Yeah, but how much of it is meaningful. It's not as though every atom in your body needs to be precisely position, not even every cell. Heck, it's entirely possible that most of the tissues outside the nervous system wouldn't need to be placed all that accurately.
Long term goals for the launch recovery include recovery of the second stage, essentially the entire rocket would be recovered and reused. If that can be accomplished (a non-trivial "if" certainly), launch costs could drop to the hundreds of thousands range rather than the tens of millions. You could have 100 launches for the cost of a single one today (already one of the cheapest launch platforms in history). Most of the cost of major missions is getting stuff to orbit; cut that one item by 99% and a lot of budget math changes.
Looking at their upcoming launch manifest I see: NASA, Orbcomm, Asiasat, Space Systems, Loral, Thales Alenia Space, US Air Force, CONAE, NSPO, Spacecom, Bigelow Aerospace, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, SES, Iridium, and SATMEX.
The US government isn't even the customer for a majority of the launches through 2015. If you're specifically talking about manned missions you might have a better argument. But even then the Bigelow Aerospace launch is tantalizing hints of the future... even if it's only the future for the fabulously, ridiculously wealthy.
It still wouldn't explain the lack of communication from the team. They're one of the most prominent and well known open source security tools and the entire website and signing keys get hacked, you don't think they would be talking to the community right now if?
If you're gonna post compromised binaries of TrueCrypt, you generally wouldn't stick them on a page with "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure" in large, bright red text. You'd also expect some kind of statement from the good folks that have been running TrueCrypt for the past decade.
I'll join the chorus of people speculating about them getting a court order they couldn't bring themselves to follow. I would stay far, far away from that latest binary, if I had to guess it contains whatever loophole they were ordered to put in place, hence all the big and bright warnings.
eventually you hit a physical limit that chokes you.
Maybe, but as long as that limit is several times more thinking power than the human brain you still have, effectively, the singularity that Vinge described: i.e. you have technological advancement faster than can be predicted at the present time. Unless you think the human brain is the absolute theoretical maximum thinking power it's possible to accumulate in one system...
But Verner Vinge isn't one of them. In his original paper, he used them to illustrate how difficult to comprehend concepts might, conceivable play out. For example, he mentions that a singularity may play out over the course of decades or over the course of hours. Imagining how such massive changes could occur on a global scale in just a few hours is difficult, so he points the reader to a book whose author has already put time and effort into imagining how such a thing could play out and what some of the implications might be. It is using the book precisely as a thought experiment to examine an especially extreme part of what he is describing.
You're begging an important question with your argument, let me quote from the article to illustrate it.
If you asked someone, 50 years ago, what the first computer to beat a human at chess would look like, they would imagine a general AI. It would be a sentient AI that could also write poetry and have a conception of right and wrong. And itâ(TM)s not. Itâ(TM)s nothing like that at all.
If you asked someone today what the first computer capable of designing an improved version of itself would look like, you'd say it would be a true AI. This is not necessarily true. You are assuming that designing a new, more powerful computer requires true intelligence. Maybe in reality it'll be a few million node neural network optimized with a genetic algorithm such that the only output is a new transistor design or a new neural network layout or a new brain-computer interface.
The disparaging way that the summary and article talk about references to science fiction stories is practically an ad hominem attack. There is nothing inherently wrong with science fiction stories that makes them improper for thinking about the implications of changing technology. Much of the best sci-fi in existence is little less than thought experiments about how various kinds of advances might affect humanity on an individual and cultural level.
Curiosity: What are some explicit examples from relatively modern media. Anything later than 2005 would be pretty interesting. I don't watch much modern sci-fi these days, my wife just isn't very interested in hard sci-fi and the soft stuff wouldn't really apply (since it's 3/4 fantasy 1/4 technobabble).
[...]no tv, no internet, no magazines, no books, no human contact at all
That's a pretty severe punishment, but it's roll-back-able - no one's been deprived of life.
