Or just make sure that they don't find the 'tragic accident circuit' or die in some particularly low-PR way before you have need to trigger said circuit.
It wouldn't do at all to have hours of increasingly labored gasping, crying, and inchoate begging broadcast across the globe; but some young explorers with stars in their eyes becoming the first humans to (as aseptically and off-stage as possible) lay down their lives in the noble cause of Space Exploration? Bring on the hagiographic documentaries...
Also, if we're ever to colonise Mars, we must start sometime to work out those logistics problems that you mentioned. So why not now?
Efficiency, mostly. All medical research must eventually have human(or sometimes veterinary) application to count as useful; but humans are lousy enough research subjects(ethical whining, long lifespans, tendency to wander off and introduce uncontrolled variables, etc.) so we generally start with something simpler and cheaper, that can be run on a much vaster scale with the same money.
In the same vein, if we were serious about confronting the challenges of building self-sustaining colony type environments, we could probably run 100 sealed-building experiments in parallel on earth(where lift costs nothing, parts can be purchased at the hardware store, and the entire team doesn't have to suffocate if the experiment fails, rather than just modifying some parameters and starting over) for the price of a single one offworld.
Just as medicine goes to clinical trials eventually, there will be questions that can only be answered by actually putting actual people under actual conditions; but so much of the prep work is easier to do in ground experiments.
sorry to burst your cum-bubble, but jizz and vag spoo and sweat dries very quickly. The answer to your bukkake question is that it will be possible at a somewhat greater distance than on earth. the only thing left for you to fantasize about it how the place will *smell* after the mission is done. I find it ridiculous that they talk of sending a middle aged couple because of radiation concerns regarding sperm and egg, plenty of young couple opt to be made sterile by one means or another, tubal ligation or vasectomy or whatever. deep space porn rights could help offset cost of mission.....
Control of biological...undesireables... is actually a bit tricky in space. Lots of problems that just solve themselves when you have an entire planetary atmosphere to work with just don't when you have a few thousands or tens of thousands of liters of atmosphere along with whatever climate control you packed with it.
Both Mir and the ISS developed moderately nasty mold problems, and Mir even had a number of horrid water globules hiding behind rarely used access panels growing various vile slime.
It isn't obvious that sexual fluids would be worse than mere sweat(might actually be less troublesome, since there is a strong evolutionary imperative in favor of mechanisms that keep other microorganisms from hijacking our gene transfer mechanism for their own ends); but we know that mere sweat and exhaled water vapor are enough to really gross up the place.
Given the cost of sending somebody, sending an old person seems like a very unwise investment in terms of expected mission years per dollar...
You'd pretty much want the youngest you could get, subject to the restriction that they be old enough to exhibit basic human competence and keep the ethicists off your back... The communications delay is short enough that subject matter experts can be consulted from earth, and RF is much cheaper than meat when it comes to shipping 'wisdom and experience' across interplanetary space.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what was in the article, they seem to be sending two people almost 2 years in space to just fly around Mars and their not even going to land there.
Isn't it obvious? Humans have such well demonstrated qualifications for 'floating around in irradiated hard vacuum doing not much of any particular interest'. Robots aren't nearly as good at that...
Any time you can buy your way to victory is a quick way to lose any hardcore fan base, and most likely the audience that will keep playing your game after release-hype
Buy your way to victory? Oh you silly little consumer you! You'll have the chance to buy your way to parity with all the other people who are buying their way to parity! The best race is the one where you have to run as fast as you can just to not fall behind!
Even better, the online summits will feature a constant "Sponsor sidebar" containing products selected algorithmically based on keywords detected within the conversation! It's going to be the ultimate in integrated consumer infotainment...
I think that the same was true when AMD was first pushing x86-64 extensions.
And probably more common than that: If you are going to a chip to implement some particular function, you need to have a very good idea of what you want already in mind. And, if you have one of those, there really isn't any reason to not have the compiler guys begin their work, or any significant obstacle that would keep somebody from hacking together an emulator implementing the ISA before the hardware team manages to get production silicon in play.
Writing emulators that are 100% accurate in simulating every last quirk of real hardware, and ideally doing so at useful speed, isn't easy, nor is producing compilers that reliably produce good output that takes advantage of the real strengths and weaknesses of real chips; but producing merely functional versions of both based on the spec faster than the hardware team can produce a good silicon implementation of the spec is likely a winnable race most of the time(especially now that 'just throw a dirt-cheap and sickeningly powerful x86 at it' is a viable strategy for papering over issues with your emulator).
It's doubly annoying because(in PR-flack ass-covering speak) an "Advanced Persistent Threat" is "Any bad guy smarter than our dumbest sysadmin's stupidest mistake".
