The gravitational forces and stresses causing immense seismic events caused by orbiting a super giant like Jupiter might be a problem.

Also the space ice pirates that ply the ocean depths are said to be very territorial and none too hygienic.

"Buy 'em out Boys!"

Nerds smash up Homer Simpson's office

"You don't think I got rich by *actually* buying people out did you?"

sry, first thing that came to mind...

I can write code that will write 1,000,000,000 lines of code easy peasy.

It might just say "Hello World" a billion times without using a single loop, but it is probably about as useful.

This is currently the problem. Zero liability currently. There have been a number of LARGE examples of this, where things have gone awry, and the company loses like 500 Million. The response has been to halt trading, and reverse all the trades. To me this is cheating. They may have lost, but that just means that someone else was the winner.

If people want to use these methods, then they take the risks. They don't get to call a "redo" because things didn't work out in the way they thought it should.

After a couple of big losses like this, people might think twice about using such a service, or at least account for it within their threshold of risk. They do not own a licence to make money.

Yes and no. There is "reasonable tech" and "current tech". My example was using current tech. Voyager is the only man made thing other than various emissions to leave our solar system. So I was using its speed as a base. Has ANY solar sail EVER been deployed successfully? I think the Japanese has a plan to use one, but that might be a far off pipe dream if I remember correctly. Ion Drives have been tested, on earth, and not for the duration you mention.

Anyway don't get me wrong, I think they should be experimenting with these technologies, particularly the ion drive. However what you call "reasonable" I think could better be described as "untested".

That said I would be much more excited about trying to launch something using an ion drive at a neighboring star, than a man on mars. One of the other obstacles is that of power source. Not sure what the energy requirements for a mission like that might be, or what an ion drive sucks down, but the only thing we have used so far are 40-80 year RTG producing somewhere around 500W of power. Long distance communication takes a lot, just keeping electronics uniformly warm takes a lot (tho by using a RTG you get some thermals anyway)...

Again my example about energy was using traditional propellant (saw it in a fact sheet someplace), as again that is all we have actually used so far.

Hell much of the older technology from back in the day has since been lost, like heavy lift etc... (though some effort is now being made to invent the wheel again).

Though heck if your calculations are correct, if they launched today, it would arrive in 42 years, and if sending transmission at the speed of light another 4.2 years to get any transmission, so 46.2 years, I *might* still be alive then to witness it! Then again, if it has to transmit by radio, I imagine it would take much longer indeed to receive any signal.

lol, yeah I can see that. You also have those that pick and choose which rules they follow. I had one vegan friend that was pretty hardcore. No leather shoes, belts, purses, and this was a girl so probably a hard line to follow. Wouldn't even use a camera because of animal products used in film production (back when camera's had film, I know I am dating myself here a bit). HOWEVER, oddly enough just couldn't give up fries and gravy. That's right gravy. It was the only rule she broke, but broke it kind of in a big way. :)

I have a girlfriend who is quite religious. I am not so much. Raised "United" which I believe is some sort of Protestant, one of the more accepting faiths I think. However not really a believer nor practicing other than to go on Christmas because it would make my Grandmother happy. I am not sure I am fully Atheist nor Agnostic, but I tend not to discuss it too much, as I have found there is really no arguing with those that do chose to believe. I am also of the ilk that think people can believe whatever they like, so long as they don't try to foist it on me, many draw a lot of comfort and community from religion. I think it is pretty obvious that we are all part of something much greater, and that their may even be a greater intelligence at work, however I am not so sure that our part in things, or the interest in those running it in us is all that significant. Much of the more literal religions I don't give much credence to. Partly because I've always been a bit of an ancient history buff, and know much of what is out there is hard to call fact and is pretty open to interpretation from scant evidence.

But I think your example is noteworthy, it probably should be harder to get into a given religion. I do recall having a friend who was a mason (as was my Grandfather), and was looking for a charitable group to work with, and asked him what was involved with joining. He asked me if I believed in God, to which I responded, "to the traditionally accepted version of God in the Bible? Not really.", and he said, well they will ask you that, and if you do not believe you will probably not be accepted. Which is fair enough, probably not the right group for me anyway.

HK-47: Explanation: It's just that... you have all these squisy parts, master. And all that water! How the constant sloshing doesn't drive you mad, I have no idea...

He already got one, what does he need another for?

Wrote a novel called WE that while most attribute to the birthplace of the concept of Utopia/Dystopia within science fiction, it is very applicable to religion and the concept of God and faith.

It is a very old question/premise. Control VS Freedom and Knowledge VS Ignorance

If you think about it Heaven is pretty much the embodiment of a "Utopia" if you believe what many religions expound. The basic premise is that God has a bunch of rules that you must follow, and you get in. Fail to do so, and you go someplace else. So you give up control for happiness. The question is asked, you have your Freedom, but are you more happy for it. The same can be said of Knowledge, which was represented by the apple, that was used to kick Adam/Eve out of the garden of Eden (another Utopia representation). Again God is demanding control for your happiness, when when they elect for individual choice, are cast out. Belief in the "leader" can bring comfort to some, and also believing whatever they are told, not knowing many of the ills. One could also argue that Freedom and Knowledge might just make you miserable.

I won't ruin the book to say what happens in the end, but throughout the book there are many religious parallels (and general philosophic arguments) .

Anyway worth a read for anyone that wants to think a bit more critically about the topic as a whole which isn't entirely one sided. Even has a bit of a dig using evolution, which if you think about the rhetoric today, must have been a pretty big deal when the book was written in the 1920's.

