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The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009
destinyland writes "An A.I. researcher lists the Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009 — along with the corresponding reality. There's exploding iPods, the uproar over 'bombing' the moon, and even a flesh-eating robot. But in each case, he supplies some much-needed perspective. 'These incidents are incredibly rare ... the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons... and desecration of the dead is against the laws of war — and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway.'"
In the "sexting" one, it mentions this quote: "[the cell phone's] portability and user friendliness -- makes it extremely easy to get and send pornographic images of anyone."
So the entire Internet is a panic then?
Black Holes Won't Destroy the Earth
"Probabaly."
Thomas McCabe is a mathematics student at Yale University and a research associate at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Not sure that's the mainstream definition of "A.I. researcher", but more relevantly, I can think of another technology panic that seems to keep recurring that the Singularity Institute might have something to do with.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Seriously, giant robots devouring the mangled corpses of our enemies? Yes, please!
We're already on the 3rd, about to roll over to the 4th day of the year. (And some of our international readers are already there.) We're still doing year-end pieces? CES can't come soon enough.
You cannot weigh the moon, this is nonsense.
BS. Sure you can weigh the moon. We can calculate it's weight very well by multiplying it's mass by g (F=M*a). Even so, in my country a tonne is exactly 1000kg. So even when the guy is referring to "weight" he really means mass.
Uhh, you can do it really easy: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99487.htm
heh usefulness?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The day before it powered up, my physics teacher had to field a dozen or so inane questions about how it would destroy the Earth, and more than a few kids decided not to do their homework. Then again, the panic could also fall under "Public Science Knowledge FAIL"
Cleans up the battlefield... Makes biofuel... Possibilities are endless...
How about the incredibly overrated Conficker / Kido / Downadup worm that was going to cause the end of the Internet on April 1st 2009? Big media blew it out of proportion considering Microsoft had patched the flaw and all major AV vendors had protected against it months before April 1st. The only people really affected by it were the patch-avoiders.
As O'l Archimedes said: Give me a place to stand and I'll weigh the moon for you.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It gave me a chuckle to see this story immediately above yet another article on the rapidly diminishing number of IPv4 addresses, and the doom awaiting us when they run out.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Human bodies are better fuel, because it has more energy available per bite. That's why top predators eat meat, though it costs so much energy to get. That mere assertion is no defense.
The laws of war are more broken than honored. Torture? Lies to invade Iraq? How are those laws stopping terrorists?
Nobody can be expected to believe those reasons why robots won't eat us. If that's all they've got to say they won't, we can expect these robots "to serve man" pretty soon.
--
make install -not war
When a hard drive died on one of the servers at my startup... According to management that was definitely the biggest of 2009.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Laws were meant to keep people from harming one another. "sexting" harms no one.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This really ignores a lot of panics that are more relevant in both mass-media and tech circles alike. The main one is the LHC. Even non-geeks were talking about it and the end of the world. Another one is Conficker, you know the virus/botnet that was supposed to destroy the world in April 2009 when it.... did nothing. Then everyone got worried that it would strike the next month... and nothing.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No. The correct nomenclature is 7.3477x10^19. And we certainly know it to 5 significant figures, which is all original value in TFA states.
Brett
If one works on any piece of machinery without turning it off one is likely to get maimed. Try changing the blades on a lawnmower without disabling it. Or working on the innards of the refrigerator. This has much less to with killer robots than humans that are not nearly scared enough of machinery. I always check twice.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Which value of g do you use? It varies from point to point. And if you use the nominal value at sea level, at which location does the moon surface hit the waves?
one might argue that the Internet is exactly as portable as a cell phone.
There's a map for that, unless of course you're happy with dial-up speeds for a broadband price.
Cleans up the battlefield... Makes biofuel... Possibilities are endless...
Slashdot does all of that?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
In the US and most the rest of the world, it is too. But the article wrote ton which is short for a "short ton" which refers to a short imperial ton.
The differences is that a tonne is a "metric ton" equal to 1000 kg or 2204 lbs, an "Imperial ton" (also known as a long ton) is 2240 lbs, or about 1016 kg, and a ton, known also as a short ton, is 2000 lbs or roughly 907 kg.
It gets a little more confusing when they use the word tonne in combination with energy proxies like in explaining the strength of a bomb or explosion as in how many tonnes of TNT it is comparable to or with amounts of force as in a 10mega tonne bomb. Or in combination with certain metal trades where they calculate the amount of metal in a long ton of ore by the percentage or metal within the ore. Then there are hold overs from traditions like in the HVAC world where AC is generally measure in ton(s) referring to how heat absorption and how heat would be displaced by a ton of ice in one day. Melting one ton of ice in this way or a 1 ton AC unit would be equal to about 12,000 BTU/h or 3517 Watts/h or 12,661,200 joules of energy per hour.