No. No it cannot be rolled back. What you are describing is probably among the most severe and permanently damaging forms of torture known to man. The human mind is not evolved to maintain stability without outside contact. I'd rather die than spend a decade (or 2 or 3 or 4) locked in a box the way you describe. I'm actually horrified that you think it's an acceptable form of justice.
Because it's "lumpier" than the universe should be based on our current understanding. At sufficiently large scales, any one section of the universe should look basically like any other section. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall (and other features of similar size) are above the "sufficiently large" scale so we don't expect to see organized structures but we do, so our understanding isn't complete (which is hardly surprising).
The prequels were fundamentally broken. Episodes 4-6 achieved cult status because they were enjoyable the first time around (not to mention the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th). The prequels released stand alone, not as part of the already established series, would have been laughed out of the theater. It's not rose colored glasses, there is a large and irrefutable quality gap between the original trilogy and the prequels.
Yes, but if my consciousness is an illusion then why how is it driving my behavior? If I'm making decisions about my survival based on how unique and special I think I am, I am conscious.
Hell, lets even ignore all that. What would I, as an end user, use OpenStack for? I'm sincerely asking: what is the use case for an end user directly using OpenStack?
I know that I'm conscious. I'm self aware. I have a stream of thought that I can analyze (and I can analyze that analysis if I really want to). That's pretty much the definition of being conscious. After that I'm left with only a few options.
I can believe that I am a unique snowflake, the only conscious human being in the world. But that doesn't make any sense. For one thing there's nothing about me that should make me unique in that regard. For another, most humans behave in ways that are basically consistent with the way I behave and much of my behavior is driven by my consciousness. It'd be difficult or impossible to account for the actions of others if I chose to view them as mere automatons.
Or I could believe that my consciousness is an illusion. Something my brain conjures up to make me think that I'm directing myself through my day when in reality I'm just another robot puttering through the day. First and foremost, why would such a thing evolve? If consciousness doesn't drive human behavior why do I perceive myself to be conscious?
Or I could believe the other human's are conscious as well. Given the alternatives, this seems like the most reasonable, logically choice.
Hell, I can do all that on the $55 tablet I got my 2 year old daughter for car rides. Or the ancient and out of support for several years $100 touchpad.
Child culture doesn't change much over the years. Look at your list and think about how many of them have been in existence for over 100 years or even 500. Many of them can be traced back to the dark ages or even further. Managing to insert your toy into part of child culture is an accomplishment worth noting; to me it remains to be seen if Rubik's cube has actually managed to do so (despite being a fan, I suspect the answer is no).
You realize Twitch pulls streams for DMCA complains quite often right? The site lives because the content creators don't complain, when they do their games get pulled. Pretty much the only time it happens is people trying to stream beta or pre-release versions of games.
Not to mention he created the market for these batteries. Yes, electric car manufacturing probably has the momentum behind it that it would continue without Tesla's goading, but that's not a sure thing. If Tesla rolls out the Model X and Model E in the coming years, there will be no going back; but right now the industry is just starting to get rolling. Destroying the largest most disruptive player in that industry is a bad idea if you want to sell to that market.
Yeah, but manufacturing is only one piece (admittedly a big piece once you start moving tens of thousands of cars per year). What doesn't make any sense is how Tesla has innovated in car design outside of the electric aspects. Anyone could have put a huge glass cockpit in their luxury car. They could have negotiated lifetime data plans with cellular carriers. They could have auto-retracting door handles. They could have done OTA updates to fix SW updatable components of the car. They could have designed gullwing doors for SUVs that take just a few inches to open.
No one ever did. The major automakers got lazy, they stopped even trying to innovate decades ago.
The only thing a dog does is make it inconvenient for a burglar.
For the vast majority of buglers, that is enough. Unless they know you have an unusual amount of valuable property, anything that increases the risk above the mean is going to encourage them to move on to the next house.
Sector General: The TV Series! I'd watch the shit out of that show. There are few concepts that allow for multiple truly alien species all living and working together that don't involve exploration and warfare; a massive hospital space station built for the express purpose of intercultural contact is a brilliant way to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
[...]offers up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft.
