Yes, but you don't understand the fundamental problem of your argument. With an OTP, the sentence "0 tanks crossed" is just as likely as the following:

"2 tanks crossed"
"3 tanks crossed"
"4 tanks crossed"
[...]
"144 tanks cross"
"346 tanks cross"

And so on and so forth. You can only run a reasonability analysis, if any of those above was less reasonable than the others. So not only would you need to know that there is a spy and that the spy counted tanks (instead of, say, planes or flowerpots), you would also need to know the exact number he counted and that the spy has not counted wrong. You'd also need to know how he phrased the answer.

In short: You'd need to already know the decoded message to say which decoded message is correct. The reason is very simple: In a One-Time-Pad, the key and message are completely interchangeable. Given only the encrypted text, it is just as hard to find the key as it is to find the original message. This is the ideal property all encryption methods strive for.

Ahhh, then I stand somewhat corrected, as the horse carriage derives from an even older form of a horse-powered carriage. Thanks for that insight!

Of course, this only strengthens my point, ya know. ;-)

P.S.: Being a German myself, your username is amusingly uncomfortable. :D

A horse-carriage is not the same as a modern automobile -- after all, it does not have a steering wheel or other amenities -- yet people always saw it as enough of a prior art to call it a car; short for horseless carriage.

A feather quill cut and dumped in ink is not exactly the same as a modern ink pen, but who would doubt that the feather is prior art?

Can you deny that the first telephones of Reis, Gray or Bell constitute a real, tangible prior art to modern mobile phones; even though they look and work completely different?

And do you know what all those things I have mentioned have in common: They admit to themselves as having prior art; they fully embrace it and the companies that make them do not intend to sue the crap out of each other for those things they have in common. Rather more, they try to innovate and focus on what makes them different.

So, what makes the Apple products different from their competitors that is also different to their own roots -- the prior art? What makes you buy one in preference to the others? Is it the fact that they have rounded edges? Certainly not. Is it the fact that they are black? Of course not. Is it the basic way you work with them (tapping, looking, reading)? I'd be hard pressed to say that that's the case.

No, you prefer one over the other because of its functional differences; exactly those things that actually set it apart from both its prior art and their competitors; especially in the minds of their customers.

So coming full circle again: The looks of the TNG PADDs and the way you hold them is inconsequential to the question if they constitute prior art, as long as their technical and functional aspects are so similar -- which is undeniably the case.

Please open any copy of Darwin's "The Origin of Species", please. It is, after all, the book that brought the issue up to public scrutiny in a big deal. And -- contrary to some opinions -- just reading something does not mean that you automatically have to agree with it.

For brevity's sake, I'm just giving you a few of the chapter headings in it:

* Difficulties on the theory of descent with modifications
* Absence or rarity of transitional varieties
* Organs of small importance
* On the imperfection of the geological record
* How far the theory of natural selection may be extended

And these are just some of the headings. The text itself contains an even more thorough look at what the theory can explain; what it can't explain and what, if found to be an incorrect assumption, would immediately break its back. The entire thing is a defense of a theory against a torrent of very intelligently put criticisms and pointing out of difficulties.

And, as far as I can remember, we raised or got shown many of the same questions during our school education on this topic. They were discussed and at the end, almost everyone was convinced of it. Not because the teacher said so, but just because it stood the test of an onslaught of people trying to poke holes in it ... and it still does!

I know virtually no other scientific idea that was, is and probably will be for our entire lifetime, put under so much scrutiny. And for some reason, no counter-argument has yet managed to break it down; the best they got to, was to show us parts where we did not understand the full implications of the theory yet. And then, by examining it closer, we discovered elements of it that were even more amazing than we thought possible.

Things like the existence of DNA; that horizontal gene transfer is possible between different individuals, groups or species; the role of retro-viruses; the quickness with which adaptation can act, given enough outside pressure; and so on.

So no, I am afraid you overlook just how deeply this entire theory is constantly being evaluated and how hard it is getting poked at. Nowadays, people want to break it, just to see what amazing things we have not yet learned about it.

Be careful where you're heading with that idea, as what you propose is exactly what ages of very intelligent political philosophers have correctly pointed out to be the most brutal and merciless part of democracy: The tyranny of the majority.

If you take a democracy to mean that you put everything to a vote and then blindly enforce what the majority demands, you quickly end up in a nightmarish hellhole.