Windows 7 got released.
Laws were meant to keep people from harming one another. "sexting" harms no one.
That assumes that the sender and receiver are playing by the same rules - and the communication is genuinely private.
Not being intercepted and exploited by others.
You have a problem is one of the parties a minor and the other an adult. You have a problem if the text or images are being shared or broadcast without consent.
Laws were meant to catch and punish people who harm one another. Only their concience will prevent it.
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
Obviously they have not battle tested this yet. I have been in a couple of engagements. All I can say is that after the fact there is not much "green stuff" left. The battlefield is mostly burned down. As for deployment in a desert... Well, I'm sure you can figure that out on your own :-)
Need an ISP in South Africa?
You cannot weigh the moon, this is nonsense.
BS. Sure you can weigh the moon. We can calculate it's weight very well by multiplying it's mass by g (F=M*a). Even so, in my country a tonne is exactly 1000kg. So even when the guy is referring to "weight" he really means mass.
You have a pretty severe conceptual error here. I don't know why you think you can multiply a mass by g to get its weight, but this is generally incorrect and only works in one specific case--on the surface of the Earth with no significant fluid pressure relative to the object (i.e. you can take the mass of a brick on the surface of the Earth and use that equation, but you can't do the same for a helium balloon in air or a boat on water).
Weight is a force. While there are relations between mass and force, they are still fundamentally different things. A 5g lead ball weighed in air and in submerged in water will have different weights, even though the mass is constant and the gravitational field is unchanged.
Well, their conscience and the fear of reprisal and punishment.
The rocket booster weighs two tons where? On Earth, the moon, space? I wonder how much the Earth weighs. Oh yeah, it's weightless, because it's in space.
Submitter gets an 'F' for failing to understand basic physics.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
You're confusing accuracy and precision.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
There's gravity in space as well you know, which is why the Earth still circles the Sun and the Moon still orbits us. Which means the Earth isn't weightless.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
that is only one point of view, and not a very popular one, as it turns out. don't get me wrong, i think that should be the guiding principle behind legislation, but these days it's all about getting reelected, which is easiest when you manage to scare people into thinking that the law you're proposing saves them from being abducted and raped by satan.
weinersmith
LHC isn't on the list for the simple reason that there was nothing to panic about.
In 2009.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Those are really small fears now, how about mobile phone radiations that are said to cause cancers and tumors ( we are discussing that on http://smsdam.com/ ) an asteroid rain with invading aliens and the 666 with the fallen angels that show up in human form.
This makes no sense. Are you going to make it a crime for teenagers to shower naked because someone could, conceivably, secretly videotape them while doing so?
Even disregarding the utter stupidity of this line of reasoning, how on Earth would it keep someone from being exploited and harmed to make them a CRIMINAL?
For the record, BTW, whether I think "sexting" is acceptable doesn't depend on the relative ages of the participants, either. People are either old enough to do it or not; if they are old enough to send naked pictures to a 16-year old friend, they're also old enough to do the same with a 19-year old friend, or a 50-year old friend. Similarly, if they're not old enough to do so with a 50-year old friend, they're also not old enough to do so with a 16-year old friend.
And finally and most importantly, when someone is too young, too immature, too much of a CHILD to be allowed to take or send naked pictures of themselves, what on Earth makes you think they're old enough to be put in jail (or otherwise punished)? The very fact that someone's mature enough to be put on trial and sentenced proves that they're mature enough to be in charge of their own life (including their own body).
I kind of got the impression that "global warming" is political speak dressed up as green speak for "our economony is now almost entirely service based, the bottom has fallen out of the unsustainable credit market, what can we in the west sell to the emerging economic giants now that they have all the large industry... how about green technology?".
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but then back in the 80's I was saying that "nuclear is bad" was political speak dressed up as green speak for "big oil is good and cheap and currently abundant" and, in hindsight, if we'd built a ton of nuclear reactors back then the world would potentially be in a much better state today (no impending fuel crisis, potentially no big war in the middle east, no extra couple of decades of pumping pollutants directly into the skies, further development of nuclear technology allowing costs to decrease and making it more viable for emerging industrial countries, etc).
It harms how the puritans view their children.
Makes they doubt the image they have of children as asexual, cute and oblivious animals you have to feed once and then. And that scares the fuck out of them.
