The Return of Testing Chat Thread

[adr]

BTW SQL sucks

"delete from table"

deletes all from the table. i was just typing something quick on the command line and accidentally hit enter early

time to restoe shit from the backup


i say "delete from" MUST have a where clause

and you can just use "truncate table" to clear it all


but SQL is a piece of shit in a lot of ways anyway

[Aaron]

likeafieldmouse:
Neil DaCosta - Astronaut Suicides (2011)
“Imagine after years of study and dedication to complex classes of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, engineering, etc. .. and of course a good physical preparation, you get up in the morning, prepare your coffee and read in the New York Times that ‘NASA will not travel into space again.’
Via
In all honesty, I’m glad to see that the State will have less to do with the exploration of the void.
Private ventures in space likely won’t be used to drop bombs on people.

Hahahahahaha! Dumbest tumblr statement ever.

[Flagg]

It literally may be. Or it's shroomy.

[Jung]

I haven't read that thread but if we're assuming the hard SF STL civilization is way huger than the soft SF FTL-based civilization I could easily see a scenario where the soft SF guys easily "win" on the battlefield and conquer the hard SF civilization, but ultimately the hard SF civilization "wins" because it's so huge and complex the soft SF civilization is just a drop into its ocean and eventually becomes demographically absorbed or culturally assimilated or just becomes a mostly irrelevant minor power once their tech diffuses to other groups so their initial advantage is gone.

Call it the Yuan Dynasty scenario. Sure the soft SF group takes over and rules for a while ... but come back in a thousand years and culturally the place looks a lot more like the hard SF civilization than the soft SF civilization, and the period of dominance of the soft SF civilization is remembered as "there was this period a while back when these fringe world yokels took over but things went back to normal after a while."

Soft power ftw

[Jung]

^ It occurs to me the above would might make interesting sci fi.

I mean imagine you have this standard Baen books space empire that has conquered a hard SF civilization that is more like Orions Arm or House of Suns

And yeah they're dominating the place militarily but economically and culturally and politically they're these handful of impoverished unsophisticated provincial fringe world yokels who are now faced with the task of running this vast and ancient and diverse and sophisticated and alien society, filled with wonders the likes of which they could scarcely have imagined and terrors to freeze the soul.

[RogueIce]

I haven't read that thread but if we're assuming the hard SF STL civilization is way huger than the soft SF FTL-based civilization I could easily see a scenario where the soft SF guys easily "win" on the battlefield and conquer the hard SF civilization, but ultimately the hard SF civilization "wins" because it's so huge and complex the soft SF civilization is just a drop into its ocean and eventually becomes demographically absorbed or culturally assimilated or just becomes a mostly irrelevant minor power once their tech diffuses to other groups so their initial advantage is gone.

Call it the Yuan Dynasty scenario. Sure the soft SF group takes over and rules for a while ... but come back in a thousand years and culturally the place looks a lot more like the hard SF civilization than the soft SF civilization, and the period of dominance of the soft SF civilization is remembered as "there was this period a while back when these fringe world yokels took over but things went back to normal after a while."

Soft power ftw

^ It occurs to me the above would might make interesting sci fi.

I mean imagine you have this standard Baen books space empire that has conquered a hard SF civilization that is more like Orions Arm or House of Suns

And yeah they're dominating the place militarily but economically and culturally and politically they're these handful of impoverished unsophisticated provincial fringe world yokels who are now faced with the task of running this vast and ancient and diverse and sophisticated and alien society, filled with wonders the likes of which they could scarcely have imagined and terrors to freeze the soul.

The question is: why do you assume any of this to be the case? Unless we're going back to my earlier comments about how you can massively stack the deck in favor against the soft sci-fi side, in which case congratulations on winning a contest you heavily rigged in your favor. That's not exactly something to feel proud of.

What makes you think a HSF civilization is even going to have anything remotely resembling a mono-culture in the first place, seeing as how they're effectively independent nation-states flung about the stars with decades, centuries and millenia seperating them from contact with another? And that this culture will somehow be so strong as to consume the "weaker" soft sci-fi culture, which is only weaker because you've stated it to be so even though there's no inherent reason for why they can't be just as (if not more) expansive than the HSF side. And oh, thanks to their far greater speeds in travel and communications, would be much more likely to retain cultural similarity across their Empire - though if it's big enough even that's debatable.

