LN400

Some serious facepalming here the other day. I'm studying electronics engineering and we were in the PLC lab when one of my co-students asked me a few "how to"s. Bear in mind now, the computers in the lab are all hooked up to the internet. He asked about a timer function in the PLC programming environment and I asked if he had looked in the help file for the software. He hadn't. He did not even know where to find the help file, the one accessed by clicking "help" on the toolbar. I asked if he had looked around on the internet. He hadn't. He never considered the internet to be of any use in finding info. In fact, he doesn't think the ability to find info is a relevant ability for engineers to have. No wonder we have jokes about engineers. I am seriously wondering what makes the guy think he made the right choice when applying for engineering studies.

Amazing oktavist singer in this piece

One very nice collection

In what context? Anyway, here's a list of some candidates http://www.abbreviations.com/MN Edit: Got beaten to it

First, I was not saying maths was only the language of physics. Far from it but I worded myself the way I did because it's a saying I assumed was well known. The meter and second are universal only in the sense that if you happen to pick that particular isotope of Unobtainium and choose to count 123456789 times then you will get the same time interval each time regardless of where you are. Same line of arguements about the meter. I guess what I was saying was that you can have "universal" units that would be totally unknown to even the most intelligent superintelligent alien, simply because they never thought that particular choice was particularely interesting. They might have stumbled across something so fundamental that would make our meter look as inaccurate as measuring distance in stone throws. If we say that seconds and meters are universal then we must say that universal does not imply mutually understood. I just wanted to point that out, is all.

While I'm not religious, Russian Orthodox chants get to me real good. I have no idea what they sing but the harmonies and display of what the human voice can do makes for some stunning music.

One problem with seconds and meters vs aliens is that the definition of a second is the time it takes to complete an arbitrary number of cycles in an arbitrarily chosen isotope. The meter follows immediately as its definition is related to the speed of light in vacuum and the second, which is arbitrary. The speed of light might be an issue too. There are indications (perhaps strong evidence, I don't know) the speed of light in vacuum is not as constant as we thought. With a variable c and a second that is defined on arbitrary pickings, not even the meter or seconds are universal. Maths is the language of physics, but don't forget that approximations and limited fields of validity enter most equations. Speed = distance/time is not true for all speeds, only relatively slow speeds as we recognize slow. Who can tell what equations any alien would think are "universally known".

I noticed you mentioned stealth games. If you haven't already, look up Thief 2 The Metal Age. I wouldn't know about the others in the series but T2 is one I would recommend.

Landings can be challenging for sure and there are lots of ways you can go about it, as shown in the forums and on youtube etc. My way, one among all those, is to first make sure I have RCS thrusters for horizontal corrections. On the launch pad, go IVA and look at the radar altimeter. Remember what it says. You will need that radar altitude later. Fast forward to Mun orbit and the deorbit burn. For the decent, go IVA and glue the retrograde marker AND the nose mark to the center of the navball. Switch the speed readout to surface and keep an eye on the navball, the VSI needle and radar altimeter. Use thrusters to control decent speed. Use RCS to keep the retrograde marker at center of the navball. Be on it. When the radar altimeter shows less than say, 500 meters (or your personal favourite low altitude), adjust throttle and RCS for a slower decent. Below 100m on the radar altimeter, keep the VSI needle at 0-5m/s decent and be on the retrograde marker with the RCS. Remember the radar altitude from the launch pad? expect touchdown once you reach that altitude. On touchdown, the retrograde marker will suddenly dance and the VSI needle will show 0. Kill the engines. Stabilize then turn off the RCS and SAS. Ok, so you can do it more fuel efficient or more spectacular but I found this would give me a pretty good success rate.

Cool. Happy roving

Thanks. Just that in the OP it says "RemoteTech is not yet compatible with either of the two full-featured autopilot mods, MechJeb and kOS. Mix at your own risk." I am wondering if we will see a change to that.

Sweeeet news this update. Thanks heaps for the work!

In case you haven't done it: Try the bracket keys [ and ] to change active vehicle. EDIT: I'm a bit slow. Is the command pod attached directly to the rover and Jeb is inside and te rover still won't work? I'm asking becaue I assumed (blame my poor eye sight) that the rover was detachable from the rest of the rocket, and the command pod in particular.

