...but there is no one right way to do it. I suppose that's the whole problem. If it were standardized, then people would not have such problems (though the gaps in the docs may still be there).
In any case, some people will tell you that such desgin documentation is absolutely essential and absolutely required, and there are those who think that they are an absolute waste of time. The truth is somewhere in-between. It depends on the projects and the organization that you work for and their adherence to standards and methodologies.
I for one, think that the documentation should be minimal but complete, and no more. Strive for conciseness. Nobody likes to read reams of documentation and then try to figure out what needs to be done. Lots of overhead usually exists in these design documents.
I frankly think design documents should not exceed certain lengths - artificial limits are not useful, but the main point is to break up documentation into smaller chunks and then work on keeping the amount of documentation that one has to read and understand in one go smaller (kind of modular programming, gee).
structure and organization will allow you to create more concise, modular and portable designs and design documents...
I have to say though, this is coming from someone who hates reading documentation of any kind.
Oh, I disagree...when we can get HDTV resolutions on the PSP (with current resolution of 480x272 on a 4.6in screen = approx. 120dpi, HDTV resolution on the same size screen would require about 480dpi), then let's talk again. I'd like to see Jack Bauer on a tiny yet really crisp screen saying "dammit" at those resolutions.
Well, look at it this way - the tobacco industry settled the suits - this will mostly protect them from future liability claims. So as far as the public and insurance companies go, they will have to assume the harms of smoking in the future and can no longer rely on being able to hit up the tobacco industry for it.
That being said, insurance companies and government sponsored health care will look to actively reduce smoking because of the health implications and the health care costs associated with them. The insurance companies will continue to increase the premiums of smokers to a point where they just cannot afford to continue smoking. The government is already making it really difficult to smoke - high taxes and various cities banning smoking in public places (Dublin, NY, etc.). They are already a lot closer. In Tokyo they even experiemented with banning smoking on the sidewalks in one particular district.
In the end, you are going to have very few places to smoke and it's going to cost you a lot to buy cigarettes, to insure yourself, and to take care of you health-wise. No one is calling for outlawing smoking completely right now, because too many people are still smoking and it would be a disaster (a la the Prohibition). So what they will do is make it costly and socially embarrassing to smoke (see all the people standing outside in the cold and rain smoking). At some point, they can make tobacco completely illegal, though at that point, it may simply be a formality.
I'll add a little more to this: ISPs may look at P2P traffic the same way some people looked at smoking at one point.
Somewhere in the world, governments still look at smoking and tobacco sale as a good revenue source, and so they are willing to "sacrifice" the people's health, or put differently, "mortgage" the people's future health costs to get cash upfront. Eventually, as we get more serious about public health and the danger of tobacco use is just so blatantly obvious and the health insurance industry catches up, it will become more costly to allow people to keep smoking, and therefore smoking may eventually become completely illegal - maybe.
Let's say that ISPs are doing the same - they would be doing themselves a disservice to shut down P2P completely, even though they can absolutely block every form of P2P if they really wanted to. They are turning the blind eye to the problem of P2P and piracy because it is a source of revenue and it allows them to build up the infrastructure and the business demands while at the same time allowing enough business opportunities to develop legitimate broadband uses. Of course, in this case, they are doing it at the expense of the copyright holders who are "losing billions" to piracy each year.
So my analogy, confused and unclear though it may be: health insurance = copyright holders government = ISPs people who pirate = people who smoke...
Eventually, I'm sure, we will see that piracy P2P will become less prominent as legitimate P2P and download services and streaming services are developed and put in place. Witness the large ISPs like Verizon and Comcast building up their infrastructure and forming partnerships with content providers, etc.
Well, if they shut down the P2P sites which were demanding most of the bandwidth requirements of the ISP, then it eliminates the need for broadband for a lot of people (at least for the time being). If people don't need broadband anymore, wouldn't ISPs lose broadband business? Are the anti-piracy groups willing to pay the ISPs for their "losses"?
Getting WinFS out there means they can work out more kinks before release of Longhorn and at the same time provide the "benefits" of WinFS to people earlier. Separating out key pieces of the OS is always good for the still changing OS. Similar to the Linux/UNIX FSes, after all. This will make the transition to Longhorn "smoother".
