requires us to make much bigger lasers, and probably also bigger sharks.

We have 'em; they're called "bankers".

Isn't periodic full-drive scanning an optional feature that the security admins can switch on or off?

In this case, add a "shutdown for the day" button, that does the updates, scanning, etc. before shutdown.

I believe they try to stagger the updates so that the network is not flooded. A smart system would coordinate all that to balance energy, bandwidth, night scans, security updates, etc.

Seems a nice niche to exploit by entrepreneurs. Sure, it may be scriptable like you pointed out, but some security teams either are not good at it, or management is more comfortable with a purchased product.

Or use an OS that can apply updates silently and doesn't require scanning for viruses, etc...

That's an org decision that is far far beyond my control. For now, I just want to persuade them to invest in update and scan coordination tools rather than leave them all slow.

I suspect the WSJ editorial section is written by similar mimic-based AI.

We can put a nuclear reactor in space to power a colony ship if we really wanted to. True, we lack practical practice, but there is no known barrier to doing it (money & treaties aside).

Don't new & changed files get scanned automatically? I don't think that's the bottleneck. I'm talking about sequential (more or less) general scanning, which is what is going on in our case during work hours. Even if I'm doing nothing on the PC, McAfee is still chugging away on the disk.

Too many people shut off their machines at night

We have a similar scan problem, but our co's policy is to not shut down PC's at night so that they can get Windows updates. But the scanning still happens during the day even if one leaves it on.

Couldn't a scan rule be put in place that only scans during the day IF the night scan didn't complete? Anybody know of a tool like that for McAfee? Does McAfee have a scripting language or scheduling rule engine? Or, a 3rd party add-on?

That way ONLY those who turn it off at night get "punished" by sluggishness. (Or if a Windows update interrupts an anti-virus scan, which may happen from time to time, but that's better than always day-scanning.)

McAfee could make a nice profit even by selling such a rule tool. It's like being paid to create a problem and being paid again to solve it: Kinda like Congress :-)

Perhaps I'm not explaining the tradeoffs I perceive well. We should put our humans-in-space research toward interstellar ships similar to the original Orion project (early 60's), for reasons given in nearby replies.

I'm not convinced going to Mars is the best way to get such research and experience. We need more experience with spin-based gravity ships and NON-chemical propulsion. Doing a slightly-bigger Apollo-to-Mars is not in that direction.

I tend to agree, and that's why I said "if we make it that far" near the end.

However, we don't need near-light-speed (near c) ability to colonize extra-solar planets. The ships can be multi-generational and use something like the original Orion project's propulsion to get roughly 5% of c. We perhaps have the technology even now if we spent enough. FTL is merely a bonus.

The key unknown here is whether AI *or* extra-solar travel ability (EST) will move faster. Existing AI is still a far cry from human-like general intelligence (HLGI). Whether HLGI is 20 years away or 20,000 is hard to say. Our current AI is still lame in most regards. (It's just fast & big-ass databases & statistical processing that makes it seem "smart" sometimes. High-level goals and abstract thinking still elude it.) We don't know how hard the problem really is. Evolution had a lot of time to optimize brains.

If EST progresses faster than HLGI, then we may be okay. EST is just about possible now, just very very expensive. HLGI is not possible EVEN if we had $100 trillion to try to build one instance (excluding "base" R&D). In that sense, EST looks like it may be feasible first. But past pace is no guarantee of future pace.

Interesting to speculate about...

WW3 would essentially turn Earth into Mars. If we have self-sustained-colony technology on Mars, we'd have it on Earth also.

And an epidemic is very unlikely to wipe out every human. The only chance of that I see is an engineered pathogen, and the builders of that would probably find a way to get it to Mars also if wiping out everyone is their goal (or it may accidentally end up there in a shipment). If it's deadly enough to wipe out 100% of Earth humans, chances are it would end up contaminating Mars also along the way.

And as I mentioned elsewhere, the risk of asteroids etc. are quite low compared to human-induced risk. The Earth-as-Mars rule above also applies to asteroid crashes.

I'm pretty sure our biggest risks are human-based. The frequency of natural mega-disasters is roughly about once per 50 million years. Yet Cold War mistakes almost triggered a nuke winter multiple times in the past 60 or so years. Humans are still stupid, with ever bigger weapons. The ability of small groups to cause big destruction is on an upward trend.

And a global drought is unlikely to wipe out every human (unless it's part of some other problem).

Our biggest risk is us.

A Mars colony will improve our odds slightly, but interstellar colonization is the only real solution (potentially). We have to spread ourselves far and wide to avoid being hunted to extinction by mega-evil empires (of humans or their bots).

Our future is probably akin to Battlestar Galactica, if we make it that far, even.

No, because the technologies for Earth-to-Mars travel versus interstellar travel are too different to have significant cross-usage. For example, a multi-generational interstellar ship will probably have to rotate (portions) to provide gravity to the inhabitants and thus the zero-gravity survival issues of a Mars trip are mostly moot.

I agree there are some lessons that are usable from a Mars mission, but it's spending a heck of a lot for marginal trickle. If we could have both, great, but given an either/or choice, I'd rather spend it on bots and get science and new vistas NOW.

if we don't get off this orb, we are destined for extinction.

What ever dooms us on Earth would likely also doom us on Mars. For example, if a mad invader wanted to take over everything, he/she would come to take Mars also. If run-away AI takes over, it will also likely infect Mars colonies.

I suppose certain mistakes like LHC producing run-away black-holes, or one-off suicidal acts are less likely to spread to Mars, but Mars is so close that most human-created maladies would also put it at risk.

An interstellar or extra-solar colony or ship would have a better chance. Just don't tell The Borg where you are going because they'll probably be able to move faster than us.

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