Just like we have reached the end of usefulness for Gigahertz as the deciding factor for cpu, we're coming to a point where more pixels is pointless. I would much prefer more realistic displays. I want a display that can display an image that looks like you are looking out a window. There is still a huge difference between a window and a display. I'm waiting for the day where I can put fake "windows" in my house and look out over the grand canyon.
Yes. It matters. Price also matters. If the price/performance gap is eliminated then major architectural changes are both possible and likely. We're already seeing this with tape vs harddrive where people are just archiving to an external harddrives instead of tape. Think about what would be possible if RAM was cheaper than harddisks and also non-volatile. Then everything could be in ram and even "saving to disk" becomes a thing of the past. Likewise, if SSDs becomes just as fast as ram, then why differentiate between ram and harddrive at all, just have "memory" which can be used or reused however you like.
Can you enlighten us with the specific genes pertaining to intelligence then please?
I ask you the same question. We know height is hereditary, eye color is hereditary, etc... What is so special about intelligence that it doesn't have a genetic component. We KNOW it has a genetic component. We have tried and failed to raise chimps as humans. They lack the capacity. It's a fact that the average IQ of the parents of smart kids is higher than the average IQ of parents of dumb kids. How much is nature vs nurture is up for debate but it's pretty well assumed that it's a combination of both and as far as this article goes, it really doesn't matter whether it is nature vs nurture that gives the kid the edge, the fact is that more children of smart parents are getting into a program designed for smart kids because they are smarter. Whether other kids are being over looked which have latent unrecognized potential is the only thing up for debate here.
On another note, the gifted programs in the US were started to address the problem of smart kids getting "bored" with regular school and therefore struggling. In my opinion, it doesn't really give them an edge but rather helps them channel that extra energy somewhere. My guess is that many of the poor kids who are accidentally getting skipped over probably have other places to channel that energy.
If you have a gifted child, one that is naturally smart, but can't pass these tests it probably shows a lack a parental involvement. Throwing them in a gifted program without that same support structure of the family would be pointless.
It's more than just support structure. Most gifted tests are biased but that's not necessarily bad. I have twin boys. One excels in math, the other excels in reading. Same parental involvement. The one who excels in logic/math scored higher on the IQ test and therefore got into the gifted program while his twin brother who is a better reader and probably more knowledgeable didn't. In the program's defence, although probably not completely intentional, my experience is that the ones who excel in math need gifted services more as they usually have poorer social skills than someone gifted in reading. There are lots of reasons that someone doesn't make the cut. My son who didn't make the cut is also more hyperactive and therefore doesn't do as good on tests. He's also much less interested in puzzles than his brother, etc... This is in one family and even if I don't agree with it, I can clearly see why it happened. For poor families, the number of differences are greatly different. When I was in the gifted program, probably less than 10% of the class were from a "poor" family but again, intelligence is hereditary and if you're smart then there is a higher probability that your parents were successful.
Who the fuck stays outside in the sun with kids for 8+hours at a time?
After an hour I'm ready for the bar and a fridge full of cold beers.
Have you never gone to the lake, gone camping, gone to a fair, gone to disney world, gone to a water park, gone to an amusement park, gone canoeing, gone on a multiday hike, etc.... There are a ton of different all day activities that are spent outside.
I think we grew up closer to the "let your kids burn" side of the coin. We would go to the beach at a local lake almost daily when we were between about the ages of 5 and 12 and I think my mom would put whatever passed for "suntan lotion" in the 1970s on us, once, when first got there and never reapply.
I don't ever remember getting sunburned but I do remember getting a really dark tan.
This is the method I still use on my kids. I apply a high SPF sunscreen when we first arrive and never reapply. My kids have NEVER got a sunburn using this method. The only time my kids have every got close to being sunburned is when we forget to put it on at all. If we are somewhere all day for 8+ hours, I do occasionally do a second application at about the 4-6 hour point just as a precaution but even when I don't get around to the second application, my kids have never had a sunburn.
Not sure if that was sarcastic, but OP is correct (with the addition of synthetic materials). I live by the ocean where the UV index is almost always extreme. Rash guards/wetsuits can cover most of your body and really are the best way to protect against the sun if you spend any amount of time in the water. It doesn't wash off and you don't miss spots (it's also it's better for the environment for those that care about it).
