Vapymid

While the world is going through yet another period of collective madness, starting up new wars with gay abandon as if they were parties - a positive test result obtained by NASA for a strange device might just mean that we have moved to the stage where space exploration on a massive scale (as in manned ships to Mars and farther away) has become possible. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/04/nasa_tests_impossible_microwave_drive_that_could_get_us_to_mars_in_weeks/ http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052 A drive that only needs electricity and no reaction mass. If it can be scaled up this means interplanetary travel under continuous acceleration (possibly high enough to generate pseudo-gravity for the crew to avoid the physiological effects of zero-G) and without hauling the mass to throw away in order to create thrust. This will give travel times between planets on the same scale as sailing across the Atlantic in Columbus times and, possibly, the payload to gross-up mass ratio to make the ships commercially viable. Regards

If that's what they think they're doing - they are governed by a bunch of morons and should think of a regime change ASAP. But that would be too good to be true. Regards

I have noticed a change of tone in the recent coverage of ISIS in the media. I think that we are being prepared to accept that "ISIS will be there to stay" and "they are a bit extreme but not that bad, actually" and "maybe we'll just have to talk to them". With Putin being the official Scarecrow No.1 and Israel causing continuing embarrassment for the West we don't want our attention drawn to an obvious failure of a 10-year long military adventure in a far away country, do we? Regards

This also doesn't make any more friends for Israel, does it? Every child who will have survived this and witnessed the destruction of their home, death of a schoolmate or a sibling or the parents - they will be living with the hatred of Israel inside them for the rest of their lives. They won't need any additional persuasion that "Israel should be wiped off the map". Regards

Nope, I don't believe any rhetoric. I'm essentially immune to over 6 million forms of propaganda I may be susceptible to confirmation bias occasionally, but who isn't? But I am trying to see through BS from all sides and what I see is that if any of us here, on this board, had a misfortune to be born and grow up in Gaza, we'd support the Hamas and we'd be happily clapping every time another rocket takes off (all except BTGBullseye, of course - he'd be lighting the blue touch paper )... Regards

The internet will go down fairly quickly. You will probably be better off using short-wave radio (if you can get to a transmitter and get it working) and emergency PA in your area. But the main problems are why do you think those surviving will listen to you, how can you make them follow your orders and what will happen if a big guy with a big gun will approach you and ask you to please GTFO? I remember watching the situation in New Orleans after Katrina and one thing that struck me was how quickly the civilization dies when you cut off the power and comms. Within a week they went all the way back to neolithic in terms of social structure and from then on that would have been the tribes and gangs fighting with each other until one of them became the top rooster. Thankfully, the rest of the country was still there and the army became that top rooster. But that won't be an option in your scenario. Regards

But if you create a ghetto in your country, concentrate its population by racial and religious criteria, deprive them of any rights and systematically terrorise them with wanton violence, cutting off their supplies, destroying whatever infrastructure they manage to build for themselves (sounds pretty much like City 17, isn't it?) - that's pretty much the only type of self-government you can expect to arise in such ghetto. The question is whether this is a product of mistakes in historical decision-making or was it actually intended in the first place? You can guess I am not a big supporter of the Israeli policies on Palestinians... Regards

I agree with this. But this is not what's going to happen if you remove all adults and only leave babies and hormonal teenagers. The problem is that without the experience carried by the adults, the teens will be repeating all the mistakes the human race have been learning from for the past 100 thousand years or so (this is not to bait BTG, by the way ). Your society will break down into permanent gang warfare where the strength of the moral principles governing each individual gang's behaviour will be inversely proportionate to the degree of its leader's psychopathy. Regards

They almost certainly did. Civilian wide-body airliners are great big targets flying straight and level and, as the saying goes in SAM forces, unless due care is taken, the system will hit the easiest target of all available. Obviously, care was not taken and whoever did this - the battery commander and the operators - were grossly negligent. Even if they were given wrong intelligence in the first place they shouldn't have taken the shot before positively verifying that the target was legitimate. Or, if there was a legitimate target in the area they should have made sure that the system and the missile tracked the target and not the B777 (they could command the missile to self-destruct if they saw that it was following a wrong target). It is unlikely, though, that it has been done on purpose (if it was done by the separatists). Regards

