Special paint that reflects/absorbs only at certain frequencies. You have a 'stickers' that go on all four corners of the vehicle. The finish line has a spread-spectrum laser array blasting across it. When a car crosses the line, each car is tagged with unique tape. The laser light reflected will be unique to the vehicle. You triangulate the reflected lights timings and use that in conjunction with the wavelength reflected back and you've got a car and you've got a time.
Unique tape on each car. Cheap, replaceable. Not a perfect solution, but some variant of this involving selected emission/absorption is a winning ticket. I made this up in 1 minute and have no idea if there are any preexisting solutions that do this. For the pedants; yes tape could peel off and yes people could cheat some how I'm sure, blah blah blah, and I'm sure there is a more optimal solution blah blah blah, and I'm sure you'll have issues in X Y Z situation with A B C conditions blah blah blah. Go make something better and sell it.
Very true, perhaps it's time for me to start weening off/., it gets tiring seeing so many cynical comments about the editing and misuse of terminology, and naturally those are not the fault of the commenters. Albeit/. does beat most all other news sites and the likes of Youtube in regards to the level of intelligence in its comment sections.
I guess I just can't tell if the rising cynicism here matches the degrading quality of editing.
All technical typos and misleading whatever aside, and aside from all the hawking about how this has already existed or this is not new blah blah blah....THIS SHIT IS STILL FUCKING AMAZING. GET OVER YOURSELVES.
I can't refute that; I guess my original posting intention was to dissuade pessimism in lieu of optimism, but if the facts point to no major breakthroughs in the foreseeable future, then so be int (**puts on shades***...ooooohhh yeaaah.)
Of course 40GHz is outside the physical limits of the current wafer-fab process for now and the foreseeable future, but chucking exponential growth and shrinking power requirements with that sole piece of knowledge seems short-sighted. What about improvement and proliferation of quantum computing and better parallel optimization on a low level? We don't have to have single-chip 100Ghz cores for the next computing revolution, it could be done with better and more efficient parallelization of low level operations (and better high level languages that map to multi-core systems), along with a (to begrudgingly use the word) complete paradigm shift in the way we look at logical operations on the per-bit scale, especially if the fabs-houses can cheaply mass produce qubit processors (once the comp-sci's, phys'es, and chem'es work out the initial theoretical and practical kinks. I think 50-100yrs is reasonable. And if not quantum computing, I'm willing to bet there will be a major revolution in the semiconductor industry in the next century that allows us to significantly surpass the current limits of silicon wafer's checkered with transistors. Everytime we hit a physical barrier, somebody comes along with a completely new idea to progress further. Steam -> Combustion, Analog -> Digital, Vacuum Tube -> Transistor, Coal Power -> Nuclear Power, etc.
Or maybe I'm spouting mainstream wishy-washy futurist bullshit that lacks any substantiation, IDK. While theoretical limits in one medium will always exist, those limits only encourage the invention and implementation of another that far surpasses its predecessors.
Is it not feasible to imagine a day when you have an IBM Watson's worth of question/answer expert system power on your portable device, with that device tied into all your household objects, vehicles, financial tools and identification documents? We've got web servers on a stick and GPS IC's that can fit on a dime (compare that to what we had 50 years ago), I think it is a reasonable assertion that computational power will will continue to grow exponentially, electrical power requirements will shrink. If you had a grid of millions of computational cores all interconnected and speaking the same higher level language (I'm not talking about HTTP and the internet, I'm talking about symbolic 'thought' for the purpose of human assistance, the next revolution in computing if you will), I imagine you could have a vast technological network that nearly represents AI, perhaps it may not fit the textbook definition of a sentient/conscious being, but it would suit the bill in terms of passing some serious milestones. In 50-100 years, I think these are broad but reasonable assumptions, or am I out of my league here?
That's why everything's so heavy-handed: people are terrified of making a mistake and losing everything.
If being a politician didn't have so many insider perks and benefits, there would not be anything to lose in the first place and they would not guard their positions with such adamant stupidity. Cut their pay, their benefits, and impose seriously limiting term limits. It can't be any worse trying that than it is now.
Totalitarian leaders of the middle-east should be given the Ig Noble Peace prize for their peaceful methods of spreading their good word. Hell, give the US one as well.
