There is at least one general who believes that robots should be deployed right now with the ability to fire their own weapons. Quoted from the linked article:
"There's a resistance saying that armed ground robots are not ready for the battlefield. I'm not of that camp," he told National Defense.
That includes the robot autonomously firing the weapon or, in other words, shooting without a human in the decision loop, he said. SWORDS never had that feature, and the idea of armed autonomous robots firing guns on the battlefield remains controversial. But Lynch was steadfast.
"I believe we can do automatic target recognition... to allow that capability. Autonomously," he repeated.
It's not really very nice. If the testing of the patched software is purely automated, I wouldn't reckon its chances highly of managing a fix without screwing something else up except in very simple systems or very well coded and sensibly designed systems.
They say this is intended as a method for keeping crap old code going when the original vendors are gone. Odds are, this autopatcher is going to be dealing with stuff the like of which you'd expect to see on thedailywtf.
There has been speculation that a Mars mission might eventually be a combined roscosmos/esa/nasa effort, similar to the international space station. It might very well be that if this nuclear rocket is built, it's launched on top of an Ares-V.
Personally, I hope it isn't. I want to see a reusable single stage nuclear launch vehicle.
Ships were already established technology at that point. If their expedition had failed, it wouldn't have been a major setback for anybody except the people lost.
If you're spending hundreds of billions on a one-shot project, it makes sense to spend another million or so checking that you've not made a huge dangerous error in something with so many potential failure modes as human morale.
The vasimr can operate in a high thrust mode. It's got an operating method that acts a bit like an afterburner, if you're willing to lower your efficiency.
It can't manage a positive thrust to weight ratio in any mode, and in any case can only operate in a vacuum, so it would end up being launched from ground on top of a chemical rocket. In theory once in space you shouldn't need other types of engine.
Irrelevant question. This isn't a government project, it's a private company that has decided to try a new and stupid business model. The "we" in this case is not taxpayers, it's business owners who are willing to hand over the cash to a security company that has a very suspicious way of ensuring somebody pays attention to the video feed.
Israel has plenty of enemies, I'm sure they could find another politically useful monster. But yes, point taken. Before the last elections I think there really was a trend in Iran towards more peaceful groups increasing in power. Now... it's a lot more difficult to say.
Well yes, in an ideal world those countries shouldn't have nuclear weaponry. There's not much that could have been done to prevent it. My view here is that any peaceful means that can be brought to bear to discourage Iran from building nukes should be used, but if that doesn't work, the only option left is to leave them to it and stand well back just in case.
Israel is one more violent maniac standing in the room, but it acts as a fairly predictable violent maniac. You poke them, they punch you in the face. You throw gravel, they beat you to death with a rock. Raising a fist to them can't end well.
They might not consider destroying israel in nuclear fire their goal, but they certainly do intend to see the state/government put to an end somehow, and the land put under the control of a group they approve of. It's not a stable relationship. If both countries were armed with nuclear weapons, how could the stand-off between them be peacefully brought to an end? What are the chances that it would be peacefully brought to an end?
Because a nation that damn near openly states as a matter of policy an intent to destroy another country shouldn't be allowed to have weapons that can destroy countries?
Ubuntu asks you to restart after upgrades of services. I suspect the other desktop-oriented distributions do the same. Whether you strictly need to is not the point, it's what the system asks you to do.
It comes down to what sort of flaw there is in the software. If it's something like a network-raping app that displays bouncing tits every time the phone recieves a message, just offering the users a choice would be incredibly irresponsible.
It's the old "should I have the right to participate in a botnet?" question. Malware can and will affect more than just one person.
But nobody is intimidated by them. They're not like speed cameras where you can be certain that anything you do wrong will be noticed. We all know damn well that on the other side of the lens there isn't an army of jack-booted thugs waiting to haul us away, all there is watching us is a bored person sitting in an office surrounded by screens, and that person doesn't care.
A far more serious issue in gaining popularity for this project is going to be hardware support. I've actually tried this OS, and discovered that if you cram everything into one floppy disc, there isn't much room left for a range of drivers. I'm fairly sure that this thing was designed and written to work on the developer's own computer, and practically nothing else.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to scale up the time taken for double checking facts in cases where so many people are going to be affected. The more significant the conse... oh sod it, I'll quote: "with great power comes great responsibility"
Changing the output frequency of a giant high energy chemical laser is extremely tricky. Frequency doubling demands a very pure coherence to get good efficiency, and even then "good" in this context means above 50% power converted to the new frequency. With a weapons laser, you're going to have a hell of a cooling problem in the converting medium.
Then again, if reflective anti-laser coatings become common, it shouldn't be too difficult to add on a free electron laser system to burn off the mirror layer before the main beam strikes. A free electron laser can change operating frequencies trivially, just by adjusting its internal magnetic field.
No fees as such. It'll be a very low interest rate account and the VPN will have quite restrictive bandwidth rate limits. I'm sure it's possible to get a bulk discount on the porn though.
The centmail scheme seems to be solely pre-pay. You buy these stamp-like certificates in five dollar bundles in advance and then use them as required. Making somebody else pay for your emails would be tricky.
I would bet that that is because slashdot's posters are mostly not strongly religious. You do see derision and mockery of atheist posts on other sites, anywhere where they don't fight back because they're outnumbered.
I didn't intend to disagree with the sentiment, was just expanding on a point I saw as important.
I'm sure they don't see it as trying to set up hostility, probably thinking of it as exposing the students to what they consider to be the worst of the worst who oppose their beliefs. As for making themselves look larger, it's certainly possible. Dembski has said that ID creationism is gaining power, not because more people are turning to agree with it but because more people are aware of it and having to deliberately state that they don't agree.