Maybe a little blunt, but I can't think of another reason. Perhaps some politicians are so retarded, they think the spirit of the law is "asexualize all children"?
your premise that "'sexting' harms no one" is false.
rewriting history since 2109
The communications themselves are not necessarily harmful if performed by consenting parties on both sides. The interception and exploitation of that communication is harmful.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
First I was like.."Wow"...then I was "Oh Shit"...Then I was all "Phew"
THEN I was like.."Wow"...then I was "Oh Shit"...Then I was all "Phew"
THEN I was like.."Wow"...then I was "Oh Shit"...Then I was all "Phew"
THEN I was like.."Wow"...then I was "Oh Shit"...Then I was all "Phew"
THEN I was like.."Wow"...then I was "Oh Shit"...Then I was all "Phew"
Dude, what a rollercoaster!
AT&ROFLMAO
your premise that "'sexting' harms no one" is false.
Evidence? Or are you just expressing an opinion?
http://ihatehate.wordpress.com
It is pretty easy to weigh the Moon. Put it on the surface of a known mass(*) and measure the gravitational force between the two masses. The force is called "weight".
(*) You can also put a known mass on the surface of the Moon. Makes no difference for the measurement.
And thus the "Sex Offender List" becomes a address book where people can get all the info they need about horny little brats who like to show off. Isn't moronic legislation^W^W technology great?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030/
"...sent nude pictures of herself to a boyfriend. When they broke up, he sent them to other high school girls. The girls were harassing her, calling her a slut and a whore. She was miserable and depressed, afraid even to go to school."
rewriting history since 2109
and the ever present risk of exploding lithium cells which many bang on about like it's a regular occurence.
You must be fun at parties
Well, the same could happen if instead of nude pics, they were her panties, or a very cheesy love letter, or a webcam striptease, or anything you might call private and part of a love relationship. Does that mean that we have tu punish the girl? Nope. Does that mean we (her parents, school, whatever) have to teach her better? Definitely. Criminalizing (Does that word exist?) something doesn't teach you better.
Better way to do it. Just push really hard, and see how much it accelerates.
Under current laws, it would be the original girl herself guilty of a serious crime, for making the images in the first place (the fact that it's of her own body is irrelevant).
So that helps us how, exactly?
Yes, "Criminalizing" is a word. *cough*dictionary*cough*
rewriting history since 2109
73,477,000,000,000,000,000.00 (Moon weight in tons)
00,000,012,162,748,511,374.98 (US Debt) ** Only 6 more decimal places to go! **
I think it's sad that when I look at numbers referring to things like moon weight or number of stars in the galaxy that the first thing that comes to my mind is my countries national debt in relation to those numbers. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ -> $12,162,748,511,374.98 as of January 4th, 2010.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
there would be things like counseling to commit a crime, the crime of forwarding the images to others.
rewriting history since 2109
No. The correct nomenclature is 7.3477x10^19. And we certainly know it to 5 significant figures, which is all original value in TFA states.
Brett
Who weighed it?
Those who sacrifice accuracy for precision deserve neither.
The torturing of war prisoners of war in Iraq and the interviews with the involved army personal clearly showed that the US military have no clue about "laws of war". Several convicted US soldiers admitted frankly they never had heard about the convention of Geneva.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In reality, there's very little I can do that will have zero impact on any other person. Whether that impact can be called harmful is not always as clear as some people would have you believe.
I think you're being incredibly short-sighted. Did you forget about the intense amounts of peer pressure that can be placed on a teenager? People can be convinced to do things well outside of their normal purview, simply by convincing them that it is the only way to be socially accepted. Teenagers have been shown to have very limited reasoning skills and not to be able to see all of the possible consequences of their actions.
While I do believe that in most cases, sexting is probably a victimless crime, there are indeed many instances in which the victims are very real. Skeazy boyfriend convinces girlfriend to give him nudes only to turn around and show his friends. Scheming girl gets boy to give her nudes so she can publicly embarrass him. We could continue to play this game for a long time, but I'm sure you get the point.
The other main problem that I have is the transition from this being a private issue between two consenting people and being very public between one teenager and a much larger audience. If taking nude photos of yourself and distributing them is perfectly legal for teenagers to do, what happens to child pornography laws? Do pervy adults start convincing teenagers to take pictures based on all of the money that they can make on the internet? If they take the pictures themselves, they'd be legal, in Vermont anyway.
So many times, people here on Slashdot like to make things black and white, when in reality, the situation is almost entirely gray.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Don't you also need to know the distance to the center of gravity of the moon to complete that equation?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Could we just have one fucking year where we don't have to dodge the "Top X of X for the year X" articles. Fuck me!
If you want to calculate the mass from the measurement, then yes. If you just want to know the weight, then no.
Save the "must be fun at parties" line for people who over-analyse jokes or provide pointless quibbles. If you thought his post was too nitpicky or boring, you might be in the wrong place.