Sayonara

Clearly then you have not looked at their myspace page

Any examples? Wouldn't want people going away thinking that Noah's Ark and "vertical petrified trees" are actual finds

Guys, the topic of this thread is "is the internet alive?". That means the internet as it is now.

Errr, should have been done a while ago.

You've got a napkin in your lap, haven't you?

The strong corners are of course at each end of the second fold. If you cut them off the napkin in the same fashion, you could orient them so that they were identical. However in the overall topology of the intact napkin, I suppose they need to be identified differently. It rather depends on where you consider a corner to start and end What was your error?

It will recalculate all the views etc so if these discrepancies continue then... errrr... we will know that was not it.

You end up with a "weak" corner, which is four flappy bits, a "medium" corner opposite it, which is two folded bits, and the remaining side has a "strong" corner at each end, which are one folded bit with two layers.

Am running the thread/counts rebuild gizmos now. Hopefully that might sort it...

There's nothing wrong with having a hunch or a hypothesis. What I meant was that having come into the thread after quite a bit of discussion, you need to read it to see what impacts that discussion has on your hypothesis. Gaia hypothesis relies on the idea that the Earth system comprises thousands of living systems. This is an attribute that the internet does not share, so the comparison is somewhat tenuous. Being a "habitat" for emerging digital life forms would not make the internet alive itself (in the same way that, say, your house is not alive), but it is an interesting idea.

I think he was referring to the poll options.

I rather like this destruction of the banana argument:

The former. Reading the thread is highly recommended. Did anyone ask him "and how does the Earth reproduce...?" In that case you either... a) Do not understand the definition of "alive", or b) Do not understand how the internet works, or c) Both of the above. Like I said, reading the thread is recommended! Because we are applying a definition to a rationally describable system, it's not simply a matter of opinion

While this is all true, it's no good the edible banana only meeting part of the requirements for an adaptive trait, if we are using that trait to support arguments about the selective advantages. Bananas with seeds (i.e., those we have not meddled with) are all manner of strange shapes and sizes. The banana varieties that are suited to being carried are seedless, so by definition they cannot have seeds which would survive passage through a gut. Why are we talking about bananas? I forgot. Agree with you on the giant fruits thing by the way. I imagine this is why we simply don't see enormous fruits; it's basically an inefficient use of material.

One thing he needs to do is check the specification carefully. Many 10 megapixel cameras are actually 7 or 8 megapixel, with the remainder "filled in" by interpolation. I have a 9.1 megapixel camera and the quality of the pictures is, I would say, worth the extra cash.

Why did we ever let this thread sink? You have to remember that we are not judging any given 'potentially living' system solely on the basis of whether or not its sensory circuits are "just trip-wires"; we are applying it as part of the entire definition. The refrigerator falls down on the definition of life because, while we might agree to increase our tolerance for primitive sensory circuits to the extremities of reason, the fridge-system simply does not meet the other criteria (e.g. reproduction). The same applies to t'interweb.

I was just looking at some old posts and found this: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3680 How I laughed. I can't believe anyone would even nearly fall for that. What other mean tricks have we played over the years?

This relies on the assumption that the seeds are co-adapted with the shape of the banana, in such a fashion that they can survive the digestive tract of the animals that feed on them.

Does this thread actually have a point?

