Just heard that Arthur C. Clarke has died; truly a sad day.

On one of his TV shows he once opined that had the ancient
societies that had employed the electrochemical cell
(Babylon), mechanical computing (Greece) and jet propulsion
(Greece, Rome, others) been able to persist and flourish,
humanity by now would have colonized the planetary systems
surrounding all the stars visible to the naked eye.

Regards,

Michael

msg wrote:

Sad day for forward thinking science fiction readers.

donald

On Mar 18, 8:00*pm, msg <msg@_cybertheque.org_> wrote:

In summary: if there was no war, we would be a far more advanced
civilization, because war wastes resources. Unfortunately we're built
to fight, which implies we're not built to be an advanced
civilization.

I regret not having a prehensile tail as well, but both issues are
species limitations and there's nothing to be done about it.

larwe wrote:
Hiram Maxim contributed to the development of the art of surgery. He
invented the machine gun.

The whole success of the information theory, nuclear physics, jet
propulsion, electronics, computers/software industry, etc. is the direct
result of the war effort. Those areas require the great amount of
investment at the initial stages. This investment can only be done by
the governments in the course of wars or the war preparations.

I am sure the first evolutionary monkey who used a stick as the tool
first used it as a weapon against the other monkeys.



Vladimir Vassilevsky
DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
http://www.abvolt.com

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:

I would have said: This investment /is/ only done by the governments
in the course...

Just the nature of the human race. <sigh>

--
-Mike

Arthur C Clark was a prolific letter writer in the early days of the
personal computer revolution he sent notes of encouragement and
suggestions to many of the early innovators. He saw better than most
what would happen when low cost computers would be generally
available.

Walter..

msg wrote:

On Mar 19, 9:23*am, Vladimir Vassilevsky

You say "only" purely because you're part of the same species as
myself and those governments. Fact of the matter is, if resources
exist, it is only culture and instinct that tell us to which projects
we should allocate them. There is no law of the universe that says "in
order for a species to develop fission power, it must first have a war
as incentive". Any scientific problem can be posed as a theoretical
question, it doesn't have to have "fight off the invader" as a motive
in order for the scientist to go find an answer.

In fact, you could argue that a completely rational civilization
sufficiently advanced to understand the concept of other planets
should have a Darwinian goal of extending its breeding habitat to
those other planets as the first possible priority.

It just so happens that our species is hardwired to have internecine
conflict as a high-priority goal.

I'm sure Swift would have had something interesting to say in this
argument.

I'm sure you're right.

On Mar 19, 11:20*am, msg <msg@_cybertheque.org_> wrote:

Just think how handy it would be. How many times have you needed to
hold three things at once? And a tail is more convenient than a trunk
or an extra set of arms.

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:

<snip>

Recent behavioral research suggests that Clarke got it right in his
depiction of early hominid cooperation involving skirmishes with other
hominids; other great apes and primates lack the motivation (perhaps
lack the cerebral circuitry) to cooperate, to empathize (theory of mind
issues) and to teach each other. OTOH, domestic dogs clearly have the
ability to understand the state of mind of others and to cooperate
in problem solving, which suggests that their cerebral development
has been rapidly selected by social context.

Michael

larwe wrote:

Thanks for the chuckle; honestly I can't every remember having
that particular desire

Michael

On Mar 19, 10:29 am, larwe <zwsdot...@gmail.com> wrote:
Personally, I've slipped off a shoe and used my toe on the single
sequence button when both hands were holding probes...

There was also control-alt-nose when code crashed while trying to hold
a probe on an ISA bus decoder...

On Mar 19, 11:21*am, cs_post...@hotmail.com wrote:

Somebody used to make a foot pedal with PS/2 keyboard wedge for this
purpose. I imagine you can use the pedals from one of those USB
driving simulator kits for the same effect.

larwe wrote:

One thing for certain is that humanity has to vacate this planet within
the next billion years or perish. We seem to be behind schedule on this
project already.

--
************************************************** ******************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
************************************************** ******************

cs_posting@hotmail.com wrote:

Hahaha. Reminds me of the old Commodore Amiga easter eggs. Hold this
key down while typing this, AND eject the floppy in the internal floppy
drive. You often needed a second person or have really big hands.

Most of the messages were engineer written/hidden, and included pictures
of half-naked women, vulgar anti-IBM PC messages, etc.

What fun. It's a shame that the world has gotten so PC that doing these
types of things today have become fodder for lawsuits, feminists, and
other would-be victims.

Keith

On Mar 19, 2:18*pm, "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Benn...@topmail.co.uk>
wrote:

I assume this message was intended to be some kind of thinly-veiled
Luddite-ism. I make no bones about the fact that I consider off-world
colonization to be the single important engineering goal to which we
can aspire.

larwe wrote:

Not considered whether or not it was any kind of Luddite-ism before.

The current scientific view is that, one way or another, the planet we
inhabit will expire within the next billion years. Either by being fried
by the Sun or ourselves managing to do the job before hand.

So, I'll agree that the highest priority of all engineers ought to be to
the ends of getting humanity off of this lump of rock and out there
colonising the other worlds we seem to be detecting with greater
frequency these days. I think that, based on the time-frame in the
majority of SF, we should have been already out there before the year
2000 so are somewhat behind the schedule.

--
************************************************** ******************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
************************************************** ******************

Paul E. Bennett wrote:
The earth won't be fried by the sun for about 4 or 5 billion years -
stars are pretty stable throughout the main phase of their lives. We'll
have more to worry about before then, however - as the earth's core
cools it will get colder, and when the Milky Way and Andromeda crash in
about 2 billion years it's impossible to predict what damage (if any) it
will cause to our solar system.

msg wrote:
Have you never had the urge to swing from tree to tree, while
carrying a bunch of bananas in one hand, and eating with the other
hand?

--
[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Walter Banks" <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote in message
news:47E11D43.C3E033BC@bytecraft.com...
Did he predict top-posting?



Steve
--
http://www.fivetrees.com

larwe wrote:
Indeed, and not just for the oft-cited justifications of the need for
an expanding frontier to accommodate social experiments and provide
relief for persecuted groups, but as an accommodation to expanding
populations, and especially necessary to mitigate objection to life-
extension technology.

Michael
extension