It might have been a clear category at one point(and there still are attackers who are pretty clearly both advanced and persistent); but the constant "Well, we could say 'gosh, we fucked up, how stupid of us.' or we could say 'It was and Advanced Persistent Threat, total national security shit, probably chinamen or something!'" pressure hasn't helped...
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
Luckily, Cadillac's target market of "old guys, soccer moms in mommy tanks, and cognac-swilling rappers' is known for its superb reflexes and incredibly responsible driving. Nothing bad could possibly happen.
In this case, the trademark holder was actively blocking sale of their product on Amazon and then suing Amazon for suggesting similar products that they did have in stock...
I'm vaguely sympathetic to the desire to single-source and have something you can monitor with one tool, which would exclude the obvious 'just get a $50 router, FFS' option; but under any reasonable depreciation calculation scheme, it'd probably be cheaper to get an ASA 5505 now, and throw it away if you need something bigger in the future than it would be to get a 3945 now in case you end up gluing a second trailer to your first or something...
Yes, it's a great start. All that's needed now is to tie in detection of auto-playing audio in a website to the protocol that allows you to punch advertisers in the face over the internet.
If we told the MPAA that it would stop piracy, we could probably get the inclusion of a small claymore-style shaped charge in all new monitors mandated by law...
Amen, brother. Dozens of times I woke up the whole house when I was surfing for an hotel and their page insisted on playing loud music when opening up their fucking Flash-page.
Additionally it's usually done for a 800*600 resolution and unzoomable so that you can't read shit on a modern HighRes screen. And often they play songs that I'm sure they don't have the rights for.
Why is it that so many hotels and restaurants use that crap?
Sounds like a golden opportunity to use the DMCA to make the web a slightly better place...
As best I've been able to find(on page 753 of The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems) the unit cost of a Mark-46 torpedo alone is $160,000(in what I think are 1988 dollars; but it isn't entirely clear). Even if the launch cage is free, I suspect that nobody is planting nearly enough of them to be a major hazard to civilian life...
I assume that this is what keeps naval mines (mostly) out of the line of fire against land mines, which are absurdly cheap by comparison.
Re:Nintendo needs to rethink its place in the worl
on
Is the Wii U Already Dead?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
It doesn't help that Nintendo apparently can't comprehend software to save their miserable lives. They can make games; but their grasp of the non-game software components is tragicomedic even compared to Sony, and that's saying something.
DRM is always user-hostile; but Nintendo's is just hilarious(even as their consoles are markedly easier to crack than Sony's or Microsoft's). Downloaded material is permanently locked to the hardware it was downloaded on. Even now that the Wii U has 'Nintendo network accounts' those are locked to the device they were created on. There is a transfer process for certain sorts of material; but it's the most ass-backwards and error-prone exercise one can imagine. Even better, the 'virtual' Wii within the Wii U, for backwards compatibility, counts as a separate device and is almost entirely non-integrated. It's just terrible at every step.
Sony's 'well, we could download updates in the background; but instead we'll make you watch' also isn't a masterpiece, and Microsoft is clearly sucking at the ad-money teat a bit too much in laying out their atrocious 'dashboard'; but that's at least evil rather than cluelessness.
What you will probably see at first is 1 human in charge of 5-10 drones. The drones act 'autonomously' and the controller can take over any of them. Then you will see as they get comfortable with the tech something like 1 to 50. Then they will take the 'commander' out of the loop and put it in the hands of 'strategy committees'. Then they will let the computer fight out what from our point of view in the command 'bunker' is a large RTS game.
It's already one pilot to multiple drones. Given that one of the major features on the things is long endurance/loiter times, and they possess some limited automation of basic flight functions(ie. unlike a 'basic' RC aircraft where every control surface is directly mapped to a joystick on the controller, and the pilot has to compute the control-surface configuration that gets the path he wants), a single person can watch over multiple drones at a time, and (so long as the standing order is some variation of 'just putz around at safe altitude until I come back') a drone can temporarily be ignored if something more important is happening with one of the others.
If memory serves, takeoff/landing still has to be one one-on-one, and all waypoint assignment and weapons targeting is human controlled; but handling the aeronautical details of moving from waypoint to waypoint is already automated.
So you are saying that both are deeply distasteful and likely to result in casualties among civilians who are 'innocent' by any stretch of the word? Or was this one of those 'we have to stoop to their level to stop those animals' arguments?
(Incidentally, unless the extremist was fucking a defense contractor, I bet the kid and not the robot was produced on time and under budget...)
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Or just make sure that they don't find the 'tragic accident circuit' or die in some particularly low-PR way before you have need to trigger said circuit.
It wouldn't do at all to have hours of increasingly labored gasping, crying, and inchoate begging broadcast across the globe; but some young explorers with stars in their eyes becoming the first humans to (as aseptically and off-stage as possible) lay down their lives in the noble cause of Space Exploration? Bring on the hagiographic documentaries...