Quite frankly, China's not ready for democracy yet. If China were to be forced to become democratic like Iraq was in the last year or so, imagine the chaos and destabilizing effect this would have in the region. For a country of China's size, changing the form of government like the former soviet union did would be absolutely disastrous. China will not likely to be ready for democracy until at least 2030 or so. China is in a rapid growth period, and things are already highly chaotic. They need to maintain stability. Democracies are highly chaotic. China is doing the right thing right now.
I hope people realize and understand that in the short term, the Chinese may not enjoy the freedom and the benefits that people in western democracies have, but the government has the responsibility to look into the future and plan accordingly. It isn't always the case that the government forces its form upon the people. More often than not, it is the people that influences the form of government. In other word, the power of the people is what dictates the government. If the people feel strongly anti-government enough, and there are enough of them, they will change it. As far as the Chinese people are concerned, there's nothing wrong with life. The malcontents who cry for freedom are much feweer. Would you rather have a freedom of speech that you have not been accustomed to that doesn't even feed you, or would you rather be less free and be able to feed your family?
um..."we" may hate what the Chinese government are doing to their population, but I don't think we "all" do. And furthermore, do you think the Chinese people hate the Chinese government for this? The Chinese are hardly ALL unhappy about their government. I think a large percentage are quite content (ok, only those who are in developing areas and see great opportunities, maybe). Stop assuming that what you don't like about what the Chinese government is or isn't doing is the same as what the Chinese people feel about their own government.
for astronaut food. I am not saying taking a printer into space with flavor ink cartridges, mind you, but that the printed papers be shipped with them...
Though I suppose they could try both, but if the printer malfunctions, they'd starve if they relied on this exclusively.
But this allows for more efficient storage. With a bit more tweaking with the proper research, with proper packaging which can also reduce the amount of exposed surface, this could be a really great way to provide nutrients for space travel, etc.
The funny thing is, I personally prefer fansub over officially licensed subtitles in many cases because the fansubbed works are better. The fansubbers (those who don't skimp on quality) are better because:
1. They provide subtitles that are more "fun" (they can get more creative because their jobs don't depend on it being professionally done). This applies very often to the swearing in the dialogue.
2. They are more thorough. For example, many fansubs go through the extra length of providing extra notes - something the professionally done official licensed versions almost never do. I truly appreciate these, because it helps explain a lot of cultural idiosyncracies.
3. They use better fonts. I've watched many licensed anime and compared the fonts with those of the fansubs. The most common font used is just damned ugly.
4. Better timeliness, of course.
5. Keep up to date with earthquakes in Japan. Often, I've seen earthquake notifications flash across the screens of the anime in the middle...I kind of miss those in the licensed anime.
The only area that licensed anime is better is dubbing. But only barely so, because they have professional equipment and voice actors/actresses to do it. Unfortunately, it sounds like they only have 3 actresses and 2 actors for all anime titles because they all sound the same.
In general, I like the fansubs better and appreciate their efforts a lot more. I wish the professionally done ones can learn from the fansubbers. I wish some of them would consider paying fansubbers for their versions (with some modifications, of course).
Current mirroring schemes out there should also offer BT alternatives. For example, if SourceForge mirrors also acted as tracker and seeds for files, it'd work really well. But I'll bet with this paid scheme, the seeds will remain low (because there'd be less reason to share, because most people will think - there's always seeding anyway)
Adobe certain has done its job in making PDF so common place that it's become an "open" format, hasn't it? I think that for specific purposes proprietary formats are ok, but for interchanging and for storage purposes, the open formats are important.
Because it screams "I am unoriginal!" "I jump on bandwagons" "I am a lemming!"
Isn't that one of the reasons why people are replacing their iPod earbuds?
And quite frankly, who cares if creative is just copying apple? I mean really!
There's soemthing for everyone. If you want to be a Steve Jobs worshipper, go buy the iPods. If you don't and want to save a little money and forego the nice looking iPods with nice usable designs, go buy something else.
I think the posts for this article is really why people don't like Apple zealots/bigots.
(I know this post is inflammatory, but that's how I truly feel - nothing against all the iPod buying/using people really, except when you tell people that somehow they are inferior because they don't share your tastes - imagine that - people actually disagree with you. Enough already - it's just a friggin portable music player)
Depends on your definition of robot. I think these questions are only applicable to "sentient" robots or robots with advanced artificial intelligence. Most "robots" as well call them today do not qualify, so none of these questions are applicable.
