vger

No thanks. I shudder the thought of something like this happening on a manned spacecraft. Especially if for whatever reason, there wasn't enough RCS to recover.

Maybe someone blew the airlock?

It's probably my fault. I mentioned it in the "IRL Kraken Drive" thread.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive If that ended NOT being a freak test, I'd say that classifies as a Kraken drive. At least until they figured out why it does what it does. I'd say an IRL Kraken drive would be a device built that accomplished something amazing, BEFORE we were even able to understand it. It's basically the process of R&D, happening in reverse.

What gives me the most hope for this is that it's Ridley Scott. The plot aside, Alien was probably the most realistic depiction of future space travel for its time. In spite of the technological advancements, you could still feel the NASA influence. And the ambiance of space felt perfect. They captured the feeling of an empty, lonely void perfectly, and the space imagery was breathtaking. On the other hand, it's Hollywood. The skeptic in me keeps screaming, "I-Robot."

Grover's Mill.

That really doesn't help as it applies to normal life. OF COURSE anyone studying to be an expert isn't going to have these problems. It's preposterous to think that everyone needs a chemistry degree just so they can know that a shampoo company isn't screwing them over. If it's your profession, then great! But are you suggesting that everyone needs to spend another ten years on education than they already do, just for BASIC life skills? In spite of technological and medical advancements, the warranty on our bodies still runs out at around 40.

I think the following quote nailed that. Truth is the needle being buried in an ever-growing haystack, where each piece of hay is an opinion, article, blog, 24/7 speculative news coverage, etc. This is worsened also though by the fact that most people cannot read scientific jargon anymore than they can read legalese. And then more often than not, what people are stuck with is dealing with a middleman who serves as a "messenger" between scientists and the common folk. Generally those 'representatives' fall into two categories. One is reporters, who are notorious for manipulating data to suit political agendas or sensatonalism requirements. How many times have we been told that NASA has achieved warp drive... based on just one test that revealed what in all probability was simply innaccurate data? The other is doctors, who are notorious for moonlighting as salesmen for pharmaceutical companies. There's a pretty old joke that goes something like, "If a doctor tells you that you need surgery, you can never be sure if you're dying or if he's just planning a vacation." It would be wonderful if that could be standard curriculum. One thing that has always bothered me about school is that it always seemed to be teaching the 'what' and not the 'why.' Kids being raised, basically to be info-sources, capable of spitting out information when asked for it. The trouble is that it's only information that has been given to them. Real problem-solving, the kind that requires improvisation, seemed completely absent. We were only being taught to handle the problems that were being given to us, with no basis for finding solutions to problems we have never encountered. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever see children being taught these things in any greed-based society. Marketing (AKA mind-control) is far more important than product, so a whole population of intellectual critical thinkers would probably crash the economy.

Do I need to be a Linux user to get the humor in this? Or is it just the joke that for some, using a command prompt is simply easier than pointing and clicking?

By "within reason," I mean specifically, the resources required to attain it. It's something that came up and really made me think about what the real definition of anti-intellectualism is. Someone on FB posted the following link recently. http://www.globalresearch.ca/utah-whooping-cough-outbreak-pertussis-only-in-vaccinated-children/5441385 Quickly I dismissed it as propaganda, because I'm not one who thinks that vaccines are evil. But for some reason, at this moment, that made me wonder if I was technically being an anti-intellectual. I simply assumed it was biased, which in turn means I was acting biased. So I started poking around. Found that many of the other articles there had the stereotypical right-winged political points. So yeah, there's a good chance it's blatant propaganda. That's still giving into cognitive bias though. If someone believes something that is false, it doesn't mean the individual is wrong about everything. So, onward to Google -- I want to see if anyone has ever talked about Global Research News and biased reporting. It took four pages of links (all pointing to global research news or other like-minded sites that simply suggest reading it) before I landed on the first link containing what I wanted. On that link, the bias was being talked about. The website? Democratic Underground. Great. So the first source I come across talking about bias on another site, is a site that is obviously going to contain bias. See what I'm getting at? Now, I could have spent another few days sifting through medical journals and hunting down statistics, but the sad fact is that there's this thing called TIME that most of us simply don't have much of. So I found myself throwing my hands in the air and resorting to my original opinion, giving into my default bias. Doesn't that mean I am being anti-intellectual? The search for truth, it seems, has become beyond ridiculous, and arguably, not even worth the effort. This is a problem that seems new in our society, ever since the beginning of mass communication. Unfortunately, the amount of time invested for a con-artist to create a work of total bull, is far less than the time required to reveal the work as such. The problem is amplified because EVERYONE can be an 'expert' now, and all they need is a blog. And I'm not just talking about politics, but science as well. If you doubt something, such the moon landings, all you need is your own space program to go up there and see for yourself. This is a problem that I feel is only going to get worse. We've already reached a point where everything seems in doubt. Even news sources like The Onion, who aren't even TRYING to fool anyone, occasionally get picked up by news portals as legitimate articles. Deception has become easy in a way that nobody ever could have imagined. "1984" is already simplistic and naive now. Even photographic and video evidence will probably soon be considered useless, because the ability to fake them is in the hands of every John Doe with a computer. Some day there will be a criminal case with falsified security video (or perhaps it has already happened and nobody knows it). Going back to my original thoughts... really, what IS anti-intellectualism? Most see it as intentionally ignoring the truth. But if you don't know what the truth is, what if it's really a lack of resources (time, money, IQ, etc) to discover the truth? We've come a ridiculously long way. If we want to know for sure that objects on Earth fall at 9.8m/s/s, yeah we can all reasonably do that. If we want to know for sure about the LHC? Well... yeah. I'm gonna go play a game now Just some random thoughts. Granted, I know there are people out there who are just driven purely by cognitive bias and do not want to see truth, but are they really the majority or not? Maybe people just don't have a million lifetimes to spend on research.

