Google's page rank algorithm goes a long way to mitigate that by tracking how many links refer to a given site
No. Popularity is a horrible indicator of usefulness, and/or accuracy and/or value. A well curated directory, on the other hand, can be all wheat, no chaff. Unfortunately, no well-curated directory exists.
I will read a good comic.
However, I wouldn't touch Cheetos with your mouth. I consider NY style pizza to be the optimum way to consume cheese, and should there be a need to do so, you may rest assured that is exactly how I will handle the matter.
Yes and no. Yes, right now, as far as we know. Hints otherwise, however, do exist. Further, apparently, space -- being nothing -- can expand and contract much faster than the speed of light (see most cosmological theories), and since the distance from here to there in astronomical terms is essentially created by space... it may be that the speed of light is constant, but the space it travels though, isn't.
Also, we may discover something else. I'm perfectly ok with not being certain; I think assigning absolute certainty to things is a losing game, frankly. In the interim, I enjoy a good story. What I think is a good story is, of course, colored by my opinions, just as everyone's is.
Why would it hurt a spaceship to hit an inertialess object? lol
Try harder.
The objection is that they would have been picked up while moving under also-moving cover.
Subtractive imaging shows both objects that are gone, and objects that are new. You just use the absolute value of the result.
Essentially, for a thresholded image, it's:
abs(1-0) = 1
abs(0-1) = 1
abs(1-1) = 0
abs(0-0) = 0
Image polarity, greyscale, color, bilevel and so on make it a little more complex, but only a little.
In English, if you absolute subtract two aligned images of the same region, everything that is the same goes to zero. Anything else shows up as a brighter spot. The bottom line is, you can't hide something moving unless a satellite imaging system can't see it at all. Not the case with large rocks, I'm afraid.
If you're going to swallow the idea of FTL drives, tractor beams and shields -- among other things -- then it's not really that much of a stretch to swallow the idea of inertial control, too. Which would make such battles not resemble a game of asteroids at all.
As for sound, presuming your vehicle maintains atmospheric integrity, you'd hear anything that causes the the craft's atmosphere to be jolted into motion. Debris hitting your vehicle, the stress caused by a sealed compartment being ruptured, people screaming when they get fried, crushed or otherwise insulted as a consequence of direct or indirect battle damage or loss of, for instance, inertial damping, equipment failures and power supplies having problems. You would also hear something if a force field of any kind was imposed upon your vehicle in such a way as to deliver any kind of uncompensated-for energy in mechanically coupled framework(s) producing direct or indirect vibrations in the audio range. And furthermore , presuming a ship has sensors to detect things like the energy outputs of other vehicles as they maneuver, seems to me that converting that to audio as a handy sound cue/warning would be hardly any trick at all. Just as one example.
Likewise, perhaps *we* can't focus a laser today, but that's not an inherent limitation of lasers even by today's known physics, that's a limitation of our technology, so that objection is kind of dead on the doorstep, so to speak. Not that a visible future beam weapon is necessarily carrying its punch in the form of light anyway. Could be just a side effect, or an aiming aid. This is the future, we're talking an imaginary scenario resulting from science and technology we don't presently have and so may speculate upon (using current knowledge... pretty boring... we can barely get off the planet's surface, much less engage in space battles... that's why most SF has at least a few pure fantasy elements in it.)
And along the lines of what we accept and what we don't, if you are blase' about the idea of a magic camera floating around your space battle and instantly changing perspective from A to B to C, perhaps it's just a little bit silly to complain about, for instance, a whoosh, or what "lasers" can do. That's entirely outside of what might be realistic in terms of what the movies subjects are up to.
So yeah, it's ok to think, but don't let someone else do your thinking for you. If there are space battles as depicted in most SF(fantasy) movies, the rules as we know them right now have long since been trashed, so there doesn't really seem to be any reason to worry about it.
All of the above is why I can really enjoy Star Wars, Firefly, Trek, etc, btw. Even though I'm fairly well grounded in how we think things work at present.
I have more trouble with obvious errors that don't take into account technologies we already have. For instance, in Red Mars, some of the characters "hide" from satellite surveillance by moving over long distances in a large hollow rock (or perhaps a thing that looks like I rock, I forget), something we would spot in an instant *today* by the simple expedient of image subtraction; Take two shots under the same or similar conditions but separated by time, align them, and subtract them. Everything that's in the same place turns to black; anything that has moved will be bright. This is *trivial* surveillance technology, and has been in use since *at least* the 1970's. And the kicker is this would work even better on Mars than it does here -- thinner atmosphere. Caused me a few snickers, that one did.
Peal/Python - A toy AI doesn't need to be fast...