We, as humans, should stop trying to play god to create sentient beings. Robots as tools are much more useful to us. But, you say, you want something that can independently think and do stuff for us. What you are looking for here are "slaves". Beings that can do their own things but still obey you.
Why do we even bother with all of this? If you don't make a super intelligent robot that can learn and independently think, then you don't need the 3 laws. You don't need to worry about the robots killing all humans and taking over the world. All of these problems that sci-fi say we will be afflicted with because we want to play god and be lazy.
hmm...perhaps you're right - there is no obvious advantage or disadvantage to any individual and therefore contribution to survival. Bad analogy. However, when I was thinking Genetic Algorithm I was thinking more of the computational benefits of genetic algorithm rather than the mechanisms of it. Meaning, genetic algorithm arrives at an approximate best answer within a reasonable amount of time through trial and error. In that sense, wikipedia can approximate "best and most comprehensive" knowledge through "trial and error" But then, someone can just come along and wreck the whole thing.... ok, nevermind, there's no saving this analogy.
But neither will regular encyclopedias get to the truth absolutely and completely. So what's the difference?
Look at it this way - I think it's more like Genetic Algorithms - it will get a lot closer to the truth quickly through its process of "evolution" through its methods.
is because Microsoft now has cheaper versions of the software available to put on these cheaper PCs. The stripped down versions of Windows, for instance. It would certainly be hypocritical to say PCs should cost $100 when the OS itself costs more.
And the reason for this, after all, is to open up the low-end market so that Microsoft can tap that revenue source. After all, if they offer something for $200 normally, and offer a strip down version for $50 such that people can afford it, it's still better than getting $0 because people can't afford to pay for it and end up pirating it.
The funny thing is, from a certain standpoint, Microsoft is actually NOT trying to stop piracy (the official line is always to be anti-piracy, of course), but Microsoft probably realized that their software will be pirated, and in some ways, this loss leader in the emerging markets should strategically be allowed. Because then, Microsoft will dominate even more, especially where Linux is popular. On the other hand, Microsoft can't grow that market if the people cannot afford to pay for the hardware. Keep in mind that Windows is as dominant as it is today partly because it was easy to copy Windows. They could have put really difficult schemes to prevent piracy, but they didn't, because ultimately, that's not how they make their money anyway. They make their money by having dominance and then sell software based on it (Office, for instance).
And in the future, Microsoft want DRM and they want to do transactions. They want more people on the internet using windows, and the way they can get that is to have as many people as possible with little cheap boxes that run some form of Windows that can at the very least access the internet so they can spend money through Microsoft channels.
Obviously, the internet is made up of not only the hardware and the software and the data - it is also the people, and people are ultimately flexible and capable of adaptation to the situations that may arise. Just as the internet allows routing around failed nodes, so will people route around the noise.
If you talk about pain, consider the withdrawal pain all of us will have to go through if the internet just wasn't available for all of our daily things anymore.
An example of adaptability of things relating to human-ness influence - languages have generally changed over the ages, and has withstood the assault of abuse and misuse more or less intact. People are always worried that new coinage and usage of the language will corrupt the language to the point where it is no longer useful - this is far from the truth, and so it will be for the internet.
...but sometimes, maybe not enough people will care. I was into the BBS stuff and all for years and years. Now that we have the internet, it's wide-open to everyone and doesn't seem that special anymore. There's certainly a very rich history in BBSes - all of the things we now take for granted on the internet now were being developed in the BBS community. But now, BBSes are bygone memories as we move forward. Long gone are the days of hours of downloading, constant busy signals and expensive long-distance dialing. Though the BBS world was more tightly knit in some ways, it was also expensive to run and use. If there's anything I've learned, is how the BBSes make the internet look really good now.
I think most people could care less about BBSes, but I suppose for the few tens/hundreds of thousands of us who experienced it, the nostalgia factor is enough to encourage us to watch this. We can tell the young whipper-snappers "You young 'uns have it really good. Why back in my days, we had to..."
