Sapient

Storing excess power generated during the day at night?

It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.

It was the first time I have used the Reader View on Firefox and I was really impressed with it.

Yep, I would agree that it would be very unlikely that a civilization capable of launching them, WOULD launch them. We are nowhere close to being able to build these probes ourselves, but already understand the dangers of doing so. Even assuming that VN probes WERE launched by some civs, who is to say that they aren't stopped by other even more advanced civs before they can become a problem?

Overall, my feeling is that there are 2 things which cause the 'dead' universe we see.

1. The Great Filter is the evolution of intelligence. Since we are here, its easy for us to assume the evolution of sentience is normal, but the dinosaurs were around for almost 200m years and got nowhere. And if not for a string of lucky events, we wouldn't even be here, wondering these things right now.

2. Advanced civilizations prefer simulation and dont need to colonize the universe at all, I think this would be even more likely if the first point is true, since once you understand the physics of the universe, see that its a cold dead place and you are bound by its physical laws, simulation has a lot more to offer. I would love to invent my own universes, simulate them, and be able to watch and manipulate them with omnipotence.

Oh yes, I agree, and I wasn't trying to imply that this would always be the case. I just meant that just because a civilization is simulated doesn't mean they have necessarily cut all ties with the physical universe. A civilization CAN be 100% simulated, but still be sending probes out to other stars etc.

I'm partial to the Great Filter being behind us as the evolution of sentience combined with tool use. There has been ample time and opportunity for 'us' to evolve on this planet, yet it took until now. The Dinosaurs were around for nearly 200 million years and got nowhere, and if that rock hadn't hit the Earth 65my ago, we wouldn't be here, and there are many other events which could also have put an end to our line. So my guess is human level intelligence is very, VERY rare, which would be very sad and I hope its not the case.

Yep, last time I made a comment about Accelerando, someone also pointed me to Diaspora. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, it was mind-blowing and I could not put it down. The reason I don't mention it though, is because its easier to relate our future to Accelerando than to the pure AI's in Diaspora.

There is no reason for there to definitely be that ONE 'colonize everything' type civilization.

I would assume that it would be incredibly common for a species capable to interstellar travel to have 'cured' aging before starting to colonize the universe. There is no way we can know how a being with eternity before them thinks. Perhaps they will just do it very very slowly? Perhaps immortal civilizations have very slow population growth and decreased pressures to colonize? Perhaps there is a lot of red tape in the Interstellar Colonization Bureau to go through before you can colonize planets? Perhaps the ONE civilization decides it can only colonize barren planets, in which case they have to terraform before they can settle, slowing the process of colonization down exponentially?

I really love this topic, there is so much room for imagination.

This has been my favourite explanation since I read Stross' book, Accelerando. The common argument I get against it is along the lines of "humans being too curious to abandon the real universe".

Of course simulation in this case doesn't answer the problem of Von Neuman probes and the like, as its still perfectly reasonable to expect a simulated race to have some physical presence and desire to explore the universe, however since we recognize the risks of these kinds of things so long before we even have the capability of launching our own VN probes, perhaps the vanishingly unlikely scenario is an advanced civilization actually doing it themselves?

Yep, seems like fiction is having a harder and harder time keeping ahead of fact.

Wow, Im pretty shocked at how many more features Postgres has over MySQL. I always just though of Postgres as 'a bit better, but not really worth the effort', I will definitely have to try it again.

No, thats not accurate, not having free will means we dont consciously choose what we do next - not that there is only one choice we will make in any given circumstance.

For example, I chose to ride a boat today, but it was raining, so I read a book instead.

I think the interesting and more important questions that stem from this are around the consequences of not having free will. Are we punishing people for doing things they were unable to NOT do? As Sam Harris said in his talk on free will, if a crocodile bit your hand off, you wouldnt 'blame' the crocodile, you wouldnt demand it be put down, and you may even take your family to see the crocodile saying 'See, thats the bugger who bit my hand off'. If we have no free will, then a human killer is as much to 'blame' for killing as the crocodile is.

Ive just realised how good AND bad finding life on Mars could be. On the one hand, we find LIFE on another planet. On the other hand, it makes it incredibly difficult for humans to ever move there and begin terraforming the planet into a second home.

It really hard to imagine the entire trillion dollars went into the development of the F-35. Maybe it did, or maybe there was another secret plane developed at the same time...

Or bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish!

I agree, what we really need is to equip a Mars rover with a digital IMAX3D camera.

There could be cultural differences at play here I suppose. The British seem to have a knack for queuing which may be missing in other cultures.

I live in South Africa, and I have definitely seen improvements in traffic when certain lights are out during rush hour (4-way stops on highways in particular).

Ah yes, I see what you mean, sorry!

Really? The blues and oranges tell me its sub-pixel rendering.

I looked for an image with a white background http://i.imgur.com/9aTz2.jpg

Those fonts definitely have sub-pixel hinting - easy to spot if you zoom in on any of the pics - the font is just not a very good UI font.

South Africa, ~210ms

Does anyone have any ideas about what new uses might be found for these precious metals should they ever become as cheap as any other metals?

Gold wiring would be superior to copper, what else?

I have only cut them out completely until I have reached a healthy weight. Once I am there, I will not introduce any refined carbs (sugar, flour etc) into my diet, but will increase certain carbs (Sweet potato, other fruits etc) until I find the point at which I put on weight again.

I should have been more specific - I have completely cut out all refined carbs like bread and sugar, and massively cut down on the rest (I do still eat some fruits, vegetables and even a little starch in the form of sweet-potatoes etc, but very little while I am losing weight).

Once I have lost enough weight, I will increase the amount of carbs in my diet (NOT refined carbs) until I find the point at which I start putting on weight again.

They may lose money on the first asteroid, but once they have the first one, everything should become exponentially cheaper as very little will need to be launched into LEO, and once they have a water rich rock, they can manufacture all the fuel they need, virtually for free. Once they have brought enough metals into LEO, along with some sort of manufacturing plant, they can build more miners, and they will only have to launch the complex parts into LEO, building the rest in orbit.

At some point, mining these asteroids will, for all intents and purposes, be free.

Edit: Another alternative is that these bored billionaires want to actually change the world just for fun, or to see if they can.

After a certain amount of equipment has been launched, they will no longer have any need to get more stuff into space, as everything they need will already be there. All they have to do is make sure they can reach that tipping point where they can construct the bulk of their miners in space (Building the hulls out of asteroid metals, and then just launching the smaller, complex, electronic etc parts from earth).

Break even for these people wont come from the first asteroid they mine - and I doubt they are expecting it to.

> chicken wings and burgers and fries and nachos and big macs

Thats loads of carbs. And they are probably also eating a lot of crisps, along with all the sodas and sweetened drinks they are drinking. What I am trying to say, is that its not the fat in those meals which is making them fat, its the carbs.

I am on a diet which has cut out all carbs entirely, and increased the amount of fat I eat drastically. I lost a large amount of weight fairly quickly on this diet, and the loss continues.

Edit: Americanized chips to crisps.

You cant change an FTP password from a client...