mistermack

I would say, if it bugs you so much you feel you have to try deleting the folder, then use one of the free backup programs like AOMEI backerupper to create an image file of the c drive, before you risk deleting the folders. At least that way, you can restore the drive, if it stops working, or goes haywire.

I think all it shows is that nobody is bothered to nail down definitions. People know what you mean, when you say "extinct species", and that's near enough. The fact that it doesn't match the definition of extinction doesn't really bother anyone. That's how words get their meaning, by general usage. There's no contradiction in the understanding of what happened. Homo erectus evolved into the ancestors of homo sapiens. That's what happened, but how you word it is academic. I agree that the word extinction is widely used in that manner, but it's also generally used to describe species that ended with no descendants, like the Dodo or the Passenger Pigeon, or T Rex. In the end, it's word-meaning that's debateable, not what actually happened.

Yes, wikipedia is capable of having one article contradict another. It's just the old problem of definition of words. wikipedia : " Extinction is the termination of a taxon by the death of its last member." That obviously never happened with homo erectus. In an arbitrary way, you could draw an imaginary line in human history, where this homo erectus was the last one, and it's children were something else. It's an artificial distinction, hence the importance of the definition of words.

I don't think so. The scientific meaning of extinction means no descendants. It doesn't mean change to something new. T Rex went extinct when the last one died. That was species extinction. Which means that homo erectus is not extinct, it's evolved. There never was a last homo erectus.

I still think that extinction means that you have no descendants. So some dinosaurs are extinct, others are not, in my book. And separation doesn't necessarily mean the evolution of differences. You need the pressure of natural selection to give evolution a kick. You can get slight changes through "drift" but it takes much longer. And humans on space colonies don't have to be isolated. You could send frozen sperm and eggs for very little cost to maintain genetic diversity. And in any case, travel between space colonies should not be expensive. You only need energy for starting and stopping. You don't need an engine running to maintain speed. Moving parts will be minimal, so wear and tear on space vehicles should be very low.

Most biologists will say that dinosaurs are not extinct, because birds ARE dinosaurs. However, most dinosaurs are extinct, because T Rex etc have no extant descendants. In 50 million years in the future, you wouldn't say that mammals are extinct, if all but rats and their descendants were extinct. You would still consider mammals to be not extinct, and the same applies to dinosaurs. Even if the rats had evolved into thousands of different species, they would still be mammals, and birds are still dinosaurs, in exactly the same way. As far as humans go, in pure speculation, I would expect average intelligence to drop a tiny bit, because more intelligent people are having smaller families. (I'm guessing, I don't have figures for that). Other than that, I can't see any selective pressures that favour one characteristic over another. Maybe gene manipulation will end up having a bigger effect than natural selection. If that's the case, I wouldn't expect space-dwelling monsters to evolve from humans. Most people would opt for their kids to be more normal, not more extreme.

What is extinct? We say that dinosaurs are extinct, but we have billions of birds, that are their descendants. Humans could go extinct, via a truly lethal pandemic, but it would be fairly easy to avoid that. Especially if we had reached the stage of living in space colonies. And if there was a truly lethal pandemic, then there are more extreme measures that can be taken, to prevent contagion. Actually, the more lethal the pandemic, the more likely it is to be rapidly eliminated. Shut down of movement would be more extreme, and elimination of outbreaks would be more certain.

The way I see human evolution going, is for local differences and characteristics to fade, and we end up with a bland mass of fairly similar humans. With genes no longer trapped in a locality by deserts or rivers, they are inevitably going to end up in one huge monochrome soup. What might change that, is artificial gene interventions. Who knows where that will go ?

Of course in the end there are limits. But sometimes, one discovery can cause an explosion of activity, and change the world out of all recognition. Like fossil fuel did, for example. Fusion energy could do likewise. Or not, if as you suggest a roadblock pops up that brings progress to a grinding halt. But I suspect that it will eventually be providing all of the power we use. The possible road blocks are already being shrunk, with progress on systems, such as superconductors. The informed estimates of the size and cost of commercial fusion plants are dropping rapidly so while it won't happen soon in a commercial way, it's getting more certain all the time. On space colonies, I think they are inevitable, and the cost of launching materials is a short term problem, not long term, as there are materials up there, on the moon and other space bodies, that can eventually be used and don't have the inherent cost of launching. And if fusion power eventually becomes cheap, then you can make cheap hydrogen to fuel take-off rockets in a cheap and clean way. Once living in space colonies gets mastered, the potential is there for explosive growth, because space and energy are almost limitless, for practical purposes, whereas on Earth they are approaching close to the limit.