The first places to burn on me are my nose, cheeks, ears, and back of the neck, in that order. The stuff typically covered by clothes are usually just fine. A wide brim hat might help a little but really doesn't work well when you are swimming. I hate sunscreen especially on the face but clothing really doesn't work well on the face. I'm pretty sure everyone hates sunscreen and we really need to come up with a better solution. My suggestions to get us started are:
1) an umbrella drone that follows you around while you are swimming.
2) release a ton of particle into the atmosphere that selectively block UV.
3) some sort of full body lightweight bodysuit that covers the head and lets water in/out but blocks UV.
Yes, that makes perfectly sense. Because as we all know sahara is immune to all extinction level events.
What type of global extinction level event are you talking about and how many people are you going to send? Many of them would also affect mars and/or would not affect something at the bottom of the ocean. Let's say by some miracle you get 1000 people to mars and they are self-sustaining. That's still probably not enough to prevent extinction. Much better to spend the money to get launch cost down first before wasting money trying to send a few dozen colonists to mars. Kindof like sending a generational ship to the nearest star. Using current technology, it's likely that a newer ship launched a generation later would beat you there.
Right. And instead of visiting the moon they could have... But I'm glad they visited the moon.
Yeah, it put a feather in our hat but that's about it. That's why we haven't been back. But, more importantly, there is a HUGE difference between a one week trip to the moon and back and a 6 month+ trip to mars. I would much rather spend money trying to figure out how to make the trip cheaper than I would trying to get there with current technology. I think the first step would be to get launch cost to under $100/pound. A space elevator might be one alternative. If you could get stuff to space for $100/pound then building a proper vehicle with shielding, 24 months worth of air, an exercise room, private quarters, etc.. becomes a possibility. Just for kicks, a carnival cruise line weights about 140 million pounds and holds about 2000 people. At $100/pound that would be about 14 billion to get a ship like that to space. Obviously way more than you need and still pretty expensive but definitely in the realistic realm for price versus current prices where my calculator can barely do the math. Using the cruise line example, that still comes out to about $7million a person but is still a much more workable number than the $2000/pound or whatever the current going rate is.
The long-term goal should still be human habitation, but there is a huge amount of work that needs to come first.
This is the understatement of the century. People came to america because it was "the land of plenty" (Pretty much the opposite of Mars) People go work on oil rigs, the arctic, deep sea, etc... because it's "temporary misery for great (pay/research/experience)" Mars is neither "the land of plenty" or "temporary misery for great pay". In order to make a mars colony viable, then you need to make people WANT to go there and not just the few crazies. Until then, you're much better off building condos in the sahara with nice swimming pools because that will be a a lot cheaper and a MUCH MUCH easier sell.
Just how are we to deal with criminals who steal from us who live in nations that will not arrest culprits? Russia leaps to mind.
You don't need to arrest them, just stop the money from reaching them. A lot of current cybercrime are being transacted via credit cards, western union, etc.. You could eliminate most spam, most phishing, and even some of the illegal drug trade if you could make it more difficult to send money to the criminals. Bitcoin will make it hard to eliminate all the illegal drug trade but my guess is most of the Viagra sold via spam is being purchased with credit cards and if you can prevent the credit card transaction from going thru then you would eliminate many of those transactions.
Any action that implies the loss of a relationship can have emotional meaning above and beyond the usual impact of such an action.
Yes, a loss of a relationship can mean feelings are hurt but are you honestly saying that I must be friends with everyone and I'm never allowed to terminate a relationship? Terminating a relationship, if that is all you do, is the opposite of bullying. Yes, it can hurt your feelings but so can not being invited to a party (still not bullying). Bullying is actively having a negative relationship with someone. Ignoring someone or having an indifferent relationship is not bullying even in the workplace. If I dislike someone in the workplace, then I'm cordial, keep any required interaction short and to the point, and minimize interactions at work (and especially outside of work) as much as possible. This is what you're suppose to do instead of bullying. It is not bullying.
No thanks. IPv6 addresses are a mouthful, typically 3x as long when printed. We should move to a version that makes them 1 byte longer.
IPv6 was a poor decision. It's like someone who ran out of toilet paper once so they went and filled their entire basement full so they won't accidentally run out again. 192.168.23.17 compared to AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED As we're now pretty much stuck with ipv6, they would be better off locking out all the later bits until the transition is complete and make the ipv4 directly translatable. I.e. 192.168.25.25 becomes just FFFF:C0A8:1919 and all other ipv6 numbers are off limits until the transition is complete. FFFF:C0A8:1919 isn't much more difficult than 192.168.25.25 and would make the transition much simpler than giving everyone a ipv4 number and a completely different ipv6 address. Doing it this way, everyone could still access the websites via either their ipv4 or ipv6, it would only be the higher order ones that you would need to upgrade in order to access. Similar things have happened with phones and websites. When new area codes were introduced or new top level domains, a few people had problems accessing the new areas with older equipment if the older equipment was hardcoded somehow.
