I'd second Frankenstein. It is a science fiction novel, in the sense that it is speculative fiction that evaluates the results of a dramatic technological innovation. In addition, it is riveting, full of action, and incredibly well written.
Second, as another post mentioned, look at the classic short stories, especially the anthologies. See the "Science Fiction Hall Of Fame". You can't be a well-read science fiction person without having read things like "Nightfall" and "The Nine Billion Names of God".
Now take the fresh water outflow of the Columbia river - the river separating Washington from Oregon. You've got 27 gallons of fresh water per person per day.
27 gallons? that is way, way off.
An estimate for water usage in the U.S. is 408 billion gallons per day. http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/index.html. That's over 1000 gallons per person. Yes, we use too much, and waste a lot of it. But, there is a limit to how much less we can use; in particular, look at the usage for generating energy, which you propose to generate using nuclear power, which requires a lot of water.
Further, water is unevenly distributed, and does not travel in the direction you want it to easily. Already, much of the world does not have access to save drinking water, and it's going to get worse. We're depleting the ground water, and sucking the rivers dry as it is.
Yes, relative to water supplies, we have overpopulation. Spouting crap about poor distribution of people isn't going to solve it; people don't move easily and the water isn't there and doesn't move easily. Free and expanded trade won't work either.
The solution is to level off the population and then slowly reduce it. It has happened in other countries (including poor ones) and, with a little bit of effort, education (esp. of women), and contraceptive rights, can happen pretty much everywhere. And, no, it doesn't requires a China-like draconian imposition of one child policy.
Really, the biggest changes in science in the past 25 years have been in biology.
Try anything by Jared Diamond, esp. 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. Or 'The Beak of the Finch' by Weiner. Or most anything by Gould or Dawkins.
Recently, I've been reading 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful, The New Science of Evo Devo' by Sean Carroll. I highly recommend it. That, and 'At the Water's Edge' by Zimmer highlight the fascinating developments in the past 25 years.
Well, what would be nice is to see what program office at DARPA it is, who you are, your CV, etc. What makes you qualified to determine what ideas are cutting edge?
I suppose that you can say that I'm being too nosy, but it's unlikely that people are going to provide their really cool ideas without some sort of checking up on you.
I think that the grandiose Strong AI isn't very likely, or very useful.
As other people have discussed, the field has become segmented, and, in general, there is no big drive or desire to re-integrate them all.
But, we have cars that can drive across hundreds of miles of desert, and now we have cars that can (almost) drive in the city. That's pretty amazing. It requires a lot of integration of different areas and as more applications require integration, it will happen more.
Well, I don't think it looks fake. But, you could easily point your radio telescope at Mars and verify that there is a signal coming from that direction.
20 years from now, we're going to have junior high school students saying that Phoenix and Spirit/Opportunity were faked. I only say this because my spouse is a science teacher and still hears that the Moon landings were faked.
So why hasn't it been determined that that was water ice yet? Simple questions that take four days to make an educated guess about. 4 days? What's 4 days? The damn thing has been in planning / design / construction for a nearly a decade. And months and months to get there. Even after we land things, it takes days to get things up, running, tested, and start stuff.
Yes, a person (or really good AI) could do things faster; but manned missions cost an order of magnitude more than unmanned, and I'd rather have 10 landers than a single manned one.
It's just slow, but if I can wait 2 years for Spore, I can wait a week for scientific results.
That's the horrendously sad part of this ruling. Reminds me of an interview I saw with Scalia saying something about whether torture in questioning a subject could actually be considered "punishment" and hence exempt from the cruel and unusual standard.
Haha, oh that's rich. Hey, we should pass a law that lets prison guards torture the prisoners, under the stipulation that torture not be used for punishment, but only for the guard's amusement!
That'd be Constitutional, right Scalia? Well, playing devil's advocate: it would be illegal, it would not be unconstitutional in the sense that it was cruel and unusual punishment.
IANACL, but "punishment" in that clause means the official effect imposed on someone for violating the law and being convicted of such. Being sentenced to a beating would violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause. A policeman dragging you into the bushes after pulling you over for speeding and beating the crap out of you is illegal but not unconstitutional. Do you see the difference?
Scalia is an ass, tis true, and is IMHO usually wrong, but the cruel and unusual punishment clause doesn't apply to someone torturing a prisoner. It's wrong, and it's illegal, but doesn't fall in 'constitutional' or 'unconstitutional' question category.
