Viewing profile — Sapient

Storing excess power generated during the day at night?

It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.

It was the first time I have used the Reader View on Firefox and I was really impressed with it.

Yep, I would agree that it would be very unlikely that a civilization capable of launching them, WOULD launch them. We are nowhere close to being able to build these probes ourselv…

Oh yes, I agree, and I wasn't trying to imply that this would always be the case. I just meant that just because a civilization is simulated doesn't mean they have necessarily cut …

I'm partial to the Great Filter being behind us as the evolution of sentience combined with tool use. There has been ample time and opportunity for 'us' to evolve on this planet, y…

Yep, last time I made a comment about Accelerando, someone also pointed me to Diaspora. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, it was mind-blowing and I could not put it down. The reason…

There is no reason for there to definitely be that ONE 'colonize everything' type civilization. I would assume that it would be incredibly common for a species capable to interstel…

This has been my favourite explanation since I read Stross' book, Accelerando. The common argument I get against it is along the lines of "humans being too curious to abandon the r…

Yep, seems like fiction is having a harder and harder time keeping ahead of fact.

Wow, Im pretty shocked at how many more features Postgres has over MySQL. I always just though of Postgres as 'a bit better, but not really worth the effort', I will definitely hav…

No, thats not accurate, not having free will means we dont consciously choose what we do next - not that there is only one choice we will make in any given circumstance. For exampl…

I think the interesting and more important questions that stem from this are around the consequences of not having free will. Are we punishing people for doing things they were una…

Ive just realised how good AND bad finding life on Mars could be. On the one hand, we find LIFE on another planet. On the other hand, it makes it incredibly difficult for humans to…

It really hard to imagine the entire trillion dollars went into the development of the F-35. Maybe it did, or maybe there was another secret plane developed at the same time...

Or bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish!

I agree, what we really need is to equip a Mars rover with a digital IMAX3D camera.

There could be cultural differences at play here I suppose. The British seem to have a knack for queuing which may be missing in other cultures. I live in South Africa, and I have …

Ah yes, I see what you mean, sorry!

Really? The blues and oranges tell me its sub-pixel rendering.

I looked for an image with a white background http://i.imgur.com/9aTz2.jpg

Those fonts definitely have sub-pixel hinting - easy to spot if you zoom in on any of the pics - the font is just not a very good UI font.

South Africa, ~210ms

Does anyone have any ideas about what new uses might be found for these precious metals should they ever become as cheap as any other metals? Gold wiring would be superior to coppe…

I have only cut them out completely until I have reached a healthy weight. Once I am there, I will not introduce any refined carbs (sugar, flour etc) into my diet, but will increas…