After all, what if a populist puts up to vote that you must buy and memorize a particular book and you are told that 51% of the people agreed to that?
What if it is then put up for the vote, that due to the way voting works, all parties should be merged, and 51% of the people agree?
What if is then asked, what you should do with a certain 1% of the population, and 51% of the people agree to seize their property?

With just three, small votes, you're in a wonderful cross between Mao's China, Stalins Soviet Union and -- and this is up to you to choose -- Hitler's Germany, Mussolinis Italy, Franco's Spain, Europe during the Inquisition, the USA during the Indian Displacement, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, etc. pp.

After all, remember that no-one said that those 51% of the population were always the same 51%. As an old adage goes: When they came for the Communists, I didn't say a word. When they came for the Gypsies, I didn't say a word. When they came for the Jews, I didn't say a word. When they came to get me, there was no-one left to say a word to save me.

No, the power of democracy does not lie in the tyranny of the majority; it lies within the civil discourse between all; majorities, minorities, loud or silent. It lies within the concept that everyone must be included to agree on a best course of action. All safe-guards in a democratic society must be laid out to guarantee this fundamental concept. That it must be impossible for any part, to take away the voice of any other part.

And, not to put too fine point on it: Taking away the voice of reason, the process of rational and impassioned evaluation of how we think the world works -- even if that reason might arrive at a conclusion you deem erroneous -- in favour of the voice of dogma, is to deny one of those safeguard of democracy.

TL;DR:
The difference is that those teaching evolution do not deny you your right to teach your kid your point-of-view; they only deny you the option of saying that your view is the only way to look at it. In contrast, most creationists/intelligent designers want to force a single point-of-view, to the exclusion of all the others; especially if they come from an impassioned look at the world as it is.

I understood that. What I was more getting at was your statement that the view of the stars should be pretty good -- as good as a near-vacuum.

But actually, during most Martian weather patterns, the view to the stars is pretty shoddy. After all, it's not the air molecules that are blocking your view to the starts on Earth (at night, at least); the three worst culprits are moisture (in the form of clouds/mist), solid airborne particles (dust, sand, ash, etc.) and the simple fact that the overall density of the atmosphere fluctuates from heat convection -- the latter leading to "twinkling" stars.

Now, Mars has virtually no airborne moisture and only high-altitude ice clouds, which is a boon. Unfortunately, this also means that it contains much more solid particles which stay afloat much longer; as they're not washed out of the atmosphere via fog, rain, snow or hail. The third is heat convection. While it helps that there's less air that moves around (which is why modern telescopes are built as high up as possible on Earth), Mars has a much stronger temperature tide. In other words: The difference in atmospheric density between hot and cold areas.

On Earth, this seldom amounts to more than a fraction of a percent compared to the overall density.
Whereas on Mars, the density can quite easily vary by 10% even if it's just modestly heated up.

So, on the balance of things, yes, Mars has a better astronomical weather than Earth, but not by much. And in contrast to the moon, where you can see the stars even during the day, on Mars you only see a reddish haze.

Again, as a comparison: moving just 100 times slower than light is still pretty damn fast. Having 100 times less atmosphere than Earth is, for many purposes, still pretty damn dense.

Snarky as your comment may have been meant, I think you need to check your numbers again what constitutes "so thin it's basically vacuum."

Mars has an average surface atmospheric pressure of 0.636 kPa. Earth has 101.325 kPa. So yes, while it is 160-times thinner, that's still pretty thick, especially if dust is kicked up. After all, remember that with 1/3rd gravity, much less air friction and no moisture, dust particles can stay afloat for quite some time.

And then, compare that to the moon, with a pressure of 10^-7 kPa (~1 nPa), Mars still has a 6.36 million times denser atmosphere. And compared to interplanetary space, that's still practically solid, as space has 400.000 times less pressure.

In other words: If Mars is a near-vacuum at nearly 10^17 times more molecules per cm than interplanetary space, then a snail that moves at only 3*10^10 cm/s.

Just like there does not seem a topic for which you can't find a quote from The Simpsons?

Behold the might of the law of large numbers and the infinite monkey theorem! Given enough input, you can find almost anything in everything and match almost everything to something else.

That is why you have an autopilot in place. There is no reason not to assume that the instructions you would get is: See the center-left screen. Please press the button labeled "Autopilot", then select "Emergency landing approach protocol". Of course, this is only peripherally related to the topic at hand.

Who said you wouldn't get any training with the system before battle? Remember, I'm not talking about the entire idea from the article, only the subsection that deals with augmented reality extended by an expert system.

