Omicron314

I have not been to many burrito places in my life, but I find a steak burrito filled with rice and beans to be delicious.

Aside from the Russian ÷ðüþú, which is a cognate of the first Polish word here, I'm also a fan of the word 'üуúð', meaning either 'pain/anguish' or 'flour'. And there is always my old enemy from Latin class volo (I fly) and volo (I want). Omina (signs) and omnia (everything) is also annoying, but it's not strictly a homonym.

(On your last remark): To be fair, though, communism has never been practiced by any nation to my knowledge. If I remember correctly, communism requires the abolishment of social classes, money, and finally the state. The USSR, the PRC, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos - none of these nations have done that. You hate totalitarians masquerading as communists, whom I hate as well, but I don't think anyone can safely say they've actually met a person from a communist nation. Nevertheless, I look forward to this season. Very exciting-looking.

I'm going to go with the Firstborn from the Space Odyssey saga. Very mysterious and powerful.

I feel really strongly about who and whom. Whom is the accusative of who, which people seem to be incapable of using despite the fact that it is used exactly like 'him' or 'her'. It is just the accusative case, people! It's not that hard! If you're unsure, plug in 'he' or 'she' where you are going to say 'who' or 'whom': if it works, use 'who', if not, use 'whom'. Either that, or learn an inflected language (Latin is nice!).

It is my view that fully automizing laborious jobs would enable communism of a sort. Higher education would be made compulsory, and upon graduation, people would have one of three job choices: an artistic job (e.g. musician, artists, etc.), a researcher (scientist, engineer, etc.) or a member of a workers' council (which both manages and repairs the robots), all relatively autonomous but still under the government's control. Base income would be determined slightly differently for each branch. Artists would be paid based on their popularity, scientists based on the significance of their experiments or discoveries, and workers' councils would be able to divvy up their government-provided income however they voted to (but extra income awarded due to an innovation or similar contribution would be given directly to the person responsible). The 'companies' run by the workers' councils would be owned by the government, so the entire nation's economy could quickly turn itself into a command economy in the event of a crisis, and then transition back into a more market-type economy after the crisis passes. While the government would take a huge amount of the cooperative's income, the income provided to the cooperative by the government would increase if the company is particularly profitable. Non-government run corporations would be allowed, but would hardly have a chance competing with their government-owned counterparts as it would be harder for them to operate without the government's funding and would have a difficult time attracting more people to the cooperative as no base salary is guaranteed. Without competition, prices would be kept down by strict regulations, but would be changeable to values within a certain range. The financial branch of the government would be able to change the range if it so desired. Everyone would be also be guaranteed good healthcare, a home to share with one or two others, and probably some other thing I am forgetting. After saving up enough by working, people would be able to purchase larger houses and furniture of their choosing created by the nationalized cooperatives. These benefits would not be given to those who choose not to work in any of the three job sectors. While this would be ideal, I highly doubt it would ever be instated in the U.S. Maybe one of the more progressive European countries would be willing to give it a go should the opportunity arise?

I didn't say that the inventors of such a drug would not be compensated, however. Essentially, the government would buy the patent, as you said. There's nothing preventing the government from offering monetary compensation for the trouble that the team/company/whatever went through before distributing it, and I think this is preferable to a private entity withholding the cure until they can directly profit from its distribution. This way, the cure is delivered to those who need it most, not only those who can afford it, and those who invented it are compensated.

I think there is a line that needs to be drawn between patent-able inventions and non-patent-able inventions. I see the validity in allowing a (reasonable) amount of time after the invention of an item for it to be sold exclusively by the inventor until it is allowed to be built upon. However, I think there are some inventions, specifically those with the capacity to save lives, that should not ever be patented but instead distributed by the government to humanitarian organizations (such as, say, Red Cross) for their use. Imagine if a company patented a cure for a terrible disease, insisting that their personal gain is more important than the lives of other people. I understand that the market of any country, however regulated it might be, needs a certain degree of leniency in order to operate efficiently, but allowing the above would simply be criminal.

I'm running into a bit of a problem with the whole 'radius' thing. I understand that I need to change both 'Radius' in 'CelestialBody' and 'radius' in 'PQS,' but when I do so, my (test) planet appears like this: I'm not able to zoom in any further, and the planet is surrounded by a strange green border (much more prominent than what is normal with Jool-based planets). When I comment out both 'Radius' and 'radius' though, the planet's radius defaults to 6000 kilometers (radius of Jool) and I'm able to zoom in to it like any other planet. Any idea what can be done to fix this? I don't want to be constrained by the standard planets' radii. Edit: Here's the .cfg if it is of interest: PFBody { name=Jupiter2 templateName=Jool flightGlobalsIndex=700 } CelestialBody { bodyDescription=Description GeeASL=2.528 rotates=True Radius=69911000 rotationPeriod=35730 tidallyLocked=False } Orbit { inclination = 1.305 eccentricity = 0.048775 semiMajorAxis = 778547200000 //Radius=60000000 LAN = 100.492 argumentOfPeriapsis = 275.066 meanAnomalyAtEpoch = 18.818 epoch = 0 referenceBody = Sun } PQS { radius=69911000 }

Granted. Your wish is true. That is all. I wish this wish was false.