Slashdot Mirror
There is at least one general who believes that robots should be deployed right now with the ability to fire their own weapons. Quoted from the linked article:
It's not really very nice. If the testing of the patched software is purely automated, I wouldn't reckon its chances highly of managing a fix without screwing something else up except in very simple systems or very well coded and sensibly designed systems.
They say this is intended as a method for keeping crap old code going when the original vendors are gone. Odds are, this autopatcher is going to be dealing with stuff the like of which you'd expect to see on thedailywtf.
There has been speculation that a Mars mission might eventually be a combined roscosmos/esa/nasa effort, similar to the international space station. It might very well be that if this nuclear rocket is built, it's launched on top of an Ares-V.
Personally, I hope it isn't. I want to see a reusable single stage nuclear launch vehicle.
It's so very tempting to mod this Informative...
Ships were already established technology at that point. If their expedition had failed, it wouldn't have been a major setback for anybody except the people lost.
If you're spending hundreds of billions on a one-shot project, it makes sense to spend another million or so checking that you've not made a huge dangerous error in something with so many potential failure modes as human morale.
The vasimr can operate in a high thrust mode. It's got an operating method that acts a bit like an afterburner, if you're willing to lower your efficiency.
It can't manage a positive thrust to weight ratio in any mode, and in any case can only operate in a vacuum, so it would end up being launched from ground on top of a chemical rocket. In theory once in space you shouldn't need other types of engine.
Irrelevant question. This isn't a government project, it's a private company that has decided to try a new and stupid business model. The "we" in this case is not taxpayers, it's business owners who are willing to hand over the cash to a security company that has a very suspicious way of ensuring somebody pays attention to the video feed.
28% of banks are small enough to keep track of the behaviour of all their employees.
Israel has plenty of enemies, I'm sure they could find another politically useful monster. But yes, point taken. Before the last elections I think there really was a trend in Iran towards more peaceful groups increasing in power. Now... it's a lot more difficult to say.
Well yes, in an ideal world those countries shouldn't have nuclear weaponry. There's not much that could have been done to prevent it. My view here is that any peaceful means that can be brought to bear to discourage Iran from building nukes should be used, but if that doesn't work, the only option left is to leave them to it and stand well back just in case.
Israel is one more violent maniac standing in the room, but it acts as a fairly predictable violent maniac. You poke them, they punch you in the face. You throw gravel, they beat you to death with a rock. Raising a fist to them can't end well.
They might not consider destroying israel in nuclear fire their goal, but they certainly do intend to see the state/government put to an end somehow, and the land put under the control of a group they approve of. It's not a stable relationship. If both countries were armed with nuclear weapons, how could the stand-off between them be peacefully brought to an end? What are the chances that it would be peacefully brought to an end?
Because a nation that damn near openly states as a matter of policy an intent to destroy another country shouldn't be allowed to have weapons that can destroy countries?
Ubuntu asks you to restart after upgrades of services. I suspect the other desktop-oriented distributions do the same. Whether you strictly need to is not the point, it's what the system asks you to do.
It comes down to what sort of flaw there is in the software. If it's something like a network-raping app that displays bouncing tits every time the phone recieves a message, just offering the users a choice would be incredibly irresponsible.
It's the old "should I have the right to participate in a botnet?" question. Malware can and will affect more than just one person.
But nobody is intimidated by them. They're not like speed cameras where you can be certain that anything you do wrong will be noticed. We all know damn well that on the other side of the lens there isn't an army of jack-booted thugs waiting to haul us away, all there is watching us is a bored person sitting in an office surrounded by screens, and that person doesn't care.
We have nukes, we have iguanas, we can combine the two. No initiative, some people...
Yes, because you can't just decide to use something different one day. Convincing all your friends to switch to something else isn't worth the effort.
A far more serious issue in gaining popularity for this project is going to be hardware support. I've actually tried this OS, and discovered that if you cram everything into one floppy disc, there isn't much room left for a range of drivers. I'm fairly sure that this thing was designed and written to work on the developer's own computer, and practically nothing else.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to scale up the time taken for double checking facts in cases where so many people are going to be affected. The more significant the conse... oh sod it, I'll quote: "with great power comes great responsibility"
Changing the output frequency of a giant high energy chemical laser is extremely tricky. Frequency doubling demands a very pure coherence to get good efficiency, and even then "good" in this context means above 50% power converted to the new frequency. With a weapons laser, you're going to have a hell of a cooling problem in the converting medium. Then again, if reflective anti-laser coatings become common, it shouldn't be too difficult to add on a free electron laser system to burn off the mirror layer before the main beam strikes. A free electron laser can change operating frequencies trivially, just by adjusting its internal magnetic field.
No fees as such. It'll be a very low interest rate account and the VPN will have quite restrictive bandwidth rate limits. I'm sure it's possible to get a bulk discount on the porn though.
Time for me to start a bank then. Free porn and VPN with every account containing over £150.
The centmail scheme seems to be solely pre-pay. You buy these stamp-like certificates in five dollar bundles in advance and then use them as required. Making somebody else pay for your emails would be tricky.
I would bet that that is because slashdot's posters are mostly not strongly religious. You do see derision and mockery of atheist posts on other sites, anywhere where they don't fight back because they're outnumbered.
I didn't intend to disagree with the sentiment, was just expanding on a point I saw as important.
I'm sure they don't see it as trying to set up hostility, probably thinking of it as exposing the students to what they consider to be the worst of the worst who oppose their beliefs. As for making themselves look larger, it's certainly possible. Dembski has said that ID creationism is gaining power, not because more people are turning to agree with it but because more people are aware of it and having to deliberately state that they don't agree.