You might be thinking that there are no acute threats with direct GMO, but long term effects on our health and our environment are largely unknown. Smaller changes are more manageable than abrupt changes that are characteristic of most GM methods. GM methods are shortcuts. It's something akin to bringing plants/animals from one location to another - initially, it may look like it'd be fine, but years later, you find out there are significant issues. For example, kudzu brought in from (I believe) Asia as an ornamental plant now overruns large patches of the U.S. and is a serious problem. Same with various animals brought to Australia that now have no natural predators and are proliferating at such rates that they are crowding out the native population and become a threat. Rate of change is absolutely relevant because it takes time to study the long term effects of new organisms. Slower rate of change means smaller changes and the effects of the characteristics can be better studied. I agree more easily grown food plants would certainly help the poor starving countries - in theory, but in practice, it doesn't. Do you really think that new crop plants created by GM companies will be freely given away after spending decades and billions of dollars on research and development? Look at the lawsuit won by Monsanto for the rapeseed plant they engineered that was found on a farmer's field - they want farmers to not only pay for the seeds, but to pay year after year - because the farmers are not allowed, under the license to buy the seeds, to keep any seeds from one year's crop to be used for the next year. In the case of the lawsuit, the farmer didn't even enter in a license deal with Monsanto, but instead had the seeds blown onto his field where it grew naturally and he was then subject to their restrictions. So...looking at this, do you really think that these farmers would be much better off growing crops that they must sell for money in order to afford buying the seed and therefore end up starving? Or do you think they'd be better off doing subsistence farming where they can actually grow the food that they can eat and afford to eat?
The problem with most starving countries is the climate, water and political instability than anything else. It is a typical American attitude to think that we can develop a "silver bullet" to solve a problem. Witness the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry - feeling depressed? Take a pill, too fat? Take a pill. Don't have enough food? Here's the seed that will solve your problem. In the meantime, it is the companies that offer these "solutions" that laugh all the way to the bank.
Please, people don't starve because of lack of GM foods. The way we use the term GM is unnatural modification of organisms through direct introduction of genetical materials from other organisms, very often from organisms that are very foreign. Natural breeding and modification of genes tend to produce slower changes because organisms often cannot reproduce sexually with partners that are too different genetically (i.e. different species - though there are of course exceptions). GM food does not cure hunger - it never will. The problem with hunger is not low yield or lack of food. Americans not only eat more food than everybody else in the world, they also throw away more food both in terms of leftovers and in terms of food that never makes it to the consumers. There have been history of purposeful destruction of food in order to prevent a glut that would drive prices down. The reason why Americans can very often offer food aid to other countries is because there is so much surplus! Yet, there are Americans starving. Americans also eat more meat than most other people in the world. Meat takes a lot more natural resources to produce. It takes something on the order of 40 tons of grass to produce one ton of beef (or some such ratio). The amount of non-meat foods that can be grown in the same space it takes to grow the 40 tons of grass is a heck of a lot more than one ton of beef (though admittedly, probably less than the grass). Basically, hundreds of millions of people starve in the world because of greed. The U.S. government "gives away" food that it must purchase from suppliers who have surplus and who lobby hard to make sure that they can always sell this surplus. This surplus, in the form of corn, is why there's high-fructose corn syrup in practically everything you buy - and is one of the things responsible for the American obesity epidemic.
nanotech and MEMS become truly advanced. Many of these robots emulate creatures that are much smaller, and therefore are able to do what they do because of the scale. Of course, it also really depends on what "features" you are emulating from the creature. Some features can be scaled up, some cannot.
Flying cars sound really great, but quite frankly, I think it's a waste. Unless it offers considerable advantage, it would never take-off (pun intended). By considerable advantage, I mean it can get to places a lot faster or uses less fuel or something. I can see the use of them, but not on a large scale basis. Flying cars will obviously use consierably more fuel than regular cars and other ground transports. For other purposes, there's the airplane, which has been economized and travels much faster.
The flying car, then, I think will end up being like helicopters - but perhaps slightly more common. Wealthy people will have them and for emergency purposes (organ transplants, etc.), but other than that, I don't see flying cars as truly useful. In the U.S., we already consume so much energy driving, etc., do we really just need more ways to consumer energy faster?
(Granted, if we all had this attitude, we would have had the technology advances we've had up to know, airplanes and all, but current energy usage trends are quite alarming).
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I concur, for I have also fallen under the spell.