That "maths" is universally understood I will dispute. Think about it. For a long time, zero was not accepted as of having anything to do with mathematics. Still to this day there are those who reject that zero has any mathematical meaning. Negative numbers, same thing. Complex numbers, those had an even tougher fight for acceptance. Sets of numbers. You will find people who believe all numbers are rational. There are societies where they simply have no concept of defined values greater than say 3, or 5. In these societies it makes absolutely no sense to talk about the value of 11. Either it's 1, 2 or 3, or it's 'many'. Still, they can tell that 20 is greater than 10, only they don't have the conceptual idea of defined values that great, at least not in their spoken or written language. Clearly the universal-ness of 'universally understood' isn't all that universal.

Just a quick question: What is the current prospect of RT becoming compatible with KOS?

I have one main issue with the idea that maths as a set of concepts is invented. An invention does not demand consistency and abscence of contradictions, as such. Maths does. The evolution of maths is also an exploration of logic. Did we invent logic? Or did our sense of logic come through a chain of realizations? I don't know but I suspect strongly we did not invent logic. On the other hand, they say Newton invented calculus. I can not reject that but I am still curious if 'invent' is the right word, or if he happened to be the guy at the right time who concluded first that calculus would be a pretty neat thing to do. But now I'm also questioning if I have got the right idea of what 'invention' means This is going to be a long journey for me.

About the evolution of separate symbols for values, it is interesting to notice that some of the earliest notations we know of, were 'notches' if you like, on clay tablets dating back to some of the earliest forms of writing we know of.. Later, during the haydays of Greek maths, the Greeks used their alphabethical letters where their alpha would be the modern 1, beta would be 2 and so on. The Romans used letters as well. I, V, L, C, D and M. Symbols for distinct values seem to have appeared (and it's reasonable to think they did appear) around the same time humans thought of symbols with sound values. Someone might correct me but it seems likely to me that numerals and sound symbols were part of the same process of concept evolution. We can only imagine how they would connect the value of sound or numerical values before that. One thing is certain though. The biological evolution hasn't changed humans all that much over the last, dunno, say 200,000 years. There hasn't been much time for evolution to make us much smarter (plenty of time for reality shows to make us dumber though) so people before recorded history I will say certainly had the same mental capacity to express both sound and numerical values in written form as we had 190,000-200,000 years later. Could be plenty of reasons we haven't found explicit evidence of earlier writings, or maths notation. Could be as simple as some of them wrote it in the dirt using a stick and that's not well suited for long term storage. Could also be as simple as noone had thought of writing down anything before about 5-6000 years ago, other than pictures that weren't expressing concepts of values but rather just someone wanting to tell they saw a LOT of deer that day. One has to be a bit cautious though. It was 'a proven fact' for hundreds of years that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were expressions of ideas and abstract concepts and not sound values. It was later proven however that the ancient hieroglyphs were, in fact 'modern' in the sense that each symbol represented sound values just like our modern alphabets. We can't easily rule out that markings in a cave were carved by a cavedwelling maths teacher, so to speak. Problem is, we only know about genuine mathematical symbols that are about 5-6000 years old. Older than that, and it's theory.

That is an excellent point and interesting. I did not know about that discovery. It's an excellent point but I would still argue (albeit a bit cautiously) that maths as we know it today, with arithemtics as well as symbols for values, evolved in the civilisations 5-6000 years ago into the various fields like geometry. I also worded myself poorly when I said "a realization that has come through the biological evolution of the brain". I would rather say through the evolution of concepts and ideas that became possible through the biological evolution of the brain. The evolution of concepts is one that does not need millions of years to "materialise" into something recognizably new, it can happen, and has happened and in leaps and bounds, sometimes making huge leaps in a very short time. One such leap was the idea that perhaps it would mean something to carve notches on a piece of rock as a representation of amounts. This would be a necessary step before more advanced steps. It would be very intriguing if they did discover 13.000 years old markings where someone carved "Zorg killed III deer, Bam killed II deer and Zlob stole I deer from Zorg leaving Zorg with II deer before the two hunters decided to split the remaining deer between them and their 2 uncles so that each got I deer." The interesting thing is, at one point in the evolution of concepts, that's in essence what happened.

