78stonewobble

Maybe a little off topic here... But I want to toss this up into the air... Based on what we've learned so far from salyut, mir and ISS, how do we build a space station, that can last perhaps 50-100 years, or even permanently?

No, at best their own culture still exists in some way even if they've been absorbed into another culture. But, yeah it is a shame that the cultures of human sacrifice, slavery or cannibalism has mostly gone out of style. -..- Not all change are for the worse. If alien contact ie. let to an exchange of technologies that let us build working clean fusion power tomorrow and let us feed everyone easily. THAT would technically destroy our global culture, but wouldn't most people be ok with that?

I do not agree with us being able to make those conclusions now. As the map on the first page of this thread illustrates, we humans are only marginally traceable within a minuscule area of the milky way. Not even in 1 percent of the milky way are we detectable. More like 0,00001 of a percent... As for us detecting other life. We've been listening dedicatedly for an even shorter time, than we've been broadcasting. I highly doubt we'd be able to detect life in even nearby systems if they weren't broadcasting directly at us on purpose. We are allready ourselves going more quietly since more and more broadcasting is moving to cables. Personally I'm willing to agree on the guess that life is somewhat rare and intelligent life even more so, but to definately conclude it, is like sampling 1 mm of one newly disinfected toilet seat and concluding that the whole earth is lifeless. I'm also agreeing that there is a chance that civilisations wipe themselves out, though I believe it's more likely to be through inaction than nuclear war. Kinda like we've grown so content with ourselves, that our space exploration is at a bare minimum and so scared of anything nuclear that we won't use it for space exploration or find out (test) whether it can be used for asteroid deflection or much needed more enviromental friendly power generation. It's the stuff we are ignorant of, that's gonne kill us off.

I just think our aggression has been somewhat exaggerated, when it comes to these kinds of questions. Yes, we've been violent, sometimes very violent and as some said here, quite good at it. So violent in fact, that I think it's basic human nature (the capacity for it, not necessarily to do it). However, and this is where the exaggeration part comes in, we're even better at coexisting peacefully and/or surviving. The fact is that our only example of intelligence hasn't wiped itself out yet and is actually thriving. I just don't think you can use human civilisation as an example of whether an alien civilisation would be either violent or peacefull. At most we can say there is potential for both. My personal wager? I think they'll be somewhat like us in this regard. I don't believe you can achieve dominant species status without either violence or the capacity for working peacefully together, dependent on circumstances and I don't think you can achieve a high technological level without the ability to reason. So I'm cautiously optimistic regarding the nature of alien contact (not of the chances of making it in the first place though). ... More on topic... I think active seti will be a waste of time, money and energy, not because I'm fearfull. I'd just much rather invest in bigger and better telescopes for astronomy, where passive seti could perhaps piggyback.

The crusades weren't the most logical thing either, but... But I tend to agree on the logic of ressources and technical difficulties. While us humans certainly have the capacity for violence and has demonstrated it throughout the ages, I'd wager than 90 plus percent of human interaction is actually quite peacefull. For every person doing the act of killing someone else, countless people spend countless manhours shaking hands, teamworking, sleeping together (well minutes here in some cases), walking dogs, farming, tending gardens, building thingamobobs and what not in peacefull coorporation.

Isn't it still the russian plan to decouple their own parts and continue to use them?

Highly modded skyrim (oblivion too?) is supposedly one of the few places there higher vmem can become necessary. Haven't really seen any reputable sites make any benchmarks of it though, but I've seen posts where people recommend higher than 2gb cards for it.

I didn't say to bottleneck it. Everyone prefers the best possible "speed" for every possible task. There's just "diminishing" returns for running everything from an SSD. In my case, my games library is 600 plus GB (with not everything installed) and over 1.000 GB of movies (far from everything on my comp as I'd prefer). I either have to spend quite a lot of money on many large SSD's or, just go with the cheaper hard drives for stuff that doesn't benefit much from SSD's. The best of both worlds.

I think it's more likely than "warpdrive", but it might require some genetic modification. Not just something we can induce in everyone. How it would affect people and minors? Pfft... probably have to ask a doctor and a biologist on it. Nature have a few different ways of hibernation if I remember correctly and presumably they work differently.

I'm in this camp.

Principally I agree, but I have a suspicion that games that stream constantly from the harddrive (large open world stuff), will benefit much more than games that load everything every half hour to 45 mins. Ie. lotro even though it's quite old nowadays can still be quite choppy when moving around due to, I think, slow loading. As opposed to games like tf2 or l4d, where it doesn't matter quite as much whether the map loading screen in the beginning takes 30 or 5 secs. Atleast imho

Especially agreeing with that bit about looking at benchmarks for games. They do those for both processors and graphicscards. If you can't find a benchmark for exactly the game you use, it might still be helpfull to look up other games with same or similar engine.

Agreed... If people want to cancel something for failing during testing, rather than actual concept problems, my faith in humanity will fall even more.