There's been some evidence that all consciousness might not be brain-related. People have inherited hobbies, cravings, and even personality attributes from the deceased via organ transplants. One girl who received a heart transplant from a murder victim, allegedly inherited enough information to help the police catch the killer.

Someone needs to do a parody of Rust now. With multiple people running around taking commands from users. They can build tents and tear everyone else's down, smash rocks with other rocks, etc.

No, though I did unplug the drive and reboot to see what would happen, and it didn't complain about anything. Plugged the drive back in and it resumed the odd behavior. Reinstalled again and it went away. So the issue is now fixed. I was planning on a fresh install anyhow but was more curious to try and figure out exactly what and why it was doing this. And seriously, those of you who can only say "get rid of XP, it's old" is like telling a guy on the street, "why do you use cardboard for the walls of your house? I find that wood and siding is much more secure."

Was thinking that. Always thought Protists WERE a hybrid of plant/animal.

Generally I agree. I like being able to build a device how I want it. Even as a kid though... I was a hardcore Nintendo fanboy. But I could NOT get into portable devices. I had a Gameboy, but only bought maybe five games for it that were must-haves so I could continue the story of NES games. My only real exception to the portable craze is Kindle. That gave me a love of reading. Turns out that reading back-lit text is just much easier on my eyes. Reading a paper book, I was always at the mercy of whatever lighting was in the room. In the case of school, that was low-budget crap flourescents that always gave me a splitting headache.

Since the most recent install, I hadn't touched those directories at all. And the install was only a week old. I hadn't even installed all my default programs yet, let alone add anything unusual. It was so apples to oranges I can't even imagine what the heck was happening. It would be like you were asking for a permit to build a deck on your property, and then the inspector doing nothing but checking to make sure your car insurance was up to date. Weirdest thing I've ever seen Windows do. Reinstalled again, and the problem has vanished. Ghost in the frikkin machine...

Yes, though I switched it off for the drive it keeps mysteriously accessing. It shouldn't be causing that to happen anyway. It's always the same directories that get accessed when I preview the image file and there's nothing significant about them.

Temp files are on C. Seems previewing an image file is prompting explorer to execute a bunch of readfiles, and even a couple of write files to the master data table $Directory on the D drive. (desktop is on C with the system files). Even more odd, it's reading and writing to a couple of game directories that have nothing to with that. This glitch is repeatable. And a quick reminder, this ONLY happens if I preview an image in the desktop folder. Anywhere else on C, this doesn't happen. Will probably just try another fresh install and see if it goes away. Seems like somehow it thinks the desktop is on D, even though the file loads properly. Or somehow it wrote the data table for JUST the desktop folder, to D. I can't imagine that being possible, and if it is, I'd think the system would be terribly unstable.

It's a new problem to me. Been using SSD's with it for a while now and there was no trouble. No hardware changes since the last install, and I don't think the OS magically aged within a week. And if I wanted snarky comments about old software I would have asked for it. Maybe if Win10 proves to NOT be designed with only mobile devices in mind.

The shuttle model is the only one I can remember.

For someone who has probably reinstalled this 100 times on different computers, this really has me scratching my head. Fresh install, not even a week old. The system drive containing the OS is an SSD. I suddenly notice a long delay when I preview an image file on the desktop. After a couple days of this, I notice that I'm hearing a hard drive spin every time I do this. Turns out that whenever I preview an image, it behaves as if it's reading the file from one of my other drives, even though I know it's stored on the SSD. Even weirder, this ONLY happens if I preview a file on the desktop. It doesn't happen if I preview a file from any other folder on the SSD. Any ideas, before I just reinstall again to see if this goes away as mysteriously as it appeared?

I've had that idea before for getting an amateur rocket into space. Trouble is once it reaches its maximum altitude... have you seen the video footage from amateur weather balloon launches? The thing gets tossed all over the place like a leaf in a hurricane. How to ensure the rocket is pointing in the right direction when you fire it?

I'd take a guess that what you're really missing of those days is when computers were made for people who use computers, as opposed to the modern age, when computers are made for total idiots. I can hold off on all of the new "Apple" gear though. I don't even have a smart phone -- I like tactile buttons that allow me to punch out a message without even looking at the screen. When Hololens comes out though... that might be a different story.

Considering how much success they had with Space exploration themes back in the 80's, an entire product line of REAL vehicles would be sweet!

Fascinating. I never knew they had to keep making so many PYR adjustments.