...but there is no one right way to do it. I suppose that's the whole problem. If it were standardized, then people would not have such problems (though the gaps in the docs may still be there).
In any case, some people will tell you that such desgin documentation is absolutely essential and absolutely required, and there are those who think that they are an absolute waste of time. The truth is somewhere in-between. It depends on the projects and the organization that you work for and their adherence to standards and methodologies.
I for one, think that the documentation should be minimal but complete, and no more. Strive for conciseness. Nobody likes to read reams of documentation and then try to figure out what needs to be done. Lots of overhead usually exists in these design documents.
I frankly think design documents should not exceed certain lengths - artificial limits are not useful, but the main point is to break up documentation into smaller chunks and then work on keeping the amount of documentation that one has to read and understand in one go smaller (kind of modular programming, gee).
structure and organization will allow you to create more concise, modular and portable designs and design documents...
I have to say though, this is coming from someone who hates reading documentation of any kind.
Oh, I disagree...when we can get HDTV resolutions on the PSP (with current resolution of 480x272 on a 4.6in screen = approx. 120dpi, HDTV resolution on the same size screen would require about 480dpi), then let's talk again. I'd like to see Jack Bauer on a tiny yet really crisp screen saying "dammit" at those resolutions.
Well, look at it this way - the tobacco industry settled the suits - this will mostly protect them from future liability claims. So as far as the public and insurance companies go, they will have to assume the harms of smoking in the future and can no longer rely on being able to hit up the tobacco industry for it.
That being said, insurance companies and government sponsored health care will look to actively reduce smoking because of the health implications and the health care costs associated with them. The insurance companies will continue to increase the premiums of smokers to a point where they just cannot afford to continue smoking. The government is already making it really difficult to smoke - high taxes and various cities banning smoking in public places (Dublin, NY, etc.). They are already a lot closer. In Tokyo they even experiemented with banning smoking on the sidewalks in one particular district.
In the end, you are going to have very few places to smoke and it's going to cost you a lot to buy cigarettes, to insure yourself, and to take care of you health-wise. No one is calling for outlawing smoking completely right now, because too many people are still smoking and it would be a disaster (a la the Prohibition). So what they will do is make it costly and socially embarrassing to smoke (see all the people standing outside in the cold and rain smoking). At some point, they can make tobacco completely illegal, though at that point, it may simply be a formality.
I'll add a little more to this:
ISPs may look at P2P traffic the same way some people looked at smoking at one point.
Somewhere in the world, governments still look at smoking and tobacco sale as a good revenue source, and so they are willing to "sacrifice" the people's health, or put differently, "mortgage" the people's future health costs to get cash upfront. Eventually, as we get more serious about public health and the danger of tobacco use is just so blatantly obvious and the health insurance industry catches up, it will become more costly to allow people to keep smoking, and therefore smoking may eventually become completely illegal - maybe.
Let's say that ISPs are doing the same - they would be doing themselves a disservice to shut down P2P completely, even though they can absolutely block every form of P2P if they really wanted to. They are turning the blind eye to the problem of P2P and piracy because it is a source of revenue and it allows them to build up the infrastructure and the business demands while at the same time allowing enough business opportunities to develop legitimate broadband uses. Of course, in this case, they are doing it at the expense of the copyright holders who are "losing billions" to piracy each year.
So my analogy, confused and unclear though it may be:
health insurance = copyright holders
government = ISPs
people who pirate = people who smoke...
Eventually, I'm sure, we will see that piracy P2P will become less prominent as legitimate P2P and download services and streaming services are developed and put in place. Witness the large ISPs like Verizon and Comcast building up their infrastructure and forming partnerships with content providers, etc.
Well, if they shut down the P2P sites which were demanding most of the bandwidth requirements of the ISP, then it eliminates the need for broadband for a lot of people (at least for the time being). If people don't need broadband anymore, wouldn't ISPs lose broadband business? Are the anti-piracy groups willing to pay the ISPs for their "losses"?
Getting WinFS out there means they can work out more kinks before release of Longhorn and at the same time provide the "benefits" of WinFS to people earlier. Separating out key pieces of the OS is always good for the still changing OS. Similar to the Linux/UNIX FSes, after all. This will make the transition to Longhorn "smoother".
