The typical alien civilization has had hundreds of thousands of years to work out compression algorithms.

On top of this, spread spectrum might be used.

So what makes anyone think that SETI or anyone else would be capable of recognizing an alien signal if they saw one?

The fact that people are trying to draw conclusions from this failure, is a sign only of colossal human arrogance.

Any derived work of something, like git, which is GPLed, must be GPLed. That means that if you fork, the main branch, the main branch is free to use your extensions. This makes it difficult for replacement to work.

Furthermore, if you try discontinue step, others are free to fork and continue. So discontinue does not work.

The GPL completely breaks the "Embrace. Step 2: Extend. Step 3: Replace. Step 4: Discontinue." process. Which is why it is hated.

This reply usually confuses them enough to go away.

Testers should do the testing.

Packagers should do the packaging.

Sysadmins should do installations.

Requiring devopers to know everything in the Debian Policy manual would be too much.

Philosophers and theologians prove exactly what they assume, no more.

These questions are a complete mystery.

Get Used to it.

This result may not be an example, yet, because it has not been independently confirmed yet. (Who knows if it will be?)

Something like this is bound to happen sometime. (Some think it already has.)

Will physicists have the courage and humility to admit current theories are broken, or will they act like geologists with respect to Wegener, before nuclear fission was discovered?

What is currently known is a very small faction of that which could be scientifically known.

Science is a restrictive methodology i.e. the scientific method.

Human beings have ways of knowing things that are not scientific. So the class of things that could be known, is even larger, than the class of things that could be scientifically known.

And then there are the questions human could pose, for which there is no conceivable way for humans to confirm an answer.

This is the unknowable. "Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses."

Then there are those truths for which humans can not even formulate the question.

Wheather you need continous math such as Calculus depends on if you are programming in a area that uses continous math. Like mathematics, statistics and many others. All programmers use discreate mathemantics, if they know it or not.

Perhaps the author has read Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas but does not want to reveal the real source of his theory.

But I predict that nobody will consider that. Everyone knows that Astology is incompatable with the mechanist materialist paradigm, and is therefore bunk.

Nobody will consider astrology.

Good software evolves.

You need to forget all grandiose plans to fix the software, especially if the ideas come from academia. Become unprincipled with respect to practicality.

The software has already evolved a lot. If you attempt to recreate from scratch, you will almost certainly repeat previous errors, even if you avoid the current maintenance mess.

The problem is that the software has evolved towards external goodness, while ignoring maintainability goodness.

Make a secret plan to slowly evolve the software towards maintainability.

Slowly sneak maintainability and sound software practice in the back door when no one is looking.

Scream loudly about how big the mess is and how amazing it is that anyone can make any changes at all to it.

Make the point that it is not how well the elephant dances, but the fact that the elephant can be made to dance at all. This will give you more time.

apologies to RAH.

Egalitarianism is killing achievement in our culture!

Some people are not capable of learning advanced math. They should be given a calculator and a shovel so they can go dig ditches.

We should stop holding back our best minds with the stupid idea that everyone can do it. They can not.

We need our Einsteins.

We need to put proof back in Geometry class. If some can not handle it, let them go learn basket weaving or something.

Our civilization depends on our best minds. We need to stop holding them back with the stupid idea that everyone can do it.

It would be colossally foolish to sign such a treaty.

I can not imagine such a treaty being ratified.

Therefore, baton down the hatches a storm is coming.

Therefore the only way such software can be known to be secure is if the source is published.

Use free software for security.