Correct. And further, they'll never sell more than 640K of them...
Computers had computer programs and graphical displays as their killer app. Even if you found a "killer app" like a high efficiency battery lattice that can only be 3D printed, there is still no reason that it wouldn't be cheaper to have them printed at a factory instead of each person printing their own. Printing high quality food is the only thing that comes to mind as something that could possibly get a 3D printer to be a common household fixture. Either that or printing things like hammers on demand and then recycling them after you're done using them but both of those "killer apps" are years if not decades away from existing.
I understand the incentive to watch a movie online but what is the incentive for someone to risk prison time to illegally record a movie and upload it to pirate bay? What is the uploader getting out of it? Back in the BBS there was a barter system where you could get credit by uploading something wanted that didn't exist yet but what incentive is there today?
Just because something illegal was done somewhere in the process to produce the video doesn't automatically make the video itself illegal. This seems like fair use and I don't see how the DMCA or any other law applies in this situation.
I think the "Rats of Nihm" is probably more realistic but even that brings up plenty of moral issues and although equal in intelligence they definitely were not equal in societal standing. I don't think society is currently ready or capable of recognizing an animal of equal intelligence as an equal.
Unless you manage to avoid such a divide, you could easily end up with a caste system where your "worth" in life depends on how much money your parents had to spend on your creation.
Hence the importance of universal health care. We all should be getting the same health care, as far as it is feasible for that to happen. The results will be good for everyone. On the other hand, we might well in that case have to deny such services to everyone, because population.
Universal health care won't solve this problem. Yeah, it might make give everyone in a rich first world super human abilities but what about all the countries that can't afford any of the first world technologies. There are many places where dialysis, or even simple things like antibiotics or malaria pills are cost prohibitive. Now if this "superhuman" technology was super cheap and used to help get the third world out of poverty by making them all geniuses able to better solve their own problems then it *might* help but chances are it will primarily only be available to the people who are already at an advantage.
Because these silly people with "morals" and "ethics" don't want a bunch of super children to be born, and begin the Eugenics Wars.
With our current knowledge, a first attempt is just as likely (if not more likely) to end up with a sub-human baby, or even worse, a half-human baby. I'm strangely ok with super babies but what do you do with something sub-human or half-human. We have some experience dealing with humans with the intelligence of a mouse and the body of a human but even then a parent-less lab-grown child who needs constant care in a mentally handicapped facility their entire life is not a desired outcome. The other side where it's a mouse with human intelligence would be even more problematic. What do you do with it? Do you let it go to school and have rights? Do you let it reproduce and have more super-mice children therefore creating a second intelligence race on this planet?
I dislike the term "taxpayer" - it implies that there are people who don't pay tax.
That's not what it implies to me at all. When I hear "taxpayer" used, what is usually implied is that there is no free money and the money is actually coming from "the people" not from some mysterious bottomless government coffer.
Surely long-distance wireless is better over short-distance like your typical Wi-Fi setups.
I mean, yeah, it will be slower, and will take up a little more power, but the bands are most likely very free in a lot of places. Most importantly, this will be considerably more accessible over a larger area, which is one of the problems with some places, long distances and uneven terrain which limits things considerably. A combination of this and something like Google Balloon would be able to get much further than short-distance cell towers.
Some connection is better than no connection. Just as long as it isn't 56k. Holy hell.
Rough terrain is an issue in some areas but most developing areas also have cheap labor and would probably love the extra jobs that laying wire and/or installing poles would require. Many of the poles in the USA were originally installed in holes dug by hand or dug with a stick of dynamite.
As far as google balloon, it seems like someone looking for something fun not something practical. The microwave towers they use to send signals from newyork to chicago would seem like an ideal technology to use to get from town to town in remote areas and then long distance point to point broadcast once you get to the town. My hometown used standard 802.11 on top of water towers. Anyone who had line of sight of the water tower could point an antenna at it and it had about a 5 mile range which would be more than enough for most small towns in remote regions.
