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Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

arxiv.org

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Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#121

Post by lmm »

danielweber wrote: post #99
arethuza wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combining time travel and computation has interesting results: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.artic...

Totally serious question: If I go back to 1990, can I distribute a current version of emacs? The toolchain to build the current source tree won't exist for a while.

GCC stage1 is deliberately written in K&R C so that you can do this kind of bootstrapping. You need a few unix tools (e.g. make - but again, a version from 1990 should work, find yourself a solaris machine or something); I don't remember exactly what emacs depends on, but it should be fine. Getting a modern environment on old unix boxes (or under windows SUA, whose unix stuff is old enough that it comes with X11R5) is fun and usually requires a bit of fiddling but nothing too serious.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#123

Post by elboru »

tinco wrote: post #82
arethuza wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why just Hitler? Stalin and Mao were arguably equally as bad: http://necrometrics.com/tyrants.htm And there are monsters like Leopold II of Belgium (possible victims in the range 2-15 million) who hardly anyone remembers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium#Exploitat... Actually, as hardly anyone remembers Leopold II maybe he is the ideal target.... :-| [NB I eventually remembered that I'm against the…

Would it not be a much better idea to kill Columbus, and prevent the 'discovery' of the Americas, thereby saving the population of nearly two whole continents? Can't be much more efficient with your time travel than that I reckon. edit: Just read the interesting link you posted to 20th centuries bloodiest tyrants. I wonder why Johnson and Nixon are not in the third list, bloody tyrants who killed over 400.000 innocen…

Because of Columbus I and most of Latin Americans are born, most of us are a mix of European and Native Americans. If all of that population was really killed, there would be just white people in the spanish and portuguese territories.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#124

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

bushido wrote: post #110
Ensorceled wrote: post #12

If you are interested in time travel: I saw the movie "About Time" last night and it was both awesome and romantic. Perfect date movie for the geek/non-geek couple. And now at least this discussion thread is not completely useless :-)

Well if you're really interested in time travel fiction, nothing beats Doctor Who.

Specifically, 'Blink' is the best time-travel conceptual episode in recent memory.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#127

Post by rwmj »

_wp3r wrote: post #116
rwmj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a slightly silly-but-entertaining film in which an aircraft carrier goes back in time. The spoiler of the film is that one man who is left behind in time becomes absurdly rich by becoming a pioneering "inventor". So we should look for absurdly rich people who have made dozens of inventions. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/

This is a great lazy Friday night film.

Right. Just make sure you don't read my spoiler comment first :-(

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#128

Post by znowi »

We could try to analyze the tremendous amount of visual data collected - photographs, video, CCTV footage. Discern abnormalities in appearance, clothes, possible gadgets used, movement, behavior. Given the abundance of recording devices today, chances are they got caught on tape or had their picture taken somewhere.

Of course there's always a possibility of false positives (e.g. Lady Gaga), but I think it may worth a shot :)

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#129

Post by twoodfin »

arethuza wrote: post #68
swombat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7000 personally executed over 28 consecutive nights, through a shot in the base of the skull while wearing a leather apron, gloves and hood, 300 a night for 10 hours each night, one every 3 minutes? That's some character... It takes a certain kind of monster to order the execution of 7000 officer prisoners of war. It takes another kind to carry it out personally with a collection of pistols brought in especially for…

I can recommend (if that is the correct term) the book "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" for a chilling description of the leadership of the Soviet Union from the early 30s until Stalin's death: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalin-The-Court-Red-Tsar/dp/0753817...

There's also an excellent 2-part CSPAN "Book Notes" with the author:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Tsa

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#130

Post by jsonmez »

This makes no sense... here is why:

"Hey Bob, you idiot! Someone found you by a stupid tweet you made. Then they posted a research paper online and now everyone knows about time travelers. Go back and fix it."

"Done"

The very act of publishing the results of this study could have caused the results to be changed, thus showing a non-positive match...

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