Also, if we're ever to colonise Mars, we must start sometime to work out those logistics problems that you mentioned. So why not now?
Efficiency, mostly. All medical research must eventually have human(or sometimes veterinary) application to count as useful; but humans are lousy enough research subjects(ethical whining, long lifespans, tendency to wander off and introduce uncontrolled variables, etc.) so we generally start with something simpler and cheaper, that can be run on a much vaster scale with the same money.
In the same vein, if we were serious about confronting the challenges of building self-sustaining colony type environments, we could probably run 100 sealed-building experiments in parallel on earth(where lift costs nothing, parts can be purchased at the hardware store, and the entire team doesn't have to suffocate if the experiment fails, rather than just modifying some parameters and starting over) for the price of a single one offworld.
Just as medicine goes to clinical trials eventually, there will be questions that can only be answered by actually putting actual people under actual conditions; but so much of the prep work is easier to do in ground experiments.
sorry to burst your cum-bubble, but jizz and vag spoo and sweat dries very quickly. The answer to your bukkake question is that it will be possible at a somewhat greater distance than on earth. the only thing left for you to fantasize about it how the place will *smell* after the mission is done. I find it ridiculous that they talk of sending a middle aged couple because of radiation concerns regarding sperm and egg, plenty of young couple opt to be made sterile by one means or another, tubal ligation or vasectomy or whatever. deep space porn rights could help offset cost of mission.....
Control of biological...undesireables... is actually a bit tricky in space. Lots of problems that just solve themselves when you have an entire planetary atmosphere to work with just don't when you have a few thousands or tens of thousands of liters of atmosphere along with whatever climate control you packed with it.
Both Mir and the ISS developed moderately nasty mold problems, and Mir even had a number of horrid water globules hiding behind rarely used access panels growing various vile slime.
It isn't obvious that sexual fluids would be worse than mere sweat(might actually be less troublesome, since there is a strong evolutionary imperative in favor of mechanisms that keep other microorganisms from hijacking our gene transfer mechanism for their own ends); but we know that mere sweat and exhaled water vapor are enough to really gross up the place.
The ship comes back with an extra passenger or two..
It's a good thing that flippers might actually work in low-density fluids at zero G; because fetuses are total wimps about radiation...
Given the cost of sending somebody, sending an old person seems like a very unwise investment in terms of expected mission years per dollar...
You'd pretty much want the youngest you could get, subject to the restriction that they be old enough to exhibit basic human competence and keep the ethicists off your back... The communications delay is short enough that subject matter experts can be consulted from earth, and RF is much cheaper than meat when it comes to shipping 'wisdom and experience' across interplanetary space.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what was in the article, they seem to be sending two people almost 2 years in space to just fly around Mars and their not even going to land there.
Isn't it obvious? Humans have such well demonstrated qualifications for 'floating around in irradiated hard vacuum doing not much of any particular interest'. Robots aren't nearly as good at that...
Actually I like the way ads are added ingame to titles like Battlefield 2142 with the real billboards and posters.
Because all those vintage 2013 products, services, and brands add so much to the realism of the frozen battlefields of the 22nd century?
Any time you can buy your way to victory is a quick way to lose any hardcore fan base, and most likely the audience that will keep playing your game after release-hype
Buy your way to victory? Oh you silly little consumer you! You'll have the chance to buy your way to parity with all the other people who are buying their way to parity! The best race is the one where you have to run as fast as you can just to not fall behind!
Even better, the online summits will feature a constant "Sponsor sidebar" containing products selected algorithmically based on keywords detected within the conversation! It's going to be the ultimate in integrated consumer infotainment...
I think that the same was true when AMD was first pushing x86-64 extensions.
And probably more common than that: If you are going to a chip to implement some particular function, you need to have a very good idea of what you want already in mind. And, if you have one of those, there really isn't any reason to not have the compiler guys begin their work, or any significant obstacle that would keep somebody from hacking together an emulator implementing the ISA before the hardware team manages to get production silicon in play.
Writing emulators that are 100% accurate in simulating every last quirk of real hardware, and ideally doing so at useful speed, isn't easy, nor is producing compilers that reliably produce good output that takes advantage of the real strengths and weaknesses of real chips; but producing merely functional versions of both based on the spec faster than the hardware team can produce a good silicon implementation of the spec is likely a winnable race most of the time(especially now that 'just throw a dirt-cheap and sickeningly powerful x86 at it' is a viable strategy for papering over issues with your emulator).
It's doubly annoying because(in PR-flack ass-covering speak) an "Advanced Persistent Threat" is "Any bad guy smarter than our dumbest sysadmin's stupidest mistake".
It might have been a clear category at one point(and there still are attackers who are pretty clearly both advanced and persistent); but the constant "Well, we could say 'gosh, we fucked up, how stupid of us.' or we could say 'It was and Advanced Persistent Threat, total national security shit, probably chinamen or something!'" pressure hasn't helped...