It is a requirement of the credit cards as any store can ask for your ID, and if you can't provide one, good luck explaining to the police officer...
It depends on where you are. I don't think I've even been asked for an ID in my town of 80k but I almost always get asked for an ID if I go to much larger city a few hours away. I'm 35 and I do usually get asked for an ID when buying alcohol but even in this case and even when paying by credit card, if I tell them I don't have my ID they always let me go ahead with the purchase anyways.
So can I get credit for reading slashdot? What about wikipedia or cracked.com? A lot of my leisure time is spent reading random articles online. Yes, this makes me more knowledgeable and I do learn a bit from each and certain domains like my knowledge of smtp, dns, etc.. has not been learned in a classroom but tracking every time I read an article seems stupid. It seems like taking relevant certification tests if you need it or better yet just being asked questions in an interview over relevant material seems more logical.
There are none. Any road has potential to have construction at any time, for example, without warning. This particular problem could be fixed with legislation requiring all construction projects to be entered into a database in advance, but do you really want your cars driving to be affected by a remote database? Seems like a security issue.
I expect that the first adopters of this will be big rigs with plenty of money and as such, I could see them even constructing special pull off areas and yes, even requiring all construction on the road to be documented. Toll roads which are privately owned would be a reasonable place to start.
Expecting a driver to take control in a failure scenario is not a solution.
I would never trust a car that could require me to take control in an emergency. At the very least, the autonomus driver should get the car to a safe stop before requiring a human to take over.
I agree that "expecting a driver to take control in a failure scenario is not a solution" and stopping is an acceptable solution but it doesn't necessarily need to be an all or nothing. A better piecemeal solution would be to have it only engage on known safe highways. It would still be extremely useful in trucks, RVs, and regular cars if it only engaged on predesignated roads or interstates. The trucking industry already has depots at both ends of Kansas where trucks double or triple up before taking the long straight stretch across Kansas to minimize drivers. I see no reason why driverless cars couldn't do the same where you could only engage autopilot on certain known safe highways with good shoulders to do emergency stops. You could also do the same with weather. If it detects rain starting then it gives a 60 second warning and pulls over to the side of the road.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like we have reached the end of usefulness for Gigahertz as the deciding factor for cpu, we're coming to a point where more pixels is pointless. I would much prefer more realistic displays. I want a display that can display an image that looks like you are looking out a window. There is still a huge difference between a window and a display. I'm waiting for the day where I can put fake "windows" in my house and look out over the grand canyon.
Yes. It matters. Price also matters. If the price/performance gap is eliminated then major architectural changes are both possible and likely. We're already seeing this with tape vs harddrive where people are just archiving to an external harddrives instead of tape. Think about what would be possible if RAM was cheaper than harddisks and also non-volatile. Then everything could be in ram and even "saving to disk" becomes a thing of the past. Likewise, if SSDs becomes just as fast as ram, then why differentiate between ram and harddrive at all, just have "memory" which can be used or reused however you like.
intelligence is hereditary
Can you enlighten us with the specific genes pertaining to intelligence then please?
I ask you the same question. We know height is hereditary, eye color is hereditary, etc... What is so special about intelligence that
it doesn't have a genetic component. We KNOW it has a genetic component. We have tried and failed to raise chimps as humans.
They lack the capacity. It's a fact that the average IQ of the parents of smart kids is higher than the average IQ of parents of dumb kids.
How much is nature vs nurture is up for debate but it's pretty well assumed that it's a combination of both and as far as this article
goes, it really doesn't matter whether it is nature vs nurture that gives the kid the edge, the fact is that more children of smart parents
are getting into a program designed for smart kids because they are smarter. Whether other kids are being over looked which have latent
unrecognized potential is the only thing up for debate here.
On another note, the gifted programs in the US were started to address the problem of smart kids getting "bored" with regular school and
therefore struggling. In my opinion, it doesn't really give them an edge but rather helps them channel that extra energy somewhere.
My guess is that many of the poor kids who are accidentally getting skipped over probably have other places to channel that energy.
If you have a gifted child, one that is naturally smart, but can't pass these tests it probably shows a lack a parental involvement. Throwing them in a gifted program without that same support structure of the family would be pointless.
It's more than just support structure. Most gifted tests are biased but that's not necessarily bad. I have twin boys. One excels in math, the other excels in reading. Same parental involvement. The one who excels in logic/math scored higher on the IQ test and therefore got into the gifted program while his twin brother who is a better reader and probably more knowledgeable didn't. In the program's defence, although probably not completely intentional, my experience is that the ones who excel in math need gifted services more as they usually have poorer social skills than someone gifted in reading.