It's like one of those infamous "Majestic 12" documents that was allegedly signed by Harry Truman - the best evidence we have that it is not authentic is that the Truman signature is exactly like another signature on another document, it was lifted, cut and pasted, onto the MJ-12 document. Note: I don't want to debate the MJ-12 documents here. This is why Slashdot sucks. Now I have to spend 30 minutes finding out all sorts of information about the Majestic-12 documents, signatures on the documents, history, and analysis. Damn you!
> Well, first of all, the price difference isn't really all that much.
Maybe not, but it's my money, not yours. I choose the best value I can get for my money, and if that means paying $50 less for a Windows machine instead of the Linux one, I'll do it.
> Why make things harder on yourself?
Why would it make things harder? The preinstalled Linux will be full of useless crap too, and I know I will have to install my Slackware on top of it anyway before performance is halfway usable. I don't know about you, but I really hate waiting five minutes for the computer to boot up with all those totally unnecessary daemons distributions start by default. And then there's the pain of starting X for a minute or so (yes, I work on the console most of the time). As you can see, it makes absolutely no difference to me what OS is preinstalled. I'll have to wipe it anyway. Re-loading an OS takes time / effort, and in my world that translates to money. I'll pay the Linux tax, save myself an hour or two, and bill my customer (at a higher rate) for the time doing useful work (installing an OS counts as overhead).
If you're going to be installing a different disto then it make sense to you to get the windows one, and save a couple of bucks. If not, save yourself some time.
I have to use Windows on my work computer, but I need to run some unix apps, primarily C++ apps that I compile using g++. So, I use Cygwin. Is this a potential replacement, and if so, why?
Managing profiles takes time (and therefore money). If they need access, charge them for it, and profit!! Or you can get yourself an assistance DBA (i.e. minion) who you can make do all of your work.
I disagree. If it has any sort of language understanding, then 'Why did Germany attack Russia' should first result in search for historical instances ('did' is past tense) of Germany attacking Russia. For each of those, it should return results relating the cause / reason for those attacks.
I actually think that powerset did very well, since Germany did not really attack Russia in WWII, it attacked the USSR. The first result was Germany attacking Russia in 1918, which seems correct.
The first page of Google results is all about Hitler (not Germany) attacking the Soviet Union (not Russia), which seems incorrect.
Look for the videos of Dexter. Yes, they have it in a harness, because it would really, really suck if it fell down and broke, but it's really walking.
Most of the list makes some sense, though some are debatable. But the one that seems out of place is :
> 2) dismantle NATO.
Why? The process of getting into NATO (like trying to get into the EU) is a force for positive change. Once in NATO, the internal politics (like the EU) seem to help keep the member countries in line. In particular, NATO criticism and holding back have been a deterrent to the Bush administration, not an enabler.
As a developer interested in the workings of the game, I think that the most important change in this game is the inclusion of generated content above and beyond what has been done before.
So much time of the developers of modern games, and the reason that the damn files are so huge, is all the static data. Where are the trees, what kind of trees are they, what is the texture on that building, etc? With cpu's being what they are today, if you can figure out the statistical distribution of the trees, or create an algorithm that creates position dependent textures, then you can have a huge leap in realism, dynamic level of detail, and infinitely large (and diverse) virtual spaces.
If it's done right (and I'm crossing my fingers), it will be a great experience. And as with any other technology, it will spread to other games. In 10 years, creating a realistic game could be much easier. Today it's becoming exponentially harder and harder to create all that content.
So what did turn the Christians into less zealous people? How can we do that to Muslims?
Seriously, I've never understood what changed. Christianity has gone through some pretty nasty periods but have become relatively de-clawed. There was a time when you were in serious trouble if you spoke out against Christianity. It's less so now, why? What were the forces that caused that change, and how can we transplant them to Muslim countries?
4. We could reduce the number of people.
Seriously, part of the energy 'problem' is that I use too much energy. The other part of the problem is that there are waaaaay too many people just like me, and many, many more that want to be like me. We need to start thinking in terms of 20, 50, and 100 year horizons. Long term reduction in human population on those time-scales is reasonable and doesn't need to be a Chinese draconian process.
$1.8b is a lot of money for education (especially woman's education), contraception, reducing infant mortality, communicable disease, women's rights, etc. The goal is to reduce the birth rate so that our long term population peak occurs earlier, leaving more resources for the people that are there. With resources, we should be able to get population growth to zero by 2030 or 2040 at 8 B people.