Quite frankly, China's not ready for democracy yet. If China were to be forced to become democratic like Iraq was in the last year or so, imagine the chaos and destabilizing effect this would have in the region. For a country of China's size, changing the form of government like the former soviet union did would be absolutely disastrous. China will not likely to be ready for democracy until at least 2030 or so. China is in a rapid growth period, and things are already highly chaotic. They need to maintain stability. Democracies are highly chaotic. China is doing the right thing right now.
I hope people realize and understand that in the short term, the Chinese may not enjoy the freedom and the benefits that people in western democracies have, but the government has the responsibility to look into the future and plan accordingly. It isn't always the case that the government forces its form upon the people. More often than not, it is the people that influences the form of government. In other word, the power of the people is what dictates the government. If the people feel strongly anti-government enough, and there are enough of them, they will change it. As far as the Chinese people are concerned, there's nothing wrong with life. The malcontents who cry for freedom are much feweer. Would you rather have a freedom of speech that you have not been accustomed to that doesn't even feed you, or would you rather be less free and be able to feed your family?
um..."we" may hate what the Chinese government are doing to their population, but I don't think we "all" do. And furthermore, do you think the Chinese people hate the Chinese government for this? The Chinese are hardly ALL unhappy about their government. I think a large percentage are quite content (ok, only those who are in developing areas and see great opportunities, maybe). Stop assuming that what you don't like about what the Chinese government is or isn't doing is the same as what the Chinese people feel about their own government.
for astronaut food. I am not saying taking a printer into space with flavor ink cartridges, mind you, but that the printed papers be shipped with them...
Though I suppose they could try both, but if the printer malfunctions, they'd starve if they relied on this exclusively.
But this allows for more efficient storage. With a bit more tweaking with the proper research, with proper packaging which can also reduce the amount of exposed surface, this could be a really great way to provide nutrients for space travel, etc.
The funny thing is, I personally prefer fansub over officially licensed subtitles in many cases because the fansubbed works are better. The fansubbers (those who don't skimp on quality) are better because:
1. They provide subtitles that are more "fun" (they can get more creative because their jobs don't depend on it being professionally done). This applies very often to the swearing in the dialogue.
2. They are more thorough. For example, many fansubs go through the extra length of providing extra notes - something the professionally done official licensed versions almost never do. I truly appreciate these, because it helps explain a lot of cultural idiosyncracies.
3. They use better fonts. I've watched many licensed anime and compared the fonts with those of the fansubs. The most common font used is just damned ugly.
4. Better timeliness, of course.
5. Keep up to date with earthquakes in Japan. Often, I've seen earthquake notifications flash across the screens of the anime in the middle...I kind of miss those in the licensed anime.
The only area that licensed anime is better is dubbing. But only barely so, because they have professional equipment and voice actors/actresses to do it. Unfortunately, it sounds like they only have 3 actresses and 2 actors for all anime titles because they all sound the same.
In general, I like the fansubs better and appreciate their efforts a lot more. I wish the professionally done ones can learn from the fansubbers. I wish some of them would consider paying fansubbers for their versions (with some modifications, of course).
...no, but those who paid to see it in the theaters should be able to file a class action suit.
Current mirroring schemes out there should also offer BT alternatives. For example, if SourceForge mirrors also acted as tracker and seeds for files, it'd work really well.
But I'll bet with this paid scheme, the seeds will remain low (because there'd be less reason to share, because most people will think - there's always seeding anyway)
Adobe certain has done its job in making PDF so common place that it's become an "open" format, hasn't it?
I think that for specific purposes proprietary formats are ok, but for interchanging and for storage purposes, the open formats are important.
Because it screams "I am unoriginal!" "I jump on bandwagons" "I am a lemming!"
Isn't that one of the reasons why people are replacing their iPod earbuds?
And quite frankly, who cares if creative is just copying apple? I mean really!
There's soemthing for everyone. If you want to be a Steve Jobs worshipper, go buy the iPods. If you don't and want to save a little money and forego the nice looking iPods with nice usable designs, go buy something else.
I think the posts for this article is really why people don't like Apple zealots/bigots.
(I know this post is inflammatory, but that's how I truly feel - nothing against all the iPod buying/using people really, except when you tell people that somehow they are inferior because they don't share your tastes - imagine that - people actually disagree with you. Enough already - it's just a friggin portable music player)
Depends on your definition of robot. I think these questions are only applicable to "sentient" robots or robots with advanced artificial intelligence. Most "robots" as well call them today do not qualify, so none of these questions are applicable.