There are lots of reasons that someone doesn't make the cut. My son who didn't make the cut is also more hyperactive and therefore doesn't do as good on tests. He's also much less interested in puzzles than his brother, etc... This is in one family and even if I don't agree with it, I can clearly see why it happened. For poor families, the number of differences are greatly different. When I was in the gifted program, probably less than 10% of the class were from a "poor" family but again, intelligence is hereditary and if you're smart then there is a higher probability that your parents were successful.
Who the fuck stays outside in the sun with kids for 8+hours at a time?
After an hour I'm ready for the bar and a fridge full of cold beers.
Have you never gone to the lake, gone camping, gone to a fair, gone to disney world, gone to a water park, gone to an amusement park, gone canoeing, gone on a multiday hike, etc.... There are a ton of different all day activities that are spent outside.
I think we grew up closer to the "let your kids burn" side of the coin. We would go to the beach at a local lake almost daily when we were between about the ages of 5 and 12 and I think my mom would put whatever passed for "suntan lotion" in the 1970s on us, once, when first got there and never reapply.
I don't ever remember getting sunburned but I do remember getting a really dark tan.
This is the method I still use on my kids. I apply a high SPF sunscreen when we first arrive and never reapply. My kids have NEVER got a sunburn using this method. The only time my kids have every got close to being sunburned is when we forget to put it on at all. If we are somewhere all day for 8+ hours, I do occasionally do a second application at about the 4-6 hour point just as a precaution but even when I don't get around to the second application, my kids have never had a sunburn.
Not sure if that was sarcastic, but OP is correct (with the addition of synthetic materials). I live by the ocean where the UV index is almost always extreme. Rash guards/wetsuits can cover most of your body and really are the best way to protect against the sun if you spend any amount of time in the water. It doesn't wash off and you don't miss spots (it's also it's better for the environment for those that care about it).
The first places to burn on me are my nose, cheeks, ears, and back of the neck, in that order. The stuff typically covered by clothes are usually just fine.
A wide brim hat might help a little but really doesn't work well when you are swimming. I hate sunscreen especially on the face but clothing really doesn't
work well on the face. I'm pretty sure everyone hates sunscreen and we really need to come up with a better solution.
My suggestions to get us started are:
1) an umbrella drone that follows you around while you are swimming.
2) release a ton of particle into the atmosphere that selectively block UV.
3) some sort of full body lightweight bodysuit that covers the head and lets water in/out but blocks UV.
Yes, that makes perfectly sense. Because as we all know sahara is immune to all extinction level events.
What type of global extinction level event are you talking about and how many people are you going to send?
Many of them would also affect mars and/or would not affect something at the bottom of the ocean.
Let's say by some miracle you get 1000 people to mars and they are self-sustaining. That's still probably
not enough to prevent extinction. Much better to spend the money to get launch cost down first before
wasting money trying to send a few dozen colonists to mars.
Kindof like sending a generational ship to the nearest star. Using current technology, it's likely that a newer
ship launched a generation later would beat you there.
Right. And instead of visiting the moon they could have... But I'm glad they visited the moon.
Yeah, it put a feather in our hat but that's about it. That's why we haven't been back. But, more importantly, there is a HUGE difference between a one week trip to the moon and back and a 6 month+ trip to mars. I would much rather spend money trying to figure out how to make the trip cheaper than I would trying to get there with current technology. I think the first step would be to get launch cost to under $100/pound. A space elevator might be one alternative. If you could get stuff to space for $100/pound then building a proper vehicle with shielding, 24 months worth of air, an exercise room, private quarters, etc.. becomes a possibility.
Just for kicks, a carnival cruise line weights about 140 million pounds and holds about 2000 people. At $100/pound that would be about 14 billion to get a ship like that to space. Obviously way more than you need and still pretty expensive but definitely in the realistic realm for price versus current prices where my calculator can barely do the math. Using the cruise line example, that still comes out to about $7million a person but is still a much more workable number than the $2000/pound or whatever the current going rate is.
The long-term goal should still be human habitation, but there is a huge amount of work that needs to come first.
This is the understatement of the century.