Most religion may be irrational, but spirituality cannot be completely discounted. There are things in science that will always be unanswerable, and there will always be people willing to fill in the gaps with untestable conjectures (but still thought out). Be it string-theory pre-big bang or be it FSM, somethings we may never know.
Well there was the SSC, but funding and mismanagement by bean counters ruined any prospects of another particle collider here in the US. In the current political climate, there's absolutely no way a larger collider will be built anytime soon. The talking heads will mention the SSC and the topic will immediately become toxic to mention.
That is what the US will become. The warriors of intellectual property. If we can't manufacture, create, and export tangible things, then god-dammit we'll charge for any intangible a lawyer can serve papers on.
I've been around the community college and university circuit, and I can say that many community colleges are becoming highly reliant on the likes of Moodle/Blackboard for delivering quizes/test/material/exercises. Also, many classes at universities now require continuously larger amounts of online coursework and thus the curriculum. At community college, I took all my foo-foo fuzzy classes purely online for full credit. I'm a STEM major, so pre-reqs like Art History and Intro To College (yes that is a required course some places) were a blast to take online, i.e. a breeze and at my own leisure), giving me more focus on classes I actually cared about.
At the big-U's, of course there will be a latent aversion to prof's lecturing to a camera and reusing said lecture every semester. If I am just watching a video of a prof or reading his lecture notes online, it will be more difficult for the universities to justify the ever-more exorbitant admission cost if it's just delivered online (although most classes seem to be more of teaching yourself than the lecturer teaching you, but that's what college is about anyways, learning how to learn). College has been going online for awhile, but the question of 'should it be' is a reasonable one; will it save students money, or just dilute the college process into even more of a degree-mill spectacle than it already is? Or just create more busywork? I say it depends mostly on the context, subjectivity, and type of degree program.
I bet in 100 years our descendants will be asking what it was like to sit in a classroom with people and how weird it must have been to learn in a group.
I was being sarcastic about the red light cameras-they followed suit in my theme that adding automation does not immediately benefit the peons/citizens, it benefits the people who automate.
Did grocery store prices plunge dramatically when they introduced self-checkout? Did they reduce at all? Or did they keep the extra they skimmed from laying off cashiers? What about banks, do banks charge less the more automated tellers they have? Lets try airports, walk into any major hub and there's so many automated check-in machines, yes, those sure reduced ticket and baggage prices! Hmm...red light cameras! Yes! They allow us to be safer at intersections, so they can get rid of police officers...err...wait. Let's see....phone trees! Soooo many phone trees....all those real people who don't run the logic sequence to get you to your endpoint, we as consumers sure got those savings for the services we seek by phone....eerrmmm...uuuhhh..not that either.
My point is that the savings are not usually passed to the consumer. They are pocketed and either hoarded or reinvested. If the 'free-market' worked 100%, then OK maybe competition would trickle savings down to the consumer. But a free-market is not to be found anywhere, for collusion and revolving doors keep Washington's interest in line with the golden-parachutist of Wall St., while Joe and Jane consumer must suck up more debit card fees and lower savings interest rates. And who can afford a house when inflation outpaces rises in raises! Brave New World.....of bullshit.
I understand why financial institutions want the lower latency but what work could a law firm be doing that could in any way benefit from 20 ms faster packets?
The Italian government is acting as the protector of corporate profits. What a white knight they are! Can there be a "One Strike" bad politician law so that after their first major fuck-up they get to go to federal PMIA prison for a minimum of 1 year? What's good for the goose is good for the gander!
It is white collar gambling and no more about company valuations than Full Tilt was about legit poker playing. Sure you can make money if you're smart/lucky/know the right people/have the right fiber connection/have the best and brightest market manipulation master from the major STEM universities, but other than that the house is stacked against you. The distribution of wealth in the country (and world for that matter) among individuals is reflective of those at the top of the game rigging it to their advantage, politically, technologically, and otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Special paint that reflects/absorbs only at certain frequencies. You have a 'stickers' that go on all four corners of the vehicle. The finish line has a spread-spectrum laser array blasting across it. When a car crosses the line, each car is tagged with unique tape. The laser light reflected will be unique to the vehicle. You triangulate the reflected lights timings and use that in conjunction with the wavelength reflected back and you've got a car and you've got a time.