Yeah, but how much of it is meaningful. It's not as though every atom in your body needs to be precisely position, not even every cell. Heck, it's entirely possible that most of the tissues outside the nervous system wouldn't need to be placed all that accurately.
Long term goals for the launch recovery include recovery of the second stage, essentially the entire rocket would be recovered and reused. If that can be accomplished (a non-trivial "if" certainly), launch costs could drop to the hundreds of thousands range rather than the tens of millions. You could have 100 launches for the cost of a single one today (already one of the cheapest launch platforms in history). Most of the cost of major missions is getting stuff to orbit; cut that one item by 99% and a lot of budget math changes.
Looking at their upcoming launch manifest I see: NASA, Orbcomm, Asiasat, Space Systems, Loral, Thales Alenia Space, US Air Force, CONAE, NSPO, Spacecom, Bigelow Aerospace, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, SES, Iridium, and SATMEX.
The US government isn't even the customer for a majority of the launches through 2015. If you're specifically talking about manned missions you might have a better argument. But even then the Bigelow Aerospace launch is tantalizing hints of the future... even if it's only the future for the fabulously, ridiculously wealthy.
It still wouldn't explain the lack of communication from the team. They're one of the most prominent and well known open source security tools and the entire website and signing keys get hacked, you don't think they would be talking to the community right now if?
If you're gonna post compromised binaries of TrueCrypt, you generally wouldn't stick them on a page with "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure" in large, bright red text. You'd also expect some kind of statement from the good folks that have been running TrueCrypt for the past decade.
I'll join the chorus of people speculating about them getting a court order they couldn't bring themselves to follow. I would stay far, far away from that latest binary, if I had to guess it contains whatever loophole they were ordered to put in place, hence all the big and bright warnings.
eventually you hit a physical limit that chokes you.
Maybe, but as long as that limit is several times more thinking power than the human brain you still have, effectively, the singularity that Vinge described: i.e. you have technological advancement faster than can be predicted at the present time. Unless you think the human brain is the absolute theoretical maximum thinking power it's possible to accumulate in one system...
There are more than a few people like that here.
But Verner Vinge isn't one of them. In his original paper, he used them to illustrate how difficult to comprehend concepts might, conceivable play out. For example, he mentions that a singularity may play out over the course of decades or over the course of hours. Imagining how such massive changes could occur on a global scale in just a few hours is difficult, so he points the reader to a book whose author has already put time and effort into imagining how such a thing could play out and what some of the implications might be. It is using the book precisely as a thought experiment to examine an especially extreme part of what he is describing.
You're begging an important question with your argument, let me quote from the article to illustrate it.
If you asked someone, 50 years ago, what the first computer to beat a human at chess would look like, they would imagine a general AI. It would be a sentient AI that could also write poetry and have a conception of right and wrong. And itâ(TM)s not. Itâ(TM)s nothing like that at all.
If you asked someone today what the first computer capable of designing an improved version of itself would look like, you'd say it would be a true AI. This is not necessarily true. You are assuming that designing a new, more powerful computer requires true intelligence. Maybe in reality it'll be a few million node neural network optimized with a genetic algorithm such that the only output is a new transistor design or a new neural network layout or a new brain-computer interface.
The disparaging way that the summary and article talk about references to science fiction stories is practically an ad hominem attack. There is nothing inherently wrong with science fiction stories that makes them improper for thinking about the implications of changing technology. Much of the best sci-fi in existence is little less than thought experiments about how various kinds of advances might affect humanity on an individual and cultural level.
Curiosity: What are some explicit examples from relatively modern media. Anything later than 2005 would be pretty interesting. I don't watch much modern sci-fi these days, my wife just isn't very interested in hard sci-fi and the soft stuff wouldn't really apply (since it's 3/4 fantasy 1/4 technobabble).
[...]no tv, no internet, no magazines, no books, no human contact at all
That's a pretty severe punishment, but it's roll-back-able - no one's been deprived of life.