Besides which, as the soft SF tech starts to diffuse even in your rigged scenario, your hard SF society is going to cease looking like a hard SF society and more like, well, a soft SF universe as I'm pretty sure they won't be casting aside FTL travel, transporters and all the other cool technology soft SF would bring to them. So in the end, the hard SF fails anyway.

Unless of course you just talk about the culture that somehow exists across this HSF universe and that the SSF power can't hope to match because you said so. But again, stacking the deck.

[adr]

BTW a story doesn't have to be plausible to be interesting.

[RogueIce]

BTW a story doesn't have to be plausible to be interesting.

Indeed it doesn't. I like space fighter stories, after all.

But that really only addresses the second quote I used, the first one doesn't have to do with it being a story. So my commentary is still valid.

[adr]

i'm actually a defender of space fighters much to everyone's chagrin

even those who accept my basic argument say it is better to just use stationary emplacements or remote controlled drones but i say blargh

[Jung]

The question is: why do you assume any of this to be the case? Unless we're going back to my earlier comments about how you can massively stack the deck in favor against the soft sci-fi side, in which case congratulations on winning a contest you heavily rigged in your favor. That's not exactly something to feel proud of.

Before ppl seemed to be talking about the STL civilization having a huge scale advantage and I was just thinking of a plausible implication of that.

I'm not in this to score points in some kind of adversarial vs. debate, just engage in some fun speculation, no need to get adversarial.

What makes you think a HSF civilization is even going to have anything remotely resembling a mono-culture in the first place, seeing as how they're effectively independent nation-states flung about the stars with decades, centuries and millenia seperating them from contact with another? And that this culture will somehow be so strong as to consume the "weaker" soft sci-fi culture, which is only weaker because you've stated it to be so even though there's no inherent reason for why they can't be just as (if not more) expansive than the HSF side. And oh, thanks to their far greater speeds in travel and communications, would be much more likely to retain cultural similarity across their Empire - though if it's big enough even that's debatable.

Actually I was kind of thinking not being a monoculture might be a source of cultural strength

Like maybe they're not so much an empire or unified culture in the way we think of it, but a vast community of hugely different communicating societies and entities with some common framework for dealing with each other and maybe some common norms and goals

So the conquering empire is just another sand grain in the vast sand bucket of different cultures ... sure they may have an outsize influence for a while, they may assimilate a lot of individual cultures, but in the end their tech will diffuse faster than they can turn the entire place into a monocultural extension of themselves, and then the old system will reassert itself (with modifications given the very different context of FTL) cause its a functioning framework for a community of vast numbers of diverse cultures that has been tested and refined over thousands of years.

Also its hugeness and diversity means a bubbling cauldron of intellectual and cultural ferment with all sorts of different entities from methane-breathing squid-whales to hive minds made up of entire planetary populations wired into each other's brains to AIs occupying Dyson Spheres around giant stars all exchanging their radically different viewpoints and bouncing ideas of each other and coming up with all sorts of fascinating hybrid cultures and ideologies and philosophies and religions and stuff. Whereas a smaller and more unified and homogenous civilization might be less intellectually and culturally vigorous cause there's less diverse perspectives and less information in the system to work with and stuff.

[adr]

well let me briefly talk about these too

The question is: why do you assume any of this to be the case?

Maybe the Fermi paradox idea could be used, or the angels and apes thing. The two worlds are unlikely to have developed at the exact same time; one is probably going to be way ahead of the other.

If the FTL civilization came first, they might* be the bigger one. We could even argue they are more likely to be the older one since the age perhaps helped them discover FTL, though I don't think this necessarily follows. (I don't think there is a linear tech progression in the real world like in a game of Starcraft, especially when it comes to a revolution like ftl would be.)

Anyway though, if a bigger FTL civ meets a smaller STL civ... well, we just have a typical Star Trek episode. Half the fun of harder sf is exploring ideas you don't see everyday.


* When doing wankcivs I like to assume a fairly constant growth, but I don't think this is going to be the case in the real world (the population growth rate is either growing slowly or already falling; the curve is bending downward). If it isn't the case for us, it certainly doesn't have to be the case for everyone else either.

And that this culture will somehow be so strong as to consume the "weaker" soft sci-fi culture

I see no inherent reason why people would accept a new culture wholesale just because someone showed up with new toys.

Hell they might reject it even more strongly to avoid losing themselves, like someone might become more conservative as a reaction to some new wild stuff.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=XrqrpMFxMo8

[adr]

that footloose song is totally addictive

i attended... i think two high school music department presentations. i don't remember the second one's story or title but i think it happened....

anyway the one i remember well was FOOTLOOSE and it was outstanding. not just catchy songs and amusing story but the performances were all outstanding

i knew the leads, we were all in the same class for ages, and i was really just blown away, they were great



mang i wonder if any of them have it on dvd. would i still enjoy it as much the second time? but i haven't seen any of those peeps for years now. i could prolly msg them on the facebook or something but meh that's too forward for me

[Jung]

Maybe the Fermi paradox idea could be used, or the angels and apes thing. The two worlds are unlikely to have developed at the exact same time; one is probably going to be way ahead of the other.

If the FTL civilization came first, they might* be the bigger one. We could even argue they are more likely to be the older one since the age perhaps helped them discover FTL, though I don't think this necessarily follows. (I don't think there is a linear tech progression in the real world like in a game of Starcraft, especially when it comes to a revolution like ftl would be.)

Maybe you could do an explanation like the Outsider hyperdrive in Known Space

Like say the conditions in which one can experimentally discover the physics that allow FTL can only be found in close proximity to a Pink Hole which is a made-up super-rare object

One happened to be orbiting the FTL guys star at around the distance of Neptune

Allowing them to perform the same physics experiments the STL guys have been doing for 10,000 years, but get different results, allowing them to discover FTL within a few centuries of having their industrial revolution whereas the other guys have no clue it's possible in 10,000+ years of having an extremely advanced technological civilization

BTW an interesting wrinkle there a 10,000 year old thousands of light years wide civilization leaking signals everywhere and launching massive starships in vast numbers and doing astroengineering might make a lot of cosmic noise. Imagine if we knew something like that was out there. The consciousness of that might effect the FTL guys long before they develop FTL.

[Phantasee]

i don't know what teh fuck you've been talking about for the past couple pages and i don't really care

my eyes glazed over

pg dn

pg dn

pg dn

pg dn















pg dn

[RogueIce]

I'm not in this to score points in some kind of adversarial vs. debate, just engage in some fun speculation, no need to get adversarial.

Sorry bro, I'd been going back and forth between this and the SDN thread so it kinda happened, my bad.

We cool?

Anyway since I'm like bored of it and stuff, I'd say we could both agree that it all depends on how you set your scenario up, and if it's for a story of course whether the plausibility of it or not matters depends on how well it's written.

Which means if adr does it it's gonna be automatic shit.

Agreed?

[adr]

agreed!

[Jung]

Sorry bro, I'd been going back and forth between this and the SDN thread so it kinda happened, my bad.

We cool?

Yeah, no offense taken (not that I'd get offended over something like that anyway).

[Darksi4190]

Going shooting again tomorrow. Guys said I made a couple of safety mistakes last time and went over some stuff with me, but they basically said this is my "last chance." If I screw up again they won't take me with them anymore.

[Zod]

Going shooting again tomorrow. Guys said I made a couple of safety mistakes last time and went over some stuff with me, but they basically said this is my "last chance." If I screw up again they won't take me with them anymore.

Is this an actual shooting course or just going to someone's backyard to shoot stuff? Because a shooting course will drill proper gun handling into you.

[Darksi4190]

Just going up to the range with my friends. The shooting courses at the local range all require you to own a gun for some reason.

[RogueIce]

What did you do to violate safety?

[Darksi4190]

There were a couple of times that I didn't keep the weapon pointed downrange when I wasn't sure if it was loaded or not, and once I turned to talk to Allen while we were shooting and accidentally fired a round into the dirt.

[RogueIce]

I didn't keep the weapon pointed downrange

I wasn't sure if it was loaded or not

Dude firearms 101, how did they let you near a weapon without knowing about these?

I turned to talk to Allen while we were shooting and accidentally fired a round into the dirt.

I have been told that there is no such thing as "accidental discharge" and about 95% of the time I'd agree (the other 5% is in the rare case of a genuine firearm malfunction, but I'm probably overstating the 5% number here).

[Count Chocula]

You need to pull your head out of your ass and keep your finger off the fucking trigger unless you're aiming at a target. I'll be honest, if it were me your first shooting session with those kind of fuckups would have been the last. Your friends are being very kind to you. There's a phrase and mindset called "situational awareness;" please learn it, along with the basic NRA training, before you go back to the range.

[Darksi4190]

90% of the time i was following proper procedure, i just slipped up once or twice because i'm inexperienced.