Although this thread hasn't been posted in for over a month, I think it will do well to restart the discussion in light of the most recent news. According to space.com (which many on this forum already read avidly, to my knowledge), Mars One has whittled down the potential astronaut selection pool to 705 and has signed a deal with Darlow Smithson Productions to host their TV show (although I've not been able to find much about them from a quick search; are they reputable? Popular?) So, with that new information, has the discussion changed? Now that they actually have the deal, is it more likely that they will at the very least launch their first mission?

For a first project, why not a simple projectile-physics-based game? The player could progress through a series of challenges in which he/she must complete objectives of increasing difficulty; for example, the first mission might be to simply shoot the cannon's projectile straight up, but later challenges might involve getting the projectile to hit a target somewhere on the screen or intercept another projectile. Kind of like a combination of Angry Birds, Simple Physics, but with more math. As for my dream game, I've always hoped for Felipe Falanghe and Vladimir Romanyuk to team up (perhaps merge their software?) into the ultimate space-exploration game. Or perhaps just SpaceEngine's planned space exploration game begin with the dawn of manned exploration, and have the player develop infrastructure in their own solar system before venturing out into the unknown. Or maybe that combined with something like Spore or (potentially) Thrive, where you must evolve your creature first. Also, a more extensive version of Civilization V (with battles akin to those from the Total War saga) taking the place of civilization stage. How great that would be . . . But its probably setting the bar a little high. Just recognize your limits and create what you feel is in your power to accomplish.

But the note: CNN PRODUCER NOTE - NASA has confirmed via email that this story is false. A spokeswoman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the largest object detected by NEOWISE measures 3 km in diameter and poses no risk to Earth. The iReport has been removed. . . . NASA had to step in to say that no, there will not be a planet-threatening collision with an asteroid on the 35th of March several decades from now. The media never fails to disappoint.

About 3 solar masses worth of star is created each year, but most of those are red dwarves, so I put the number of stars created each year at 6 (although that's probably a bit high). It seems likely that most, if not all, star systems develop planets, so I put that value at 100%. However, Kepler data suggests that one in five sun-like stars has a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone, so I think the number of habitable planets per star system is about 0.2. Then it gets a little harder. Due to the fact that Earth life arose very shortly after the continuous orbital bombardment of the surface ceased, it seems that most habitable planets develop life. However, "terrestrial and in the habitable zone" is not equivalent to "habitable". The thickness of the atmosphere and the strength of the magnetic field can vary greatly from planet to planet (just look at Venus and Mars). Both Venus and Mars are in the habitable zone, so I'll use 33% for this value as I have nothing better to put. For the intelligence factor, I am going to side with the "life trends towards intelligence" side. Yes, many many species have existed on Earth over the course of it's 4.5 billion year lifetime, but the ancestors of modern humans were in a much better position to develop intelligence than any other species before. Life began simple and worked its way up towards intelligence, so that now we have a whole host of intelligent creatures from humans to apes to octopodes to crows, and most stars in the galaxy are red dwarves, which have lifespans of trillions of years. It seems likely that most planets with life eventually develop intelligence. Thus, I set this value to 85%. If we turn the "percent civilizations that can communicate across space" bit into "percent civilizations that destroy themselves" (I put 50% (although it should probably be less): we came very close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union several times over the course of the Cold War) and take the length part to mean how long a surviving civilization lasts (if they overcome the threat of destroying themselves, probably a very long time), we get a more interesting answer. It tells us that there are about one and a half million civilizations in the galaxy. Most of them probably wouldn't be detectable, though. If we assume that all civilizations get the ability to send radio waves out into the galaxy but this period only lasts about 100 years (as seems to be the case with our civilization), that means there are only about 34 detectable civilizations in our galaxy. That few civilizations means that we probably will never detect another alien civilization, unless the more advanced ones purposefully contact us or we ourselves gain the ability to detect their "radio" chatter. Still, 1.5 million civilizations means that around only one in every 200 (0.5%) stars has ever hosted a civilization, and only in every 9 million or so (0.00001%) have a civilization around our own level of sophistication that we could detect. With these statistics, SETI seems like a pointless endeavor. To scan 9 million stars in 100 years would mean that each star would only be given 350 seconds of listening time, which is simply unrealistic. Of course, building more arrays would enable us to scan that same number of stars in significantly less time, but the nearest civilization would still be so far away that the chances of detecting them would be minimal. But still, one in 200 is a lot. There could very well be an advanced civilization within one hundred lightyears of us, more than capable of determining the existence of life on Earth through spectral analysis. We may have no idea where they are, but don't be too sure about them.

Alright, but whenever I try to export a procedural object (such as a random selena I find in a random star system), it tells me "Object not found." Also, I am having some problems getting this compatible with Real Solar System (which I intend to use in conjunction with the planets that I am making). Any help on that would also be appreciated.