People came to america because it was "the land of plenty" (Pretty much the opposite of Mars)
People go work on oil rigs, the arctic, deep sea, etc... because it's "temporary misery for great (pay/research/experience)"
Mars is neither "the land of plenty" or "temporary misery for great pay".
In order to make a mars colony viable, then you need to make people WANT to go there and not just the few crazies.
Until then, you're much better off building condos in the sahara with nice swimming pools because that will be a a lot cheaper and a MUCH MUCH easier sell.
Just how are we to deal with criminals who steal from us who live in nations that will not arrest culprits? Russia leaps to mind.
You don't need to arrest them, just stop the money from reaching them. A lot of current cybercrime are being transacted via credit cards, western union, etc..
You could eliminate most spam, most phishing, and even some of the illegal drug trade if you could make it more difficult to send money to the criminals.
Bitcoin will make it hard to eliminate all the illegal drug trade but my guess is most of the Viagra sold via spam is being purchased with credit cards and
if you can prevent the credit card transaction from going thru then you would eliminate many of those transactions.
Any action that implies the loss of a relationship can have emotional meaning above and beyond the usual impact of such an action.
Yes, a loss of a relationship can mean feelings are hurt but are you honestly saying that I must be friends with everyone and I'm never allowed to terminate a relationship? Terminating a relationship, if that is all you do, is the opposite of bullying. Yes, it can hurt your feelings but so can not being invited to a party (still not bullying). Bullying is actively having a negative relationship with someone. Ignoring someone or having an indifferent relationship is not bullying even in the workplace. If I dislike someone in the workplace, then I'm cordial, keep any required interaction short and to the point, and minimize interactions at work (and especially outside of work) as much as possible. This is what you're suppose to do instead of bullying. It is not bullying.
No thanks. IPv6 addresses are a mouthful, typically 3x as long when printed. We should move to a version that makes them 1 byte longer.
IPv6 was a poor decision. It's like someone who ran out of toilet paper once so they went and filled their entire basement full so they won't accidentally run out again. 192.168.23.17 compared to AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED:AB34:34ED
As we're now pretty much stuck with ipv6, they would be better off locking out all the later bits until the transition is complete and make the ipv4 directly translatable. I.e. 192.168.25.25 becomes just FFFF:C0A8:1919 and all other ipv6 numbers are off limits until the transition is complete.
FFFF:C0A8:1919 isn't much more difficult than 192.168.25.25 and would make the transition much simpler than giving everyone a ipv4 number and a completely different ipv6 address.
Doing it this way, everyone could still access the websites via either their ipv4 or ipv6, it would only be the higher order ones that you would need to upgrade in order to access. Similar things have happened with phones and websites. When new area codes were introduced or new top level domains, a few people had problems accessing the new areas with older equipment if the older equipment was hardcoded somehow.
Correct. And further, they'll never sell more than 640K of them...
Computers had computer programs and graphical displays as their killer app. Even if you found a "killer app" like a high efficiency battery lattice that can only be 3D printed, there is still no reason that it wouldn't be cheaper to have them printed at a factory instead of each person printing their own. Printing high quality food is the only thing that comes to mind as something that could possibly get a 3D printer to be a common household fixture. Either that or printing things like hammers on demand and then recycling them after you're done using them but both of those "killer apps" are years if not decades away from existing.
I understand the incentive to watch a movie online but what is the incentive for someone to risk prison time to illegally record a movie
and upload it to pirate bay? What is the uploader getting out of it? Back in the BBS there was a barter system where you could get
credit by uploading something wanted that didn't exist yet but what incentive is there today?
Just because something illegal was done somewhere in the process to produce the video doesn't automatically make the video itself illegal.
This seems like fair use and I don't see how the DMCA or any other law applies in this situation.
I think the "Rats of Nihm" is probably more realistic but even that brings up plenty of moral issues and although equal in intelligence they definitely were not equal in societal standing.
I don't think society is currently ready or capable of recognizing an animal of equal intelligence as an equal.
Unless you manage to avoid such a divide, you could easily end up with a caste system where your "worth" in life depends on how much money your parents had to spend on your creation.
Hence the importance of universal health care. We all should be getting the same health care, as far as it is feasible for that to happen. The results will be good for everyone. On the other hand, we might well in that case have to deny such services to everyone, because population.
Universal health care won't solve this problem. Yeah, it might make give everyone in a rich first world super human abilities but what about all
the countries that can't afford any of the first world technologies. There are many places where dialysis, or even simple things like antibiotics or
malaria pills are cost prohibitive. Now if this "superhuman" technology was super cheap and used to help get the third world out of poverty by making
them all geniuses able to better solve their own problems then it *might* help but chances are it will primarily only be available to the people who
are already at an advantage.