No. There are not two types. There is just one. Simply being annoying isn't a separate branch or something.

Example Vegans. One type. They don't eat meat or dairy products. That is it.

There are Vegans who do this quietly as a personal preference, and those that expound it at every chance they can to say meat is murder, and how disgusting you are for doing so. There is a name for that, they are called assholes. It doesn't make them more or less Vegan.

Just because you are Muslim, Christian, Atheist, or Vegan, does not preclude the chance that you might also fall into the category of asshole.

That said, technically many of the actually branches of Religion have actual tenants about spreading the faith, or converting the heathens, while Atheism is simply a lack of belief in any of that nonsense. So in actuality some basically incorporate being an asshole within their faith, while for an Atheist it might merely be a personal choice... :)

Assuming the closest is even viable, which it probably isn't, 4.2 Light Years = 39735067984839.36 Kilometers. The fastest thing (only thing) man has sent out of our solar system is Voyager 1, which at its current speed, if it was pointed in the right direction would take about 73,775 years to reach the target. Considering you probably don't want to run into it at that speed, you will have to accelerate and decelerate. Which it doesn't have the fuel for (never mind its RTG energy source is only good for 60-80 years), but even if it did would roughly double the time to reach the intended target to about 147,550 years. OK well that's not quite true, it would only add an insignificant amount of time because not a lot of time was actually spent to accelerate in the first place. However in the example below where you do not coast for tens of thousands of years, and accelerate til the midway point and then immediately start to decelerate it would double whatever you speed VS distance is anyway.

Sure you could accelerate and decelerate much harder than that to get there much faster, approaching whatever value of c is currently capable at launch. However by any measure, unless some magic energy source and method of propulsion is devised, the required energy at least at today's standards would require carting around the hydrogen energy mass of our sun for the trip. Some other methods of insitu material gathering such as ram scoops picking up interstellar dust are as likely as the fiction, as again unless some dark matter type thing which is everywhere (presumably) is harnessed, the amount of mass available is pretty low, space as it turns out is pretty damn empty.

Not to mention the weirdness of relative time as one approaches c on a ship compared to Earth, as while it may take less than the 75k years voyager would, here on Earth many more years will have elapsed. As to how many, I have no idea, that is beyond my math calculating ability (as is generally most of what I have currently written I am sure will be pointed out).

Never mind trying to maintain a ship, machinery, technology, or even a society that long!

More likely colonization will involve self replicating and regenerating robotic ship carrying a genetic payload and an informational database (likely with a terra forming mission proceeding it). Which would be more like favorable seeding for similar evolution and life to occur, than an actual "colony". Then again, that would also require pretty adaptive programming and AI, which would likely mean we would probably be fertilizer for our robotic overlords petunia plants.

So I guess I am saying as a thought experiment it is sort of interesting, but at this point (or any really foreseeable point in our future), it is all a bit far fetched by even the loosest standards.

Errr... I would agree with the whole vaccine thing, but GMOs?

There are loads of problems and issues with GMOs. They are pretty much the equivalent to what scientists use to do by intentionally introducing non-native species to take care of an annoying local species. Which we now know to be "a very bad idea". All ready insects are developing immunity responses to the new strains, while the new strains kill off all the variation.

Anyway all the sciency technical stuff aside, one of the more disturbing things about GMOs is the fact the companies (most of which can be called Montensento apparently) patent these strains. Which is pretty much evil. It is a near perfect business strategy of course:

1) Create product
2) Patent product
3) Have product literally kill off all competing products
4) When no one has a choice anymore, charge whatever you like, and sue everyone else into oblivion

As the saying goes, don't attribute to malice, what could be incompetence (or something like that, I am paraphrasing, can't be bothered to look up actual quote).

However I think the inverse holds true for Politicians. You might think they are making decisions like stupid morons, but very likely it is a calculated response, usually one that is A) going to win votes among the stupid that believe that drivel, B) ideological which will win them points within their party by towing the party line, or C) simply to be partisan to make your opponent fail and you don't care much as to how.

Never mind E) about budget and money. Killing science budget and applying it to something else that can further your interests, or making or taking positions that are friendly to those interests that funded your last political campaign or potentially your next one.

All very cynical I know, but the truth usually is.

Also I forgot about what I call the FB rule.

Your password is super safe and invulnerable. However you signed a EULA (that is 862 pages long, stored in some obscure location, that can be changed at will) by glancing at it for about 5 seconds to find the next button, that basically gives the rights to all the information you were protecting in the first place, and your first born son, to the company that stores the information, who can and will sell it all to the highest bidder anyway.

Crypto is being supplanted by a lack of rights.

Ob. XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/538/

Now a days you don't have to worry so much about some criminal beating you with a wrench, however you do have to worry about the NSA going to everywhere you actually store information online and forcing them to give the information over "voluntarily" by creating laws under some pretense and threatening legal repercussions, or by just doing it illegally anyway using the usual scare tactics. The same can happen to you personally, and they can pretty much throw you in jail for an infinite amount of time until you produce the password in question anyway.

Anyway criminals are NOT brute forcing huge lists of passwords in the first place. They either take advantage of terrible security in the first place (Hey lets store all the passwords in an unencrypted text file which anyone can access if they know where to look!), software vulnerabilities (Hey your password is super safe, too bad there is that gaping security flaw that lets people bypass passwords altogether!), or social engineering (Hey sure I will give out your password, I'm an IT guy that gets paid 10$ an hour and I really don't give a shit anyway).

So while in an interesting sort of puzzle way this is neat, the actual protections it will afford you is probably very little.