If we don't change the population size slowly, it will change very quickly.
Well, no. "Official data show that wind energy production amounted to a preliminary 2,742 gigawatt hours last year and contributed 2.37 percent of the Netherlands' total electricity consumption, up slightly from 1.81 percent in 2005." Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/18/business/wind.php
Slashdot Mirror
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(spacecraft)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESSENGER
No, they are not manned. But NASA put them there; and others; and more in the works.
I'd second Frankenstein. It is a science fiction novel, in the sense that it is speculative fiction that evaluates the results of a dramatic technological innovation. In addition, it is riveting, full of action, and incredibly well written.
Second, as another post mentioned, look at the classic short stories, especially the anthologies. See the "Science Fiction Hall Of Fame". You can't be a well-read science fiction person without having read things like "Nightfall" and "The Nine Billion Names of God".
Finally, read the works of Harlan Ellison.
Now take the fresh water outflow of the Columbia river - the river separating Washington from Oregon. You've got 27 gallons of fresh water per person per day.
27 gallons? that is way, way off.
An estimate for water usage in the U.S. is 408 billion gallons per day. http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/index.html. That's over 1000 gallons per person. Yes, we use too much, and waste a lot of it. But, there is a limit to how much less we can use; in particular, look at the usage for generating energy, which you propose to generate using nuclear power, which requires a lot of water.
Further, water is unevenly distributed, and does not travel in the direction you want it to easily. Already, much of the world does not have access to save drinking water, and it's going to get worse. We're depleting the ground water, and sucking the rivers dry as it is.
Yes, relative to water supplies, we have overpopulation. Spouting crap about poor distribution of people isn't going to solve it; people don't move easily and the water isn't there and doesn't move easily. Free and expanded trade won't work either.
The solution is to level off the population and then slowly reduce it. It has happened in other countries (including poor ones) and, with a little bit of effort, education (esp. of women), and contraceptive rights, can happen pretty much everywhere. And, no, it doesn't requires a China-like draconian imposition of one child policy.
Really, the biggest changes in science in the past 25 years have been in biology.
Try anything by Jared Diamond, esp. 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. Or 'The Beak of the Finch' by Weiner. Or most anything by Gould or Dawkins.
Recently, I've been reading 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful, The New Science of Evo Devo' by Sean Carroll. I highly recommend it. That, and 'At the Water's Edge' by Zimmer highlight the fascinating developments in the past 25 years.
Well, what would be nice is to see what program office at DARPA it is, who you are, your CV, etc. What makes you qualified to determine what ideas are cutting edge?
I suppose that you can say that I'm being too nosy, but it's unlikely that people are going to provide their really cool ideas without some sort of checking up on you.
I think that the grandiose Strong AI isn't very likely, or very useful.
As other people have discussed, the field has become segmented, and, in general, there is no big drive or desire to re-integrate them all.
But, we have cars that can drive across hundreds of miles of desert, and now we have cars that can (almost) drive in the city. That's pretty amazing. It requires a lot of integration of different areas and as more applications require integration, it will happen more.
Well, I don't think it looks fake. But, you could easily point your radio telescope at Mars and verify that there is a signal coming from that direction.
20 years from now, we're going to have junior high school students saying that Phoenix and Spirit/Opportunity were faked. I only say this because my spouse is a science teacher and still hears that the Moon landings were faked.
You would have no idea if the 'bunch of freakin weirdo germs' are useful or not.
I would guess that they would be unbelievably useful in understanding biology.
Yes, a person (or really good AI) could do things faster; but manned missions cost an order of magnitude more than unmanned, and I'd rather have 10 landers than a single manned one.
It's just slow, but if I can wait 2 years for Spore, I can wait a week for scientific results.
Haha, oh that's rich. Hey, we should pass a law that lets prison guards torture the prisoners, under the stipulation that torture not be used for punishment, but only for the guard's amusement!
That'd be Constitutional, right Scalia? Well, playing devil's advocate: it would be illegal, it would not be unconstitutional in the sense that it was cruel and unusual punishment.
IANACL, but "punishment" in that clause means the official effect imposed on someone for violating the law and being convicted of such. Being sentenced to a beating would violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause. A policeman dragging you into the bushes after pulling you over for speeding and beating the crap out of you is illegal but not unconstitutional. Do you see the difference?