Because these silly people with "morals" and "ethics" don't want a bunch of super children to be born, and begin the Eugenics Wars.
With our current knowledge, a first attempt is just as likely (if not more likely) to end up with a sub-human baby, or even worse, a half-human baby. I'm strangely ok with super babies but what do you do with something sub-human or half-human. We have some experience dealing with humans with the intelligence of a mouse and the body of a human but even then a parent-less lab-grown child who needs constant care in a mentally handicapped facility their entire life is not a desired outcome. The other side where it's a mouse with human intelligence would be even more problematic. What do you do with it? Do you let it go to school and have rights? Do you let it reproduce and have more super-mice children therefore creating a second intelligence race on this planet?
I dislike the term "taxpayer" - it implies that there are people who don't pay tax.
That's not what it implies to me at all. When I hear "taxpayer" used, what is usually implied is that there is no free money and the money is actually coming from "the people" not from some mysterious bottomless government coffer.
Surely long-distance wireless is better over short-distance like your typical Wi-Fi setups.
I mean, yeah, it will be slower, and will take up a little more power, but the bands are most likely very free in a lot of places.
Most importantly, this will be considerably more accessible over a larger area, which is one of the problems with some places, long distances and uneven terrain which limits things considerably.
A combination of this and something like Google Balloon would be able to get much further than short-distance cell towers.
Some connection is better than no connection.
Just as long as it isn't 56k. Holy hell.
Rough terrain is an issue in some areas but most developing areas also have cheap labor and would probably love the extra jobs that laying wire
and/or installing poles would require. Many of the poles in the USA were originally installed in holes dug by hand or dug with a stick of dynamite.
As far as google balloon, it seems like someone looking for something fun not something practical. The microwave towers they use to send signals
from newyork to chicago would seem like an ideal technology to use to get from town to town in remote areas and then long distance point to point broadcast
once you get to the town. My hometown used standard 802.11 on top of water towers. Anyone who had line of sight of the water tower could point an antenna
at it and it had about a 5 mile range which would be more than enough for most small towns in remote regions.
It is a requirement of the credit cards as any store can ask for your ID, and if you can't provide one, good luck explaining to the police officer...
It depends on where you are. I don't think I've even been asked for an ID in my town of 80k but I almost always get asked for an ID if I go to much larger city a few hours away. I'm 35 and I do usually get asked for an ID when buying alcohol but even in this case and even when paying by credit card, if I tell them I don't have my ID they always let me go ahead with the purchase anyways.
So can I get credit for reading slashdot? What about wikipedia or cracked.com? A lot of my leisure time is spent
reading random articles online. Yes, this makes me more knowledgeable and I do learn a bit from each and certain
domains like my knowledge of smtp, dns, etc.. has not been learned in a classroom but tracking every time I read
an article seems stupid. It seems like taking relevant certification tests if you need it or better yet just being asked
questions in an interview over relevant material seems more logical.
There are none. Any road has potential to have construction at any time, for example, without warning. This particular problem could be fixed with legislation requiring all construction projects to be entered into a database in advance, but do you really want your cars driving to be affected by a remote database? Seems like a security issue.
I expect that the first adopters of this will be big rigs with plenty of money and as such, I could see them even constructing special pull off areas and yes, even requiring all construction on the road to be documented. Toll roads which are privately owned would be a reasonable place to start.
Expecting a driver to take control in a failure scenario is not a solution.
I would never trust a car that could require me to take control in an emergency. At the very least, the autonomus driver should get the car to a safe stop before requiring a human to take over.
I agree that "expecting a driver to take control in a failure scenario is not a solution" and stopping is an acceptable solution but it doesn't necessarily
need to be an all or nothing. A better piecemeal solution would be to have it only engage on known safe highways. It would still be extremely useful
in trucks, RVs, and regular cars if it only engaged on predesignated roads or interstates. The trucking industry already has depots at both ends of
Kansas where trucks double or triple up before taking the long straight stretch across Kansas to minimize drivers. I see no reason why driverless
cars couldn't do the same where you could only engage autopilot on certain known safe highways with good shoulders to do emergency stops.
You could also do the same with weather. If it detects rain starting then it gives a 60 second warning and pulls over to the side of the road.