They're not talking about replacing all humans with robot pilots. That's absurd. There will be just way too many situations that even very good AI would not be able to handle.
However, the majority of bombing missions have already been replaced by robots. They're called Cruise Missiles. This thing is just a reusable Cruise Missile. With a predetermined target, this thing can unload 3000 pounds of ordinance, and fly back home - and reload. A single Cruise Missile is about $800,000. Way too fuckin expensive for your little 3rd-world tinpot raids. Use one of these drones to launch an airstrike, and keep it coming as quickly as you can reattach bombs. If your enemy does not have air superiority, you can keep using these things, they won't be shot down as easily as Cruise Missiles because they're smarter, and can fly much faster and higher, and have a remote-pilot option. Plus, a crucial advantage, it can pull probably 20-30 G turns, where a human pilot can only survive about 10. That's a huge defensive advantage when evading enemy fire.
Remember during the gulf war when we were worried that we were going to run out of Cruise Missiles? VERY expensive weapons. This weapon is meant to address that problem - we were flying expensive jets, risking pilots to do little more than dump bombs on static, undefended targets. A robot can do that.
If you don't have air superiority, then you use human piloted air superiority fighters and GET air superiority, then you bring in the drones. If you don't have air superiority, clearly these things will be shot down by the dozen by even a poorly equipped air defense. Or, the communications mechanisms and safeguards will be hacked. So you can see, these things have very limited uses, but there IS a good place for them.
Now it's soapbox time. What are Cruise Missiles, and fighter-bombers REALLY replacing?
Battleships. Like the old Iowa-class battleships. Sure, there were a lot of good reasons to discontinue use of these weapons, chief among them was the sheer manpower required to keep them running, but what they could do: They could sit off the coast, safe from enemy antiaircraft fire, behind their protective screen of carrier-launched interceptors as air defense, and lob 16" shells 200 miles inland. With modern computer guidance, these shells could be as accurate as Cruise Missiles, could be retrofitted for nuclear capabilities, and could reach 90% of the world's population (within 200 miles of any water). The battlecruiser could place as much ordinance on a target as three aircraft carriers launching strikes around the clock, and the battlecruiser could do it in any weather, without risking pilots, or requiring air superiority. But they aren't high-tech. WWII-era battlecruisers just aren't as sexy as remote piloted bomber drones.
Oh well. Humans make mistakes, machines make mistakes. Humans are supposed to LEARN from their mistakes.
IIRC, there are only two galaxies (excluding ours) visible to the naked eye, Andromeda, and the Magellenic clouds. Everything else you see with your naked eye is a star.
Atoms are so small you can't see them with the naked eye.
Galaxy clusters are so large, and so distant that you can't see them with the naked eye.
Besides, where are you going to find schedule data in the right format?
I'm sure there could be a market for that on Hotline. . .
or buddy-networks.
OR - possibly there's a place where you can get it in the wrong format, but with a little clever text processing, one could reformat it to the correct format. Of course, the hackers would have to stay ahead of every little TiVo software update to avoid the same problems our Samba brethren get from every SP Microsoft releases.
For my $ TiVo was too expensive.
and there were a number of other problems.
TiVo didn't work well with my DISH system. The IR Blaster didn't blast very well. Sometimes picked wrong channels, sometimes didn't work at all.
TiVo wasn't reliable, it would *sometimes* not record programs I had told it to record, on one occasion, I was recording a 3 hr movie, it cut it off at 2 hours. Rather frustrating.
I returned it.
Then I found out that DISH network sold a system called DishPlayer. 12 hours flat recording (because it records the digital signal directly). Since I was already a DISH customer, it was only $172, plus $10/month for the "service" (which kind of sucks, it's nothing DISH doesn't already give - guide downloads? just to enable the recording features). But it also has games, Doom, You Don't Know Jack, and Solitaire. The UI for listing programs recorded, and the recording schedule is together - unified. One of the things I hated about TiVo was that though it was easy to see what was recorded, it was difficult to get from there to the to do list. (three clicks - and waits for very slow screen refreshes).
The DISHPlayer also has WebTV, but I'm not going to sign up for that. Unfortunately, there's no lifetime deal for signing up for the monthly service, and as far as I can tell, it's not as easily hackable as TiVo. But for me, it was far better than TiVo in many ways.
given the split in the popular vote, house and senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the VOTERS had in mind.
Watching any of the financial news channels, most commentators are rather OPEN about saying that they prefer gridlock, a system where government can't get anything done. This is because it is assumed that anything government gets done will be destructive in nature. gridlock is good for business.
How can anyone with half
a brain think their vote will be valid by voting for two people for the same office?
In the case of MY county, there were some spots for city council where you were supposed to vote for TWO candidates. Instructions were pretty clearly marked tho.
That's the thing, we're all (Americans) stuck on this idea of "democracy" and it's not really our fault. It's "their" fault. They. Them. The ones who taught us in kindergarten how great America is because we're free, and a democracy. The ones who go to the UN and get permission to bomb someplace because they're "not a democracy" those poor Americans, living under the opressive tyranny of a republic. Let's send in a few hundred tomahawks, bomb some democracy into em. Yeah! Let's arrest and try the electoral college on crimes against humanity! yeah!
To be fair; Gore showed his moral fiber, and his worth, this morning by standing up on national TV and announcing that even though he won the popular vote, he may have lost the electoral vote, and if that's the case, he respects that, and that it should not be challenged because it's constitutional, and it's the foundation of everything that we believe in as a nation. Well, that's not quite true (the electoral college was a concession to get smaller states to join the union, a political compromise - in geek terms, a kludge). But anyway, it sure eased my mind a bit about the questions I had about the man's sense of honor.
Yeah, but I live in California, where Gore had a 12% margin. My Nader vote didn't hurt Gore one damn bit. And here, the most ecologically sensitive and left-leaning, and online demographic in the US, California, Nader only got 4%. (well, 6% in MY county; