Random • m*******e@a****.***u.edu 01/05/1996 00:00:000 UTC I have been having fun trying to recompile various Linux utilities for MS-DOS to replace the crappy DOS utilities. One problem is that some of these, such as DIFF, do fancy piping stuff which isn't available under DOS (perhaps I can make it work under OS/2 Warp, though...). I have SORT working, although the size of the input file is limited by the limit DOS imposes on the number of files open at one time. A 350+K file sorted OK, but my 900+K fortune cookie file did not. I will have to try to rewrite SORT so it closes the temporary work files when it isn't using them. Another thing I'm working on is learning how to write Windows 3.1 programs. This is a real pain in the ass, made worse by the fact that Windows doesn't have decent memory management. Due to the 386 mode being used, I am limited to 8192 memory blocks, regardless of the amount of memory in the system, and on top of this there are 64K boundaries due to the use of 2-byte registers for various 386 string operations. This is the sort of hardware-dependent crap that an operating system is supposed to hide from a program. Of course, calling Windows an operating system is like calling a Hot Wheels car a Cadillac. How Microsuck manages to dominate the market I'll never know. I will have to write a module to allocate blocks of up to 64K and divide them up into smaller pieces to hand out to programs. On Tuesday night around 22:30, my monitor broke down. There was a loud pop, and the screen suddenly blurred, with each edge bowed in toward the center. I hope this isn't expensive to fix. I've only had the thing for four years. (My father's 8088-based Columbia system has lasted for about 12 years without any such breakdowns.) Robbo would probably know what the problem is. This is an especially bad time for computer trouble, since: 1. The end of the semester is coming up -- always a busy time. 2. I have to write up notes for a cosmology talk I got roped into giving within the next few weeks. Regarding intelligent life in space, I haven't seen any discussion in the texts of how long ago the first civilizations could have arisen. But there are old Population I stars about five billion years older than the Sun in the galactic bulge, so a figure of one billion years ago seems reasonably conservative. Now, if we say that the first civilizations appeared one billion years ago, then the probability of any civilization being within one hundred years of us in age (up to 100 years older or 100 years younger), is 200 / 1,000,000,000 or 1 in 5,000,000. If we take our own rate of technological development as average, then this is also the probability of a given alien civilization being within 100 years of us in development. A typical science fiction television series might have, say, about eight or ten civilizations at about our level of development (e.g. Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Gorn, Orion pirates), implying the existence of perhaps 40-50 million civilizations in our galaxy. But the civilizations in these shows are not randomly scattered around the galaxy; they are all found in the vicinity of the Earth, implying an even higher density of civilizations; well over a billion in our galaxy alone. Such densities seem unrealistically large. It is true that the recent discovery of other planetary systems, and the Space telescope observations of protoplanetary disks, imply that planetary systems are quite common in the galaxy. But this does not imply that civilizations are equally common. A planetary system might not have any planets in the habitable zone, or its habitable planet might be bombarded frequently by large meteorites, preventing life from evolving, or life on a planet might not happen to evolve beyond the bacterial stage. It would be better if the civilizations in these shows were spread out over a wider variety of technological levels. Babylon 5 does this better than the other series I've seen, but even they have a lot of civilizations similar in development to humanity (e.g. the League of Nonaligned Worlds). One interesting possibility that no one seems to have explored in television or films is a future in which all of the civilizations we have encountered are vastly older than ourselves, and thus incomprehensibly alien, but where the roles normally given to alien civilizations are filled by various groups of genetically engineered humans in a wide variety of forms. Perhaps these people were engineered to survive on normally inhospitable worlds, or perhaps they were bizarre experiments or art forms. These groups of humans would tend to associate more with their own kind than with the rest of humanity, leading to a number of separate blocs analogous to the Earth Alliance, Minbari, Centauri, Narn, and so on, without the need to introduce an implausibly high density of alien civilizations. -- Brian Maybe some day I'll finally find time to read Knuth... Smedley's Law: Someone else's keyboard never feels quite right. • k******d@d*****i.com 02/05/1996 00:00:000 UTC > It would be better if the civilizations in these shows were spread out over a > wider variety of technological levels. Babylon 5 does this better than the > other series I've seen, but even they have a lot of civilizations similar in > development to humanity (e.g. the League of Nonaligned Worlds). Bab 5 perhaps would've been more interesting if there also were a League of Neanderthal Worlds. ;-) --Doc • s******r@s**.***.*****n.edu 02/05/1996 00:00:000 UTC In article <4m8j1m$***@g*****.***u.edu>, m*******e@a****.***u.edu (Brian McGuinness) writes: > Regarding intelligent life in space, I haven't seen any discussion in the texts > of how long ago the first civilizations could have arisen. But there are old > Population I stars about five billion years older than the Sun in the galactic > bulge, so a figure of one billion years ago seems reasonably conservative. > Now, if we say that the first civilizations appeared one billion years ago, > then the probability of any civilization being within one hundred years of us > in age (up to 100 years older or 100 years younger), is 200 / 1,000,000,000 or > 1 in 5,000,000. If we take our own rate of technological development as > average, then this is also the probability of a given alien civilization being > within 100 years of us in development. A more likely possibility is that technological civilizations often leave technological descendants. A machine civilization would have an open-ended life span (Benford, Saberhagen). Another possibility was explored by Bruce Sterling in the story "Swarm". Intelligence, he conjectured, is not a long-term survival advantage. Intelligent races come and go, but the non-intelligent Swarm remains. Whenever intelligence is needed for the Swarm to cope, intelligent Swarm members are created through the appropriate use of hormones. > One interesting possibility that no one seems to have explored in television > or films is a future in which all of the civilizations we have encountered are > vastly older than ourselves, and thus incomprehensibly alien, but where the > roles normally given to alien civilizations are filled by various groups of > genetically engineered humans in a wide variety of forms. Perhaps these > people were engineered to survive on normally inhospitable worlds, or perhaps > they were bizarre experiments or art forms. "Surface Tension" by James Blish. Humanity keeps sending out seeding ships that establish human life wherever they can. One of these seeding ships is forced to land on a world that is very inhospitable for large organisms. The ship does what it can, and...voila, human plankton. >These groups of humans would tend > to associate more with their own kind than with the rest of humanity, leading > to a number of separate blocs analogous to the Earth Alliance, Minbari, > Centauri, Narn, and so on, without the need to introduce an implausibly high > density of alien civilizations. Yes! I've always wanted to see a sci-fi series (or movie) where this is the explanation for all the inevitable humanoid aliens. So simple, so plausible! The only place I really remember seeing this in the literature is in Larry Niven's Known Space series (the devolved Pak breeders--such as humans--throughout the galaxy). -- K. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin L. Sterner | U. Penn. High Energy Physics | Smash the welfare state! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------