Scalia is an ass, tis true, and is IMHO usually wrong, but the cruel and unusual punishment clause doesn't apply to someone torturing a prisoner. It's wrong, and it's illegal, but doesn't fall in 'constitutional' or 'unconstitutional' question category.
Maybe not, but it's my money, not yours. I choose the best value I can get for my money, and if that means paying $50 less for a Windows machine instead of the Linux one, I'll do it.
> Why make things harder on yourself?
Why would it make things harder? The preinstalled Linux will be full of useless crap too, and I know I will have to install my Slackware on top of it anyway before performance is halfway usable. I don't know about you, but I really hate waiting five minutes for the computer to boot up with all those totally unnecessary daemons distributions start by default. And then there's the pain of starting X for a minute or so (yes, I work on the console most of the time). As you can see, it makes absolutely no difference to me what OS is preinstalled. I'll have to wipe it anyway. Re-loading an OS takes time / effort, and in my world that translates to money. I'll pay the Linux tax, save myself an hour or two, and bill my customer (at a higher rate) for the time doing useful work (installing an OS counts as overhead).
If you're going to be installing a different disto then it make sense to you to get the windows one, and save a couple of bucks. If not, save yourself some time.
I have to use Windows on my work computer, but I need to run some unix apps, primarily C++ apps that I compile using g++. So, I use Cygwin. Is this a potential replacement, and if so, why?
Managing profiles takes time (and therefore money). If they need access, charge them for it, and profit!! Or you can get yourself an assistance DBA (i.e. minion) who you can make do all of your work.
I disagree. If it has any sort of language understanding, then 'Why did Germany attack Russia' should first result in search for historical instances ('did' is past tense) of Germany attacking Russia. For each of those, it should return results relating the cause / reason for those attacks.
I actually think that powerset did very well, since Germany did not really attack Russia in WWII, it attacked the USSR. The first result was Germany attacking Russia in 1918, which seems correct.
The first page of Google results is all about Hitler (not Germany) attacking the Soviet Union (not Russia), which seems incorrect.
Try this:
http://www.anybot.com/
Look for the videos of Dexter. Yes, they have it in a harness, because it would really, really suck if it fell down and broke, but it's really walking.
Most of the list makes some sense, though some are debatable. But the one that seems out of place is :
> 2) dismantle NATO.
Why? The process of getting into NATO (like trying to get into the EU) is a force for positive change. Once in NATO, the internal politics (like the EU) seem to help keep the member countries in line. In particular, NATO criticism and holding back have been a deterrent to the Bush administration, not an enabler.
As a developer interested in the workings of the game, I think that the most important change in this game is the inclusion of generated content above and beyond what has been done before.
So much time of the developers of modern games, and the reason that the damn files are so huge, is all the static data. Where are the trees, what kind of trees are they, what is the texture on that building, etc? With cpu's being what they are today, if you can figure out the statistical distribution of the trees, or create an algorithm that creates position dependent textures, then you can have a huge leap in realism, dynamic level of detail, and infinitely large (and diverse) virtual spaces.
If it's done right (and I'm crossing my fingers), it will be a great experience. And as with any other technology, it will spread to other games. In 10 years, creating a realistic game could be much easier. Today it's becoming exponentially harder and harder to create all that content.
So what did turn the Christians into less zealous people? How can we do that to Muslims? Seriously, I've never understood what changed. Christianity has gone through some pretty nasty periods but have become relatively de-clawed. There was a time when you were in serious trouble if you spoke out against Christianity. It's less so now, why? What were the forces that caused that change, and how can we transplant them to Muslim countries?
4. We could reduce the number of people. Seriously, part of the energy 'problem' is that I use too much energy. The other part of the problem is that there are waaaaay too many people just like me, and many, many more that want to be like me. We need to start thinking in terms of 20, 50, and 100 year horizons. Long term reduction in human population on those time-scales is reasonable and doesn't need to be a Chinese draconian process. $1.8b is a lot of money for education (especially woman's education), contraception, reducing infant mortality, communicable disease, women's rights, etc. The goal is to reduce the birth rate so that our long term population peak occurs earlier, leaving more resources for the people that are there. With resources, we should be able to get population growth to zero by 2030 or 2040 at 8 B people. If we don't change the population size slowly, it will change very quickly.
Well, no. "Official data show that wind energy production amounted to a preliminary 2,742 gigawatt hours last year and contributed 2.37 percent of the Netherlands' total electricity consumption, up slightly from 1.81 percent in 2005." Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/18/business/wind.php