My general rule is, deleting something on the c drive is undesirable unless you know for certain what it does. Which is unlikely to happen without tiresome research, which rarely has a point. If you suspect something harmful, use a good anti-virus to scan the pc. Or there are various cleaner programs like IOBIT Advanced Systemcare available for free. I think, if it's working ok, leave it alone. Like the human body. You wouldn't be wise to cut bits off, just because you don't know if they do anything.

This has the whiff of copy and paste about it. Do you have a link to what it's from?

My feeling about carbon fibre is that metal has one advantage, in that it can be bent, and yet remain strong. Take the example of wrought iron. If you have a slight imperfection of fit on a metal body, it's possible that under extreme forces, the metal will give just enough to correct it, without failing catastrophically. Once it's moved that tiny amount, it will fit better the next time. With carbon fibre not having that ability, it will have to resist the extra forces that an imperfect fit throws up, or fail. And on the next dive, the fit will still be imperfect, so the risk is still there. That's just my speculation, but I would far rather trust SS or Titanium than five inches of carbon. In a perfect world, carbon in the main body might be plenty strong enough, but what's it like, around bolts and joints? Everything has to be perfect.

Naughty night nurse. But she looks well worth 100 dollars.

Trump has no fear whatsoever of rhetoric coming back to haunt him. He didn't build the wall, he didn't put Hilary in jail. Nobody on his side cared. He kept his promise of not being Hilary Clinton. That was enough for them. I'm not sure that the swing voters care too much about transgender issues either. And nobody else really matters. Except maybe the can/can't be bothered to vote people. If you can find an issue that gets them out of the house, you might be on a winner. But I don't think transgender issues would be close enough to home to get them out on polling day.

Well, that will do my head in, if machines start sensing god.

I think the effect of heat is being overestimated. Maybe the air temp might go up very high for a millisecond, but the volume of air at that point would probably be tiny, I'm guessing one thousandth of it's volume at one atmosphere. And it would probably be dispersed, not all in one bubble, so the water would cool it in an instant. Not true. I can't quote the details, but I believe about twenty survived. There's no concievable way of surviving that kind of sub collapse.

Much of these types of discussions revolves around the meaning of words. In this instance "sense" is the guilty party. It depends how you define it, and there are a great many ways to choose from. So you end up having a discussion, where one person defines sense one way, while another difines it differently. Which doesn't make much sense. At least, it doesn't really get you anywhere. Actually, "god" is also a guilty party. Also lacking a universal definition. I wonder if AI will have that problem, in the future? Surely machines will be able to unite on definitions, so a lot of the pretty pointless arguments that we humans have will simply not happen between units of AI.

I can't. There are too many variables. But chance of survival would be less at the bottom of the ocean, that's for sure. But only for a millisecond, I would have thought. The heat wouldn't be the main threat, when cold seawater was slamming into the void.

Right. Because it only matters if it's happened to Americans. That's a fairly entrenched view in the States. But it's not exactly moral. Vietnamese people can be bombed with Napalm, Phosphorus, and Agent Orange, and waterboarding isn't torture, if it's done to foreigners. It's called double standards.

Agreed

Oh yeh, I didn't but I do now. (my eyesight is less than good) I agree it's not likely to be actual comouflage, more likely a coincidence.

The colours of fruit are generally signals to animals that they are ripe and ready to eat, or unripe and bitter.

Kinetic energy. Like when you stomp in a puddle.

I wouldn't find it surprising that the viewing port was out. You would think that it's design would be to resist huge outside pressure, and that pressure from within would push it out quite readily, and that on collapse, the internal pressure would momentarily be huge. Of course, it's still possible that it was the port that initially failed. I notice that there's no word about recovering bodies. They were almost certainly pulverised out of recognition in a millisecond, but it wouldn't be palateable to discuss that on official channels.

The comment was about reparations. I think it's relevant here. What would make more sense, to try to make it right for the descendants of Palestinians, in 200 years time, or to stop the atrocity now? People seem to be very selective about what deserves reparation, and what can be ignored.