Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
There's an RSS feed use can use to keep tabs on wether or not the LHC has destroyed the earth. Very useful site.
Seriously, giant robots devouring the mangled corpses of our enemies? Yes, please!
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"
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.
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.".
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
There's an RSS feed use can use to keep tabs on wether or not the LHC has destroyed the earth. Very useful site.
Check the page source for that site. It is quite interesting.
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.
The panic is that kids think that pictures given privately to their friends are going to be kept that way... nope. One wrong friend who publishes it and there's no end to it.
This is semi-off-topic, but what you said here reminds me of something that happened on a web forum I used to moderate on. We had a private section for the staff to have discussions in. Once in a while a user would get into it with another user and because of the formation of various cliques sometimes that'd rock the boat for several members of the staff in the private forum. One staff member in particular was a little too abrasive when describing the offending users that weren't in his group of friends. I tried to warn him that he should be careful about what he says. Just because it's 'private' doesn't mean that somebody watching couldn't do a copy/paste. He replied with "I shouldn't have to censor what I say, blah blah blah!" A month or so later he did manage to use the right series of words aimed at the right person at the right time for another member of the staff to see it, get pissed, and send an e-mail to the person he bad-mouthed to see what was being said behind his back. He, of course, shot into orbit. The funny thing is, if he had done this in public view, it probably would have been a short lived series of fireworks. But because he did this in a private forum, this guy got so angry he created a bunch of threads talking about how shitty the site is, then he told his story to people in another forum and for several days they'd come in and start trouble. The staff member in question never did admit to me that I was right.
Anyway, so what does that have to do with the topic at hand? You are absolutely right about the concern of the 'one wrong friend'. I'd be extra concerned when talking about teenagers and their ever-changing groups of friends and enemies. In general there's a lesson to be learned about being careful what you say when it can be copied verbatim for the rest of time. It's kinda sad, though, that the 'sexting' stories about consequences are getting more attention than the stories about people saying the wrong thing on Facebook and getting fired.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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
On the other hand, a robot that eats dead flesh will do its cleanup then stop when there is no more dead flesh to eat. A robot that eats live plants will continue eating until there are no more plants and we are truly screwed.
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).