Unique tape on each car. Cheap, replaceable. Not a perfect solution, but some variant of this involving selected emission/absorption is a winning ticket. I made this up in 1 minute and have no idea if there are any preexisting solutions that do this. For the pedants; yes tape could peel off and yes people could cheat some how I'm sure, blah blah blah, and I'm sure there is a more optimal solution blah blah blah, and I'm sure you'll have issues in X Y Z situation with A B C conditions blah blah blah. Go make something better and sell it.
What are we transforming America into?
The 4th Reich.
Very true, perhaps it's time for me to start weening off /., it gets tiring seeing so many cynical comments about the editing and misuse of terminology, and naturally those are not the fault of the commenters. Albeit /. does beat most all other news sites and the likes of Youtube in regards to the level of intelligence in its comment sections.
I guess I just can't tell if the rising cynicism here matches the degrading quality of editing.
All technical typos and misleading whatever aside, and aside from all the hawking about how this has already existed or this is not new blah blah blah....THIS SHIT IS STILL FUCKING AMAZING. GET OVER YOURSELVES.
I can't refute that; I guess my original posting intention was to dissuade pessimism in lieu of optimism, but if the facts point to no major breakthroughs in the foreseeable future, then so be int (**puts on shades***...ooooohhh yeaaah.)
Of course 40GHz is outside the physical limits of the current wafer-fab process for now and the foreseeable future, but chucking exponential growth and shrinking power requirements with that sole piece of knowledge seems short-sighted. What about improvement and proliferation of quantum computing and better parallel optimization on a low level? We don't have to have single-chip 100Ghz cores for the next computing revolution, it could be done with better and more efficient parallelization of low level operations (and better high level languages that map to multi-core systems), along with a (to begrudgingly use the word) complete paradigm shift in the way we look at logical operations on the per-bit scale, especially if the fabs-houses can cheaply mass produce qubit processors (once the comp-sci's, phys'es, and chem'es work out the initial theoretical and practical kinks. I think 50-100yrs is reasonable. And if not quantum computing, I'm willing to bet there will be a major revolution in the semiconductor industry in the next century that allows us to significantly surpass the current limits of silicon wafer's checkered with transistors. Everytime we hit a physical barrier, somebody comes along with a completely new idea to progress further. Steam -> Combustion, Analog -> Digital, Vacuum Tube -> Transistor, Coal Power -> Nuclear Power, etc.
Or maybe I'm spouting mainstream wishy-washy futurist bullshit that lacks any substantiation, IDK. While theoretical limits in one medium will always exist, those limits only encourage the invention and implementation of another that far surpasses its predecessors.
Is it not feasible to imagine a day when you have an IBM Watson's worth of question/answer expert system power on your portable device, with that device tied into all your household objects, vehicles, financial tools and identification documents? We've got web servers on a stick and GPS IC's that can fit on a dime (compare that to what we had 50 years ago), I think it is a reasonable assertion that computational power will will continue to grow exponentially, electrical power requirements will shrink. If you had a grid of millions of computational cores all interconnected and speaking the same higher level language (I'm not talking about HTTP and the internet, I'm talking about symbolic 'thought' for the purpose of human assistance, the next revolution in computing if you will), I imagine you could have a vast technological network that nearly represents AI, perhaps it may not fit the textbook definition of a sentient/conscious being, but it would suit the bill in terms of passing some serious milestones. In 50-100 years, I think these are broad but reasonable assumptions, or am I out of my league here?
Yes....go on...you were saying?
TROLLOLOLOLOLOL
Relevant: ...will never take our INDEPENDENCE DAY
And thus spoketh the Lord to Mr. Jobs, "here dost thine golden ipad".
That's why everything's so heavy-handed: people are terrified of making a mistake and losing everything.
If being a politician didn't have so many insider perks and benefits, there would not be anything to lose in the first place and they would not guard their positions with such adamant stupidity. Cut their pay, their benefits, and impose seriously limiting term limits. It can't be any worse trying that than it is now.
Totalitarian leaders of the middle-east should be given the Ig Noble Peace prize for their peaceful methods of spreading their good word. Hell, give the US one as well.
Most religion may be irrational, but spirituality cannot be completely discounted. There are things in science that will always be unanswerable, and there will always be people willing to fill in the gaps with untestable conjectures (but still thought out). Be it string-theory pre-big bang or be it FSM, somethings we may never know.
