanitary water and sewage disposal.
And whither where or when? Won't somebody think of the prepositions?
Legal or illegal aliens?
Only if it were manufactured to very exacting specifications.
Or matter *is* space and vice versa, matter being just a bit twister.
You obviously never had some of my professors.
on a large scale, it's indefensible. If we had a thousand dams with many thousands of small generators, many thousand solar installations on every structure in the country where it made sense, many thousands of tiny wind farms, many thousands of small geothermal generators, and so on, with passive protection from overload for all, this wouldn't be an issue. For that matter, neither would fuel shortages, at least as far as electricity goes.
I dunno. Sometimes I can go years without folding the towels. I'm going to have to call "improvement" on this one.
it hints perhaps that the drive to try is far more important than natural ability.
I strongly agree. My degree is in psychology. I sucked at math in high school. These days I design automated testing system code frameworks and write control systems in .net. To me, the drive to try is everything.
is all wet (Sorry, it had to be said.).
I get this. The thing is, if this happened in a workplace, the perps would be in jail.
But we allow it to happen to *children* every day.
Ow! STOP That!!!
This has been the teacher and administrator MO since I was in school in the 60s. Actually it's worse than that. The teacher/administrator just wants the problem to go away so they tend to persecute and isolate the *victim* rather than the perpetrator (Johny gets bullied by a group of 5 kids on the playground so we'll keep *Johny* inside while all the kids go out to play). This usually ostracizes the victim further by pointing him/her out as the weak odd kid.
In my experience, the most culpable individuals are spineless teachers followed by spineless administrators. Children can't really be blamed. They know no better. Adults do, or should.
Don't you remember? You DID give me the time machine to warn everyone by posting on Slashdot. Remember what you said in the bunker?
"...everyone takes warnings posted on Slashdot seriously, so we put you in the time machine and...."
And the USA sends in Will Smith to take care of Godzilla.
Before you start mucking about with geo-engineering the temperature, you'd better make damn sure you can UN-muck it or we're all seriously mucked!
What this means is:
1) Thousands of gyroscopically positionable mirrors in space allowing you to control sunlight = Good!
2) Planting oodles of trees everywhere we can do distribute the heat that we do have = "Well, OK, it'll work for most of the planet as long as you don't plant trees that are disease vectors for other organisms."
3) Throwing thousands of tons of [Insert favorite substance here] into the atmosphere/Ocean/Volcanoes and hoping it works and not having a clue as to the knock-on effects down the road = BAD, BAD, BAD.
Cheers!