I think that's to make it easier to translate the software.
The McDonalds UI, for when your staff are illiterate in six different languages...
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
Luckily, Cadillac's target market of "old guys, soccer moms in mommy tanks, and cognac-swilling rappers' is known for its superb reflexes and incredibly responsible driving. Nothing bad could possibly happen.
For just $150 extra and a voided ability to return the monitor, the geek squad will sandpaper it for you!
In this case, the trademark holder was actively blocking sale of their product on Amazon and then suing Amazon for suggesting similar products that they did have in stock...
The audacity is jaw-dropping.
I'm vaguely sympathetic to the desire to single-source and have something you can monitor with one tool, which would exclude the obvious 'just get a $50 router, FFS' option; but under any reasonable depreciation calculation scheme, it'd probably be cheaper to get an ASA 5505 now, and throw it away if you need something bigger in the future than it would be to get a 3945 now in case you end up gluing a second trailer to your first or something...
(and yes, I know that you are joking.)
This library has a 3945.
Somebody at Cisco must have made quite a bonus...
Yes, it's a great start. All that's needed now is to tie in detection of auto-playing audio in a website to the protocol that allows you to punch advertisers in the face over the internet.
If we told the MPAA that it would stop piracy, we could probably get the inclusion of a small claymore-style shaped charge in all new monitors mandated by law...
Amen, brother. Dozens of times I woke up the whole house when I was surfing for an hotel and their page insisted on playing loud music when opening up their fucking Flash-page.
Additionally it's usually done for a 800*600 resolution and unzoomable so that you can't read shit on a modern HighRes screen. And often they play songs that I'm sure they don't have the rights for.
Why is it that so many hotels and restaurants use that crap?
Sounds like a golden opportunity to use the DMCA to make the web a slightly better place...
As best I've been able to find(on page 753 of The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems) the unit cost of a Mark-46 torpedo alone is $160,000(in what I think are 1988 dollars; but it isn't entirely clear). Even if the launch cage is free, I suspect that nobody is planting nearly enough of them to be a major hazard to civilian life...
I assume that this is what keeps naval mines (mostly) out of the line of fire against land mines, which are absurdly cheap by comparison.
It doesn't help that Nintendo apparently can't comprehend software to save their miserable lives. They can make games; but their grasp of the non-game software components is tragicomedic even compared to Sony, and that's saying something.
DRM is always user-hostile; but Nintendo's is just hilarious(even as their consoles are markedly easier to crack than Sony's or Microsoft's). Downloaded material is permanently locked to the hardware it was downloaded on. Even now that the Wii U has 'Nintendo network accounts' those are locked to the device they were created on. There is a transfer process for certain sorts of material; but it's the most ass-backwards and error-prone exercise one can imagine. Even better, the 'virtual' Wii within the Wii U, for backwards compatibility, counts as a separate device and is almost entirely non-integrated. It's just terrible at every step.
Sony's 'well, we could download updates in the background; but instead we'll make you watch' also isn't a masterpiece, and Microsoft is clearly sucking at the ad-money teat a bit too much in laying out their atrocious 'dashboard'; but that's at least evil rather than cluelessness.
why would you study a bunch of primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks?
You seem to be thinking of southerners, not Americans...
What you will probably see at first is 1 human in charge of 5-10 drones. The drones act 'autonomously' and the controller can take over any of them. Then you will see as they get comfortable with the tech something like 1 to 50. Then they will take the 'commander' out of the loop and put it in the hands of 'strategy committees'. Then they will let the computer fight out what from our point of view in the command 'bunker' is a large RTS game.
It's already one pilot to multiple drones. Given that one of the major features on the things is long endurance/loiter times, and they possess some limited automation of basic flight functions(ie. unlike a 'basic' RC aircraft where every control surface is directly mapped to a joystick on the controller, and the pilot has to compute the control-surface configuration that gets the path he wants), a single person can watch over multiple drones at a time, and (so long as the standing order is some variation of 'just putz around at safe altitude until I come back') a drone can temporarily be ignored if something more important is happening with one of the others.
If memory serves, takeoff/landing still has to be one one-on-one, and all waypoint assignment and weapons targeting is human controlled; but handling the aeronautical details of moving from waypoint to waypoint is already automated.
Killer robots can't be a government only option =D
"Killer robots don't kill people, people with killer robots kill people! Wait, um, no, actually, killer robots do kill people!"
So you are saying that both are deeply distasteful and likely to result in casualties among civilians who are 'innocent' by any stretch of the word? Or was this one of those 'we have to stoop to their level to stop those animals' arguments?
(Incidentally, unless the extremist was fucking a defense contractor, I bet the kid and not the robot was produced on time and under budget...)