No. No it cannot be rolled back. What you are describing is probably among the most severe and permanently damaging forms of torture known to man. The human mind is not evolved to maintain stability without outside contact. I'd rather die than spend a decade (or 2 or 3 or 4) locked in a box the way you describe. I'm actually horrified that you think it's an acceptable form of justice.
Because it's "lumpier" than the universe should be based on our current understanding. At sufficiently large scales, any one section of the universe should look basically like any other section. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall (and other features of similar size) are above the "sufficiently large" scale so we don't expect to see organized structures but we do, so our understanding isn't complete (which is hardly surprising).
Nothing you say is wrong but what you imply is.
The prequels were fundamentally broken. Episodes 4-6 achieved cult status because they were enjoyable the first time around (not to mention the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th). The prequels released stand alone, not as part of the already established series, would have been laughed out of the theater. It's not rose colored glasses, there is a large and irrefutable quality gap between the original trilogy and the prequels.
Yes, but if my consciousness is an illusion then why how is it driving my behavior? If I'm making decisions about my survival based on how unique and special I think I am, I am conscious.
Hell, lets even ignore all that. What would I, as an end user, use OpenStack for? I'm sincerely asking: what is the use case for an end user directly using OpenStack?
I know that I'm conscious. I'm self aware. I have a stream of thought that I can analyze (and I can analyze that analysis if I really want to). That's pretty much the definition of being conscious. After that I'm left with only a few options.
I can believe that I am a unique snowflake, the only conscious human being in the world. But that doesn't make any sense. For one thing there's nothing about me that should make me unique in that regard. For another, most humans behave in ways that are basically consistent with the way I behave and much of my behavior is driven by my consciousness. It'd be difficult or impossible to account for the actions of others if I chose to view them as mere automatons.
Or I could believe that my consciousness is an illusion. Something my brain conjures up to make me think that I'm directing myself through my day when in reality I'm just another robot puttering through the day. First and foremost, why would such a thing evolve? If consciousness doesn't drive human behavior why do I perceive myself to be conscious?
Or I could believe the other human's are conscious as well. Given the alternatives, this seems like the most reasonable, logically choice.
Hell, I can do all that on the $55 tablet I got my 2 year old daughter for car rides. Or the ancient and out of support for several years $100 touchpad.
Child culture doesn't change much over the years. Look at your list and think about how many of them have been in existence for over 100 years or even 500. Many of them can be traced back to the dark ages or even further. Managing to insert your toy into part of child culture is an accomplishment worth noting; to me it remains to be seen if Rubik's cube has actually managed to do so (despite being a fan, I suspect the answer is no).
You realize Twitch pulls streams for DMCA complains quite often right? The site lives because the content creators don't complain, when they do their games get pulled. Pretty much the only time it happens is people trying to stream beta or pre-release versions of games.
Not to mention he created the market for these batteries. Yes, electric car manufacturing probably has the momentum behind it that it would continue without Tesla's goading, but that's not a sure thing. If Tesla rolls out the Model X and Model E in the coming years, there will be no going back; but right now the industry is just starting to get rolling. Destroying the largest most disruptive player in that industry is a bad idea if you want to sell to that market.
Yeah, but manufacturing is only one piece (admittedly a big piece once you start moving tens of thousands of cars per year). What doesn't make any sense is how Tesla has innovated in car design outside of the electric aspects. Anyone could have put a huge glass cockpit in their luxury car. They could have negotiated lifetime data plans with cellular carriers. They could have auto-retracting door handles. They could have done OTA updates to fix SW updatable components of the car. They could have designed gullwing doors for SUVs that take just a few inches to open.
No one ever did. The major automakers got lazy, they stopped even trying to innovate decades ago.
the house is alarmed
What startled it?
The only thing a dog does is make it inconvenient for a burglar.
For the vast majority of buglers, that is enough. Unless they know you have an unusual amount of valuable property, anything that increases the risk above the mean is going to encourage them to move on to the next house.
Sector General: The TV Series! I'd watch the shit out of that show. There are few concepts that allow for multiple truly alien species all living and working together that don't involve exploration and warfare; a massive hospital space station built for the express purpose of intercultural contact is a brilliant way to do it.