The birth of mathematics as most (??) understand it was when the ancient kings and queens in ancient civilisations wanted to keep track of how many sheep and how many jars of olives the citizen produced and how much of that the citizen would have to give in the form of tax. The foundation for that started when our brains realised that 2 oranges and 1 orange is not the same amount of oranges. That goes waaaay back, long into the mist of unrecorded history. Today, we know that certain birds are capable of recognising if 1 egg is removed or added to the nest, we have also seen that a few birds have shown a form of understanding of natural numbers up to about 7. So what is the essence of maths? The ability to work out incredibly hard equations or the ability to realise that 1 is fewer than 2 is fewer than 3 etc etc? I would say that the latter is the case and as such, it's not an invention, more a discovery, or more precicely a realization that has come through biological evolution of the brain, and not just the human brain.

In case you're looking for it http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/116916-Comprehensive-Mod-Compatibility-List-for-KSP-1-0 (gotta spread the word )

Just wondering. This mod isn't in the Mods for v1 list. Are there plans for an update soon so you'd wait to have it there, or is it an oversight? I'd give the list updater a headsup but if there's a reason this mod isn't there yet, then I'd rather you did.

The question "is there life anywhere else in the Universe?" is to me one of the most intriguing ones. Unfortunately it is also one of the trickiest when it comes to building any reliable foundation for which questions we'd need to ask. The number of unknowns and the vastness of the unknown make it near impossible to know if we are asking the right questions. For starters, we still have no definition of where the line between life and no life is, at least not one everybody can agree on. Even something as "simple" as defining species is a task that is horribly difficult and one that keeps coming back, reminding us that nope, we still haven't figured out this species business, and that's just for life here on Earth. Next is, it seems that every new planet we discover outside our own solar system opens up a whole new package of questions on how planets are formed, and ultimately how many planets are there in the first place? There is more but for starters it should be a reminder that there are only a few things we know: All our theories on Life, Universe and Everything are up for fundamental changes without warning, which can turn all our calculations into irrelevant scribblings we'd be embarrassed to show anyone. We have not seen any trace of alien civilisations and we are absolutely clueless as to the actual why. The theoretical whys we have a much better grasp on. We have theories. Some good, some not so good but no matter how good, they are still only theories and one weakness of theories is the uncertainty: Are we asking the right questions at all? The Karadshev scale is purely hypothetical. It is based on what we do know and what we think we know and what we know until we learn we didn't know after all as well as speculations, guesswork and assumptions and the hope that we by a fantastic stroke of luck managed to ask the correct questions. Same for all models, scales and explanations. We can only hope we got it right. That is... until we get hard evidence that there really are someone out there. The Question is intriguing but I'm wondering if it's more a philosophical question than a scientific one, for the time being. It's very much like questions like "is there a God?", "are parallel Universes a physical reality?", "is there something outside our Universe? Like more Universes?". Questions we can't find the answer to, scientifically. Intriguing, exciting but scientifically not really relevant. So, should we stop looking? No, why should we? If there is something out there then the probability of us discovering it is not zero. Might be depressingly low but it is not zero.

Totally wicked. I have been waiting for news on this one. Way happy to see the update.

Just read a few articles on this new find. Looks like the tree of life may have to be redrawn (yet again). I for one am excited about this. Out with the old, bring on the new, that's science in action. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/science/under-the-sea-a-missing-link-in-the-evolution-of-complex-cells.html?_r=0 and a more scientific take on it http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14447.epdf?referrer_access_token=uwWlXE4wLU4AAe9rLG94FdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M94F4Fxvk6-RgLp0laGRO8gmUGkk2ZPF7E5BeUUtr8Gt2kKw_bFYYtQQupdUsXO8pvT4xSqVm0i4oyEpieZiO6kxW993frxlRHnEUq4dT-3eyf6DI95aOlYzsiT7HMApgN_fnww7OUw_Yxl94RDKzEzYAoWf90hvEVUcTfGMa00steVauro_npq6I5aPp3pstdkuLCvtncuThEozJwsirr_tMR0PgWy32r9jFsgLgyXA%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nytimes.com

I do agree that we can, and should, ask for fixes. Better still, we can report bugs and glitches as we find them, make the devs aware of these bugs and glitches then trust the matters are looked into. Even better still, we can do testing, give the devs all the clues we can give them as to how the bugs appear and which part of the code the bugs are associated with. There are very few who are happy with sending out a flawed product only to abandon all work to fix anything. It's apparent to me Squad is not among those. I don't think they are happy with the bugs at all, perhaps even less happy with it than we are. I guess the bottom line is, we should continue to give good bug reports with good clues about the bugs and wait for the next patch to come out