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| Personal background |
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Just got a job with Visual Concepts, beta testing/debugging Sega Sports games... much cooler than the traffic surveyor gig. Gotta love the hours too, M-F 5:30P-1:30A... i can sleep in all i want and still not be late for work!
My computers are my hobby... and my life. Here are the specs on my primary computer (right now):
AMD Athlon XP2200 (1800MHz)
ASUS A7V8X Motherboard, BIOS rev. 1012
512MB PC2100 CAS2 DDR SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400, overclocked
D-Link DGE-500T Copper Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Broadcom 4401 100mbps Ethernet Adapter
Via AC97 5.1 Audio controller
Maxtor 7200rpm 120GB HD
Memorex 48x12x48x4x CDRW/DVDROM
If anyone has actually looked at this profile more than once, they'll notice that my other computers are gone, and that my primary computer seems a bit... stripped down. This would be because my best friend was having emotional issues, and was able to find relief playing online games with her friends. However, her computer wasn't able to support the games she wanted to play, thus I assisted her.
The other computers have gone to become computers for her two daughters, as one of them is entering high school this next fall (2004), and the other is entering junior high. Interestingly enough, my friend actually got upset that I was sending her so much equipment. She did agree though that it would be beneficial for her daughters to have computers with which to do schoolwork, so she agreed to keep it. I find it odd, and rather amusing that I had to *convince* someone to take something from me, especially something I usually consider very near and dear to me. But hey, that's what friends are for :)
I just realized recently that, although her daughters now have computers... they have no way to access the internet, as she's stuck in a town where the nearest computer store is about 20mi away. Thus, as a back-to-school present for her girls, I'm sending them a broadband router and multifunction printer :) |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Probability suggests that out there in that vast universe, there is some form of intelligent life. However, they could be technologically far behind us: perhaps they could just have discovered fire. They could also be technologically far ahead of us: perhaps they have some form of quantum communications devices, and have no interest in radio frequencies.
Then there's also the alternative that they communicate through means other than hearing and speaking. If the atmosphere were too light on their planet, sound would not carry well and sound receptors may have evolved away. Perhaps they might communicate through a form of morse code, with a luminous appendage that they can illuminate and darken at will. In a thinner atmosphere, there would be fewer air particles to refract the light, and it would carry a much longer distance than sound. In this scenario, our audio transmissions would be lost on them unless they found a way to decode our speech signals into light signals that they could read.
If and when we DO discover some form of intelligent life out there, there are many benefits and dangers to this. The exchange of technology and information between two civilizations who have evolved completely separate from each other could result in a profound increase in the quality of both civilizations. However, if the alien civilization were hostile, they might teach us how to make more implements of mass destruction, thus only hastening our demise at our own hands... or they could just destroy us themselves, seeing us as a new territory to be conquered. Also, we might teach them hostility if they were a previously peaceful race, and create havoc among their civilization. However, the reverse might happen, and they may show us ways to settle our differences peacefully, perhaps acting as mediators in disputes. Or, perhaps they might have a form of settling difference that does not carry such an enormous cost of life and resources as war does. |
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