Well there was the SSC, but funding and mismanagement by bean counters ruined any prospects of another particle collider here in the US. In the current political climate, there's absolutely no way a larger collider will be built anytime soon. The talking heads will mention the SSC and the topic will immediately become toxic to mention.
+1 Sad and Hilarious Insight
That is what the US will become. The warriors of intellectual property. If we can't manufacture, create, and export tangible things, then god-dammit we'll charge for any intangible a lawyer can serve papers on.
if they are introduced to it at a young age they might not develop an irrational fear of it.
You should get rid of your irrational fear of math and ***puts on shades*** replace it with integer quotients. Yeeeaaaahhhhhh
I've been around the community college and university circuit, and I can say that many community colleges are becoming highly reliant on the likes of Moodle/Blackboard for delivering quizes/test/material/exercises. Also, many classes at universities now require continuously larger amounts of online coursework and thus the curriculum. At community college, I took all my foo-foo fuzzy classes purely online for full credit. I'm a STEM major, so pre-reqs like Art History and Intro To College (yes that is a required course some places) were a blast to take online, i.e. a breeze and at my own leisure), giving me more focus on classes I actually cared about.
At the big-U's, of course there will be a latent aversion to prof's lecturing to a camera and reusing said lecture every semester. If I am just watching a video of a prof or reading his lecture notes online, it will be more difficult for the universities to justify the ever-more exorbitant admission cost if it's just delivered online (although most classes seem to be more of teaching yourself than the lecturer teaching you, but that's what college is about anyways, learning how to learn). College has been going online for awhile, but the question of 'should it be' is a reasonable one; will it save students money, or just dilute the college process into even more of a degree-mill spectacle than it already is? Or just create more busywork? I say it depends mostly on the context, subjectivity, and type of degree program.
I bet in 100 years our descendants will be asking what it was like to sit in a classroom with people and how weird it must have been to learn in a group.
I was being sarcastic about the red light cameras-they followed suit in my theme that adding automation does not immediately benefit the peons/citizens, it benefits the people who automate.
Did grocery store prices plunge dramatically when they introduced self-checkout? Did they reduce at all? Or did they keep the extra they skimmed from laying off cashiers? What about banks, do banks charge less the more automated tellers they have? Lets try airports, walk into any major hub and there's so many automated check-in machines, yes, those sure reduced ticket and baggage prices! Hmm...red light cameras! Yes! They allow us to be safer at intersections, so they can get rid of police officers...err...wait. Let's see....phone trees! Soooo many phone trees....all those real people who don't run the logic sequence to get you to your endpoint, we as consumers sure got those savings for the services we seek by phone....eerrmmm...uuuhhh..not that either.
My point is that the savings are not usually passed to the consumer. They are pocketed and either hoarded or reinvested. If the 'free-market' worked 100%, then OK maybe competition would trickle savings down to the consumer. But a free-market is not to be found anywhere, for collusion and revolving doors keep Washington's interest in line with the golden-parachutist of Wall St., while Joe and Jane consumer must suck up more debit card fees and lower savings interest rates. And who can afford a house when inflation outpaces rises in raises! Brave New World.....of bullshit.
I understand why financial institutions want the lower latency but what work could a law firm be doing that could in any way benefit from 20 ms faster packets?
So they can sue faster!
I unfriend people all the time, to keep my friends list at the right number.
Over 9000?
The Italian government is acting as the protector of corporate profits. What a white knight they are! Can there be a "One Strike" bad politician law so that after their first major fuck-up they get to go to federal PMIA prison for a minimum of 1 year? What's good for the goose is good for the gander!
It is white collar gambling and no more about company valuations than Full Tilt was about legit poker playing. Sure you can make money if you're smart/lucky/know the right people/have the right fiber connection/have the best and brightest market manipulation master from the major STEM universities, but other than that the house is stacked against you. The distribution of wealth in the country (and world for that matter) among individuals is reflective of those at the top of the game rigging it to their advantage, politically, technologically, and otherwise.
Or am I just another FUD spewing pinko-commie?
My Reminder Cues:
IE Update Reminders - About every dentist appointment (1-2 years)
Chrome Update Reminders - Roughly every equinox and solstice.
Firefox Update Reminders - Monthly diarrhea.