I remember Peal... from Bell Labs, right? Yeah, I thought it rang a bell.
I remember having to code an AI solution to the Wolf-Goat-Cabbage Problem and the Missionaries/Cannibals Problem.
Me, too. No, wait... that was the Minestrone / Cannabis problem. My bad. I did solve it, though. Ate every damn bit of that minestrone. I think I found some old popcorn under the sofa seats, too. Don't exactly remember.
You're completely missing my point. Probably because you didn't read the thread, so you're not aware that my argument is that the idea that "something came from nothing" is specious.
I didn't say THE universe, I said A universe. I've no problem with a quantum fluctuation (or any other universe-creating mechanism) in SOMETHING ELSE or OUTSIDE or PREVIOUSLY EXISTING creating our universe. That's not at all the same as our universe being created from nothing, and it's completely misdescribed when someone says it that way.
My entry into the thread was to debunk the idea that "goddidit", and nothing else. There was an attempt to use thermodynamics to show that "goddidit", that's all.
In summary, there's no evidence that "creation from nothing" was required, because we don't have any evidence, or physics tools that will work, for what went on that far back. The presentation of "quantum fluctuations in something else" precisely makes my point: if the universe came into being (wasn't always there) then the universe still had a cause that doesn't require a mythological explanation. Common sense tells us that causation continues in some form until a level of "it was always there" is reached. If "always" is the correct dimensional term, which it very well might not be, though it may make no practical difference to us.
I can put it this way, too: Anything that was "caused" had a preceding mechanism operating in some kind of reality capable of supporting that cause. Until causes are traced back to something that was always there, again with the caveat about dimensionality. And yet, we may not have been caused at all -- the "was always here" may stop right on our own doorstep, so to speak. We just don't know.
Anyway, there is zero evidence supporting the idea of a god or gods.
Fini.
Whoever downmodded that, you just lost your geek card.
It is possible to create a universe from nothing. What you do is borrow energy from a quantum fluctuation.
No. You can't have a quantum fluctuation when there is nothing to have a quantum fluctuation in. Your assertion requires the pre-existance of a universe in the first place.
Ergo, the universe does not exist.
Assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, that creation is required in the first place. Consider: everything we have and know about was not "created", it was always present in some form or other. Assuming that this is not the case for a time/dimensional configuration for which we have neither evidence or understanding is, at best, fact-free speculation - certainly in no way an inevitable logical conclusion.
If you can't "wrap your mind around" how your average bunny rabbit could rule a world of vicious, hungry, intelligent tigers, does that make you "appreciate the idea"? Are you willing to extend "blind faith" in this direction as well?
I think the premise that you can "appreciate it" because "you don't get it" is just politically correct appeasement.
Why not just go with "I don't get it" and so "it's not worthy of confidence, only speculation, and that utilizing the knowledge we do have, until or unless I do"?
As to infinity, if you don't understand it, what's the problem? Pizza still tastes like pizza, and science proceeds apace regardless. Not understanding something in no way makes the mythologies of pre-scientific societies in any way likely to provide answers.
It came from God... God created it.
There is absolutely zero evidence for this, so I see no reason at all to take it seriously.
So, it was always there then. You believe in infinity.
No. I don't "believe" in anything. I was simply correcting the simplistic, errant logic of the post parent to mine.
My confidence rest with the idea that our physics is currently unable to describe what went on prior to a certain point in time, if "time" is the relevant dimensional term, even assuming that we've got the facts straight back that far from the scant evidence that remains. I'm perfectly comfortable with that. I am curious to know the answer(s), if there is/are one/multiples I can understand, but it bothers me not all that I don't presently know, and may never know.
Although I'm comfortable, as I said, I find informed speculation interesting. What I have extremely low confidence in, though, are attempts at answers made up by pre-scientific societies. I find the idea that they had any means to know straight-up ludicrous. Having been raised in a country that positively reeks of Christianity (the USA), I have made it my business to learn as much about it in particular as I could. That process served only to significantly lower my confidence in its basic premise.
But where did the something it came from, come from. And where did that come from, etc.
Why did it have to come from anywhere? Our existence implies that something was there at any point in our current time, and any point related to that, dimensionally speaking, prior, if indeed "prior" is a relevant term.
Perhaps the universe is infinite in other dimensions (like time) as well as space. If it is, so what? Does Captain Crunch taste any different? No.
The important thing, to me, is to note that we do not know, and therefore it is pointless to claim that we do. Speculation, of course, is very interesting, but only serves to winnow out the things physics tells us are nonsense. Keeping in mind that physics is evolving as well.
With your bare hands?!?