A learning algorithm? That makes sense. In reality there will probably be a combination of advances in both hardware and software that will lead to a breakthrough in AI. Now, whether that would actually lead to the "singularity" I don't know. I am skeptical about it. I think more likely there will be a long period of co-existence which will end up with gradual blurring of lines between the machines and the humans. I still think though that the scope for scientific progress remains unbounded for us even if humans are the only intelligent race in the Universe (which I don't think is the case). Regards

That is certainly true for the types of computers we have so far. However, I believe that anything that nature could do we can reverse-engineer and replicate, including the brain, and once we've built one and understood the principles - we can build a bigger and more powerful ones. But I also think that replicating the human brain is a backstop. The most conservative scenario. We will probably be able to understand the principles of "sentient and sapient computing" without having to do a one-to-one replica. At least I hope so. Regards

L1wIe48dsxI Oh, you lit my fire!.. Regards

There is an alternative idea of technological singularity where we will switch to a trans-human phase once the capability of the AI we can build exceeded that of the bio-humans. The trans-human technological advancement will then go along a much steeper exponent until it reaches some asymptotic limit and then continue indefinitely at that rate (or until our paths cross with another race). Aka Alcubierre drive now. I sure hope either this or some wormhole drive can be achieved as it appears to be the only way to get anywhere faster than light. It all requires things like exotic matter, negative energy density, negative mass etc. though, which at this point are as realistic as unicorns... Hopefully, they will fire up the LHC at full power soon and, just maybe, some practical ideas would come out of their results. Regards

I'm glad we have finally agreed on something. Regards

Not an attack. A compassionate enquiry. Regards

Enthusiastic ignorance is amusing but only to a point. I especially love how solving legislative corruption and politically inspired boondoggles is easy for you. Resolve the world problems twice over in one fell swoop. Go on then, what holds you up? Batteries? You probably meant ultracaps? Well, maybe. On a large scale, though? Unlikely. Time will tell. http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/pressroom/pressrelease/2012-09-17/europes-thirst-biofuels-spells-hunger-millions-food-prices-shoot-up http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/21/germanys-412-billion-green-energy-plan-meets-harsh-reality/ There is plenty here on possible technologies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power Regards

You have Tourette's? Regards

That's fine. Just make sure that your having fun is not at the expense of the others. Very well. Anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. A path to the dark side it is. Regards

Wind as replacement for fossil fuels generation IS expensive and it doesn't work (it tends to generate best when there is no need for it). Stand-alone installations require alternative back-up (hydro or diesel) and those feeding the grid are often forced to go off-line when their output is either too high or too low (balancing problems). Of course, the green racket means that the Government must pay the wind operators *to not generate* when that happens. Oh, joy! With solar on a large scale there is a similar problem - it does not generate at night, when you need the power, and there is no practical energy storage technology at the moment to make it effective. Production of PV panel IS energy intensive and although they are claimed to have energy pay-back periods of 2 to 4 years these figures are seriously suspect as they don't really follow through on the entire production chain, including mining and refining the materials. Bio fuels are OK in theory but in practice the bio-fuel crops displace food crops, which causes food prices to go up, especially in those places on Earth where people can least afford it. Tidal power - if you use the same principles as for hydro-electric (i.e. huge dams and turbines) they are extremely disruptive to the environment. Beside the ridiculously high capital requirements this is one of the reasons why it is not being widely used. The alternative tidal or wave-powered generation is in the infancy stage and a commercially-viable technology has not yet been demonstrated. So, well, nuclear fission is the greenest energy source there is at the moment (pending development of fusion nuclear). Regards

I'm sorry, but I think this has degenerated into an ad hominem spat which no longer has any connection to the underlying thread. Will everyone please calm down and take a deep breath before continuing the conversation. Regards

What happens to the 6th person attempting to use it, I wonder? Automatic life sentence for piracy? Regards

y1tFQMjc-IE Regards

Well, yes, what specifically about it? Regards

That was not clear from the first article. Having looked at the publication itself it does seem that the GM crop is increasing the disease incidence and mortality, especially in females. In certain categories the non-treated GM corn had more effect than the herbicide itself. However, a good news - the mortality in males fed on the highest proportion of GM feed (33% - bold line) was lower than for controls (doted line). http://www.enveurope.com/content/26/1/14/figure/F6 If you are a man and want to live long - eat lots of GM food! Well, maybe not.... Regards