We, as humans, should stop trying to play god to create sentient beings. Robots as tools are much more useful to us. But, you say, you want something that can independently think and do stuff for us. What you are looking for here are "slaves". Beings that can do their own things but still obey you.
Why do we even bother with all of this? If you don't make a super intelligent robot that can learn and independently think, then you don't need the 3 laws. You don't need to worry about the robots killing all humans and taking over the world. All of these problems that sci-fi say we will be afflicted with because we want to play god and be lazy.
We are doomed.
hmm...perhaps you're right - there is no obvious advantage or disadvantage to any individual and therefore contribution to survival. Bad analogy. However, when I was thinking Genetic Algorithm I was thinking more of the computational benefits of genetic algorithm rather than the mechanisms of it. Meaning, genetic algorithm arrives at an approximate best answer within a reasonable amount of time through trial and error.
In that sense, wikipedia can approximate "best and most comprehensive" knowledge through "trial and error"
But then, someone can just come along and wreck the whole thing....
ok, nevermind, there's no saving this analogy.
But neither will regular encyclopedias get to the truth absolutely and completely. So what's the difference?
Look at it this way - I think it's more like Genetic Algorithms - it will get a lot closer to the truth quickly through its process of "evolution" through its methods.
is because Microsoft now has cheaper versions of the software available to put on these cheaper PCs. The stripped down versions of Windows, for instance. It would certainly be hypocritical to say PCs should cost $100 when the OS itself costs more.
And the reason for this, after all, is to open up the low-end market so that Microsoft can tap that revenue source. After all, if they offer something for $200 normally, and offer a strip down version for $50 such that people can afford it, it's still better than getting $0 because people can't afford to pay for it and end up pirating it.
The funny thing is, from a certain standpoint, Microsoft is actually NOT trying to stop piracy (the official line is always to be anti-piracy, of course), but Microsoft probably realized that their software will be pirated, and in some ways, this loss leader in the emerging markets should strategically be allowed. Because then, Microsoft will dominate even more, especially where Linux is popular. On the other hand, Microsoft can't grow that market if the people cannot afford to pay for the hardware. Keep in mind that Windows is as dominant as it is today partly because it was easy to copy Windows. They could have put really difficult schemes to prevent piracy, but they didn't, because ultimately, that's not how they make their money anyway. They make their money by having dominance and then sell software based on it (Office, for instance).
And in the future, Microsoft want DRM and they want to do transactions. They want more people on the internet using windows, and the way they can get that is to have as many people as possible with little cheap boxes that run some form of Windows that can at the very least access the internet so they can spend money through Microsoft channels.
Obviously, the internet is made up of not only the hardware and the software and the data - it is also the people, and people are ultimately flexible and capable of adaptation to the situations that may arise. Just as the internet allows routing around failed nodes, so will people route around the noise.
If you talk about pain, consider the withdrawal pain all of us will have to go through if the internet just wasn't available for all of our daily things anymore.
An example of adaptability of things relating to human-ness influence - languages have generally changed over the ages, and has withstood the assault of abuse and misuse more or less intact. People are always worried that new coinage and usage of the language will corrupt the language to the point where it is no longer useful - this is far from the truth, and so it will be for the internet.
...but sometimes, maybe not enough people will care. I was into the BBS stuff and all for years and years. Now that we have the internet, it's wide-open to everyone and doesn't seem that special anymore. There's certainly a very rich history in BBSes - all of the things we now take for granted on the internet now were being developed in the BBS community. But now, BBSes are bygone memories as we move forward. Long gone are the days of hours of downloading, constant busy signals and expensive long-distance dialing.
Though the BBS world was more tightly knit in some ways, it was also expensive to run and use. If there's anything I've learned, is how the BBSes make the internet look really good now.
I think most people could care less about BBSes, but I suppose for the few tens/hundreds of thousands of us who experienced it, the nostalgia factor is enough to encourage us to watch this. We can tell the young whipper-snappers "You young 'uns have it really good. Why back in my days, we had to..."