Guinan would have no way of knowing that unless it were such common knowledge that Starfleet knew it too. Her character and the characteristics of her race suggest that she is dramatising so that Picard is in no doubt whatsoever how grave a threat the Borg are to the Federation. Also bear in mind she was probably drunk. For all her melodrama and posturing, the queen at no point states how long the Borg have been assimilating. How long they have existed, I seem to recall, but not how long they have been techno-raping the galaxy. Remember that nincompoops can also add to the Wikipedia! The control of a "handful of systems" in the Delta Quadrant by the Borg in 1484 is given as an unambiguous fact, not as a character's opinion or a tall tale. Look more closely, at sources that are written by geekier people. In "Q Who" we are told that the original species the Borg came from first appeared a thousand centuries ago. They evolved into cyborgs over that time (mostly in the latter years, one would imagine), but this does not require any kind of assimilation of other species. We learn in "Dragon's Teeth" that when the Vaadwuar who fled obliteration by the Turei placed themselves in suspended animation, the Borg were at that time in control of only a handful of systems. This was in 1484. What is notable about the dialogue is that the Vaadwuar who converses with Seven of Nine says "the Borg", rather than "the Borg Collective", and "they controlled", rather than "they had assimilated". This supports the idea that the crusade for involuntary assimilation of other species did not really get started until about that time. The Brunali did nothing that the Federation could not do, though. If you remember, the thrust of the episode "Good Shepherd" was that the Starfleet crew were appalled by the Brunali's willingness to use their own children as genetic weapons against the Collective. This is what I meant by "resistance is a product of cultural flexibility" -- the Brunali conceived of and deployed this final solution because they were not as advanced as the Federation. No, that's why I said it was circumstantial. We know that members of those races have been assimilated, but in the areas of space where those drones were first encountered, and around the same time period, we see groups from both races going about their normal business (i.e. - they have not fled the area completely, and they are not extinct). This suggests that to them, the occasional Borg assault is an occupational hazard and a bit of a nuisance, rather than being their major concern as a species. A bit like local muggers. Something being unexpected does not make it more advanced. Although the Borg use an eclectic technological approach, they are not inventive; they use what they acquire from other species. Whether or not the technology of an advanced race makes the Borg more advanced upon its assimilation is a matter of opinion, because the most effective deployment of a technology often relies on free-thinking individuals making strategic decisions. There are many species less advanced than the Borg and the Federation who we have seen repelling all known weapons, or travelling through time. The Devidians who infiltrated 19th century San Francisco in "Time's Arrow" are a good example. This is patently not true - the Borg only hold information that they assimilate. Indeed, the first time we ever saw them in "Q Who", their first act was to board the Enterprise and attempt to extract the contents of the LCARS database. A demonstration of advancement needs to be defined around some kind of principle. Technologically advanced? A bit, depends what they have encountered recently. Ethically advanced? They have no ethical structure to speak of. Economically advanced? That's certainly a tricky one. To the Borg, this would represent a contradiction. Their approach protects them from inefficient losses. Factor: If the target species cannot resist, one cube will be enough Factor: If the target species resists, one cube might not be enough. Factor: How many cubes are enough? Solution: Send one cube. If the target species resists, reformulate approach. We see two combat scenarios where more than one Borg ship attends: The first is during the war with Species 8472. At this time, the Collective was in real trouble and knew it - it is likely that the Borg were attempting to ascertain how many cubes it would take to knock out a single 8472 dreadnought. The second was the assimilation of species 10026 in "Dark Frontier" - there were two cubes and the queen's diamond flagship present during this assault. We are told that the single-planet species has been troublesome, and that their weapons have been developed to penetrate Borg shielding (this species may be the Nihydron from "Year of Hell" - their ships used the same CGI model). This is another example of someone standing up to the Borg. However in this particular case, the Collective determined that - because of the unique ability of 10026 to continue to damage Borg ships after shield adaptation - the species merited a more forceful attack, with multiple targets. Incidentally, there were 39 ships defending during the battle; sound familiar? In First Contact, it's likely the Borg sent one ship because the Queen/Collective was over-confident about the chances of success. Well, I say "over confident"; accurately confident is more like it. But if the Borg were to launch a further attack on the Federation, I would expect it to utilise a much more significant force. Incidentally, there is (again circumstantial) evidence that the Borg cube at Wolf 359 was not alone, and neither was the cube that attacked Sector 001 in 2373. In both instances, we later encounter drones (or the memories of drones, see "Infinite Regress") who were assimilated during these invasions. Since the lead cube was destroyed in each case, we must assume that other cubes (or support vessels capable of significant transwarp jumps) were present in the Beta and Alpha quadrants during each incursion. I sometimes wonder how the Borg would have turned out if the studio had been willing to pay for Maurice Hurley's original "insectoid race" concept

That is certainly true. Who says this, and when? I am unable to find any references. All the encyclopaedic resources I have read state that the earliest known activity was during Earth's 15th century. The Brunali, Wysanti, and Norcadians appear to be technologically and culturally inferior to the Federation. It seems that resistance is a product of cultural flexibility and inventiveness, rather than being advanced. We have to compensate for the idea that the show is about humanity's trials and tribulations. Not really. The most advanced thing we really saw them using in later Voyager episodes was the quantum slipstream drive, and we know from the Voyager timeline that at that time, Starfleet was on the cusp of developing that themselves. We can assess from alternate timelines that they succeeded within twenty years or so. To be fair, the single ship assault in First Contact did actually succeed (if you remember, they assimilated Earth). The only reason that assault finally failed was because of the relationship between Data, Picard, and the Borg queen, and it had nothing to do with the size of anyone's fleet. Also, it is a bit silly to discount that strategy as "bound to fail" when you consider the thousands of homeworld assimilations that the Borg have successfully carried out against inferior races.

Well, the Federation stood up to them, and the Federation is made up of over 150 races - not just humans. Also remember that the Borg had their asses handed to them by Species 8472, and the Brunali (Icheb's race) would have delivered a serious blow if Captain Kathy and her Space Cru had not interfered. In the novel "Probe", it is directly implied that the Cetacean probe sent to Earth in Star Trek IV fought off a Borg assault on the way here (which further implies it came from the Delta Quadrant). In the novel "Vendetta", the weapon seen in the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine" is revealed to be a weapon against the Borg. Someone somewhere had a jolly good crack at resisting! In Voyager, there is circumstantial evidence that the Wysanti (Rebi and Azan's race) and the more advanced Norcadians (Mezoti's race and creators of the tsunkatse tournaments) are capable of defending against the Borg in some fashion. In "Strange New Worlds", Q mentions that the Voth could possibly defeat the Borg. Given the cloaking technology that the Voth demonstrated in "Distant Origin", it is possible the Borg do not even know they exist. But I'd put gold-pressed latinum on the Voth in a direct confrontation. We know that the Borg had started to assimilate species in the Delta Quadrant as early as the 15th century, but they did not start their galaxy-wide expansion until about the 23rd century. One would imagine that during this time, they would have been expanding "locally" and annoying the hell out of species in the Delta Quadrant. Many races would have been assimilated and effectively wiped out, but the fact that we see a rich and diverse ecosystem in the DQ means that others must have found ways of fighting the Borg (or at least holding them off) that we just didn't hear about.

Catch-all option added to poll.

We can't have AgentChange's virtual memory being exceeded.

Duplicate thread closed... see link in post #6 for the "live" thread.