Basically, your argument boils down to this: Imagine that your grandparents have not seen a computer or dealt with one for most of their life. For them, it sure might be possible to get and see an E-Mail with the pictures you've just sent them, but they certainly can't be expected to browse the web to find the codecs they need to watch the OGG-Theora movie you've also attached. There might be exceptions, but they're bound to be rare.

But your siblings, who grew up at the same time as you; even if they never studied computers in detail, might correctly understand what you told them to do. And for you yourself, and millions around you, this action comes almost as second nature -- not because you might have professionally studied it, but because they were simply subjected to it.

Now imagine every single soldier being equipped with such a system. Being told to trust it. Having learnt to use it even under the duress of combat. To have it integrated into their daily drill. No, they would not need to study medicine; but just by being subjected to a system that puts that knowledge in their hand (so to speak), they can become far more capable than what the current pure first-aid-medic system can give.

As I said: It would not replace medical doctors, hospitals or med-evacs. Instead, it would improve the immediate situation at hand until proper help could arrive.

Just compare the injury-to-death rates of historical battles with modern battles. Even though the number of injured people can be much higher today, the plain fact that you're most likely not going to lie in the dirt for a few hours until the battle is over is saving scores of people.

You forget that with a sufficiently advanced expert system that is guiding the actions of the person in question, many complex tasks boil down to an execution of relatively simple steps.

For example: Most people could not land an airplane on their own. But as the Mythbusters have shown, if an expert (or expert system) is guiding you through the steps, almost everyone can do it.

So, if I have the choice between sharing a single, specialized medic who could do brain surgery without help but can only tend to one patient at a time, or just giving the soldier next to me the ability to do something simple like ensuring that my heart keeps beating and my blood doesn't spill everywhere while they call the med-evac; I'll gladly take the second option. If there's a system in place that makes sure the soldier next to me doesn't accidentally administer a fatal dose of morphine, all the better!

As always: The solution does not need to be perfect, as long as it is better than what is currently in place.

That is not not something Ayn Rand was the first to state. It's even older than basic capitalism. For example, the ancient Greek and Romans knew that while slave labour was bad for the slave, it was essential for their society, and thus a net-gain for it.

But as you can quite clearly see, whether a net-gain for society is morally good or wrong depends on what kind of society you are talking about.

And then of course, the windowmaker-fallacy is also not very far away. Just because you break a window and give a window-maker a new job, that doesn't mean that it's a net-gain.

As good and as valuable as more automation is (after all, for most people the times of 60h+ working weeks are long over), there are some corner-cases where its over-all effect can be and is damaging.

There are always three things to any written pronouncement: The letter, the spirit and the application. In law terms it means that the letter of the law (the text that is read by you) is not a complete picture of the spirit of the law (what those who wrote it intended), and that how it is applied (what those who read it do with it) is not a perfect representation of either of the the two former things.

In your example, the Old Testament merely states that homosexuality is a grave sin and should be punished in the life just as it is punished in the afterlife. The spirit of it was just good, old, plain homophobia. The application of it by those who follow that creed can range from tacit disapproval to burn-them-at-the-stake. Somewhere in the middle-ground is chemical castration as happened to Turing.

So, even though the OT did not proscribe that punishment directly, it is responsible for, or at least an expression of, the belief that homosexuals ought to be punished. So if you think the application is morally wrong, you can't escape the argument that the letter is also or even just as morally wrong.

Or in other terms:
I missed the part of the 2nd Amendment to the US constitution where it says people may buy assault rifles, rocket launchers and autocannons. Would you be so kind as point that out?
I missed the part in the manual of my car where it said you should not strap rocket boosters onto it. Would you be so kind as point that out?

Or, to put it in really simple, Hollywood-compatible terms:
I missed the part of the Army Handbook where it says where to find the mess hall. But if it isn't explicitly described in there, how could you have ever found the mess hall?

Well, Europe (specifically the area governed by the EU) is not the same as Australia.

Here, you're very hard pressed to find places that do not qualify as someone's back road outside of a few mountain streets.

And well, if you drive off of a mountain street, the "golden" window where people can actually help you has usually already passed the moment your car lost contact with the street.

Any good forensic examiner would like to disagree with you.

True, you should probably visit a psychiatrist if you think you hear the dead speak, but that does not mean that they can't talk.

Three guesses why the Mafia and certain other organized criminals give you concrete shoes -- or even directly cut out the watery middle-man and simply embed you completely in concrete.

Remember: In the family, the Omertà and oath of silence extends even beyond death.

Errata (just like in any good book about maths): X/Y = 0 + epsilon