You might be thinking that there are no acute threats with direct GMO, but long term effects on our health and our environment are largely unknown. Smaller changes are more manageable than abrupt changes that are characteristic of most GM methods. GM methods are shortcuts. It's something akin to bringing plants/animals from one location to another - initially, it may look like it'd be fine, but years later, you find out there are significant issues. For example, kudzu brought in from (I believe) Asia as an ornamental plant now overruns large patches of the U.S. and is a serious problem. Same with various animals brought to Australia that now have no natural predators and are proliferating at such rates that they are crowding out the native population and become a threat.
Rate of change is absolutely relevant because it takes time to study the long term effects of new organisms. Slower rate of change means smaller changes and the effects of the characteristics can be better studied.
I agree more easily grown food plants would certainly help the poor starving countries - in theory, but in practice, it doesn't. Do you really think that new crop plants created by GM companies will be freely given away after spending decades and billions of dollars on research and development? Look at the lawsuit won by Monsanto for the rapeseed plant they engineered that was found on a farmer's field - they want farmers to not only pay for the seeds, but to pay year after year - because the farmers are not allowed, under the license to buy the seeds, to keep any seeds from one year's crop to be used for the next year. In the case of the lawsuit, the farmer didn't even enter in a license deal with Monsanto, but instead had the seeds blown onto his field where it grew naturally and he was then subject to their restrictions.
So...looking at this, do you really think that these farmers would be much better off growing crops that they must sell for money in order to afford buying the seed and therefore end up starving? Or do you think they'd be better off doing subsistence farming where they can actually grow the food that they can eat and afford to eat?
The problem with most starving countries is the climate, water and political instability than anything else. It is a typical American attitude to think that we can develop a "silver bullet" to solve a problem. Witness the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry - feeling depressed? Take a pill, too fat? Take a pill. Don't have enough food? Here's the seed that will solve your problem. In the meantime, it is the companies that offer these "solutions" that laugh all the way to the bank.
Please, people don't starve because of lack of GM foods. The way we use the term GM is unnatural modification of organisms through direct introduction of genetical materials from other organisms, very often from organisms that are very foreign.
Natural breeding and modification of genes tend to produce slower changes because organisms often cannot reproduce sexually with partners that are too different genetically (i.e. different species - though there are of course exceptions).
GM food does not cure hunger - it never will. The problem with hunger is not low yield or lack of food. Americans not only eat more food than everybody else in the world, they also throw away more food both in terms of leftovers and in terms of food that never makes it to the consumers. There have been history of purposeful destruction of food in order to prevent a glut that would drive prices down. The reason why Americans can very often offer food aid to other countries is because there is so much surplus! Yet, there are Americans starving.
Americans also eat more meat than most other people in the world. Meat takes a lot more natural resources to produce. It takes something on the order of 40 tons of grass to produce one ton of beef (or some such ratio). The amount of non-meat foods that can be grown in the same space it takes to grow the 40 tons of grass is a heck of a lot more than one ton of beef (though admittedly, probably less than the grass).
Basically, hundreds of millions of people starve in the world because of greed. The U.S. government "gives away" food that it must purchase from suppliers who have surplus and who lobby hard to make sure that they can always sell this surplus. This surplus, in the form of corn, is why there's high-fructose corn syrup in practically everything you buy - and is one of the things responsible for the American obesity epidemic.
nanotech and MEMS become truly advanced. Many of these robots emulate creatures that are much smaller, and therefore are able to do what they do because of the scale. Of course, it also really depends on what "features" you are emulating from the creature. Some features can be scaled up, some cannot.
Flying cars sound really great, but quite frankly, I think it's a waste. Unless it offers considerable advantage, it would never take-off (pun intended). By considerable advantage, I mean it can get to places a lot faster or uses less fuel or something. I can see the use of them, but not on a large scale basis. Flying cars will obviously use consierably more fuel than regular cars and other ground transports. For other purposes, there's the airplane, which has been economized and travels much faster.
The flying car, then, I think will end up being like helicopters - but perhaps slightly more common. Wealthy people will have them and for emergency purposes (organ transplants, etc.), but other than that, I don't see flying cars as truly useful. In the U.S., we already consume so much energy driving, etc., do we really just need more ways to consumer energy faster?
(Granted, if we all had this attitude, we would have had the technology advances we've had up to know, airplanes and all, but current energy usage trends are quite alarming).