I kinda see "space" as the well... ass end of some country. There are ressources and value to be found, but not in amounts that currently makes private enterprise interested. I think it will take government/public investment in infrastructure and access to make anything major happen there. Personally, if it was up to me and it's not, I'd look into creating some sort of scheduled service to space and places to go. I wouldn't necessarily call it Big Dumb Boosters... But just imagine what we could create with ie. 4-6 annual launches of a saturn 5 equivalent. Or enough launches to really take advantage from mass production. As for places to go there. Perhaps some sort of production that benefits from microgravity, spacehotels or if those fails or are not ripe yet, drag a big honking metal asteroid close and mine it. Let the government(s) handle the basic proof of concepts here (catching asteroids, mining, production in microgravity, living in space) and help with the biggest roadblock (cost of access to space). Then we let private enterprise build on that and do what it does best, find other things to produce in space, stripmine stuff efficiently, sell space tourism or mass production of parts (subcontract the big rocket). The technology isn't there yet and the motivation to get it isn't there yet, but I have a hard time seeing us getting that technology, unless we as a society choose to get it or we get so desperate that we need it. Waiting til we absolutely need it, seems too risky for my liking.

Fail deadly... It adds spice to your lives...

You are right I was thinking of something else, I was thinking of the subjectivity of morality and how we are all entitled to it, and that a society should an amalgam of it's citizens oppinions on a variety of subjects. Laws as an expression of morality should be one of them. Not in the sense, that it gives an individual the right to break the law, but the right to affect the law. Ie. I think that if a majority of citizens, is quite ok with voluntary assisted suicide or euthanasia (yes killing/murder/whatever you want to call it too)... then it is not ok, for a some select few, claiming a higher/universal moral standard to be able to override this change of laws. It's probably the case in quite a few western countries and is by far a much worse example than a stabbing by a crazy guy and the apathy of bystanders. Since here we're pretty much talking about torturing hundreds of thousands people globally. Personally I think it's much worse than murder, to be part of keeping other people alive in terrible pain and/or humiliation, just so I can feel good about myself.

I do believe in moral subjectivism and that our society's overall "moral" should be an amalgam of those, not the supposedly "higher" moral of some select few. I agree we should intervene in the above case, because a person like that probably doesn't think clearly at the moment or as clearly as he/she could, but there are other cases where we shouldn't. My guess for the muffins... That we have a responsibility, when decisions affect not just an individual, but everyone, to dispell myths, lack of knowledge, faulty logic and what not that can lead bad decisions or atleast needs to be considered for taking a decision.

I agree... there is no difference in principle. But does everyone have the right to expose everyone else to all of their particular lifestyle everywhere in society? I don't think so... People can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home, but when it's a place where everyone has access to or someone elses property... Not so much... Obviously we can't account for every other persons pet peeves and we shouldn't stop doing things that are very important to us, but there is quite a range between doing stuff we really like and forcing everything we do on other people.

So, when I call aspergers for aspergers and PTSD for PTSD, I'm insinuating they are "along the same line"? Using their distinctly different names is lumping it all together in the category of mentally ill? Ok, you're right... In the new "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition", where, instead of being it's own category, it is now a part of Autism over a severity spectrum instead. A person with diabetes that manages it, still has diabetes. A person with cancer, that works, still has cancer. You don't have to be in the hospital or strapped to a bed to be "ill". That's just varying degrees of debilitation or we can call it the diseases effect on a persons life. Just because it has a small effect does not mean it's not there. Actually, lack of knowledge on the subject is what keeps us calling alot of these for mental diseases, when in fact, they are all somatic diseases, which we do not understand yet.

We could argue that, but just because I want to shop groceries naked and nudity is completely natural, does not mean it is without problems if I do it. Just as an example. I'm not a repressed nudist *lol*. We have a right to be who we are, but it's only to a certain degree we have to "inflict" (I am that pale) how we are on others and "force" others to conform to "us".

If you can't compaire anything with anything else, then we have no point of reference for calling Aspergers for aspergers, "normal" for "normal" or depression for depression. Different mental (or somatic) diseases have varying degrees of debilitation on a variation of parts of life. Thankfully having aspergers is a relatively mild thing compaired to lots of other things people can have. The point still stands, that you can be the smartest person in the world, but if you are unable to teamwork or just poor at it, you are, under some circumstances, not a benefit or can even be a detriment, to getting a task done. There, a person with aspergers, can run into problems, depending on how it manifests. Which is why I say high functioning is required, atleast to the degree, where the persons job related skills times social skills add to the "team", rather than detracts from it. Obviously, it has to be judged on an individual basis, rather than aspergers (anything else) automatically meaning better or worse.

I just think a certain amount of social intelligence and/or ability is required to function as a group in tight quarters, over an extended period of time, where your life is dependent on eachother. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you **** people off to the degree, where they vent you out the airlock... It will be for naught. I've met people with Aspergers and many other different psychological illnesses (ADHD, Depression, paranoid schizophrenic, manio depressive, dementia, dysthymics, post traumatic stress and what not) and while most often quite sweet (except for the homicide), they aren't necessarily "gods" gift to man or would automatically be an asset in the op's scenario.

This... The energy density is what makes it interesting for certain applications. ... A more interesting question is where they're formed naturally and can we scoop them up?

That's actually a good point. However... Atleast around here, there is free will, unless you are so "ill" that you absolutely cannot take care of yourself. Basically, you are free to take any number of mindnumbingly stupid decisions, unless you are completely unable to take decisions. ... I don't know how important it is to a person trying to fly like that. Maybe it means more to him/her to than continued existence does. It's not my place to tell other people what they should find important in life, but if we're discussing it I'll certainly give my oppinion.

Sometimes though, it is a fact, that some people only know half as much as other people and sometimes some ideas are stupid and can be dismissed as such. Ie. I'm gonna jump of this tall building with some wood strapped to my arms and I'm gonna fly like a bird, flapping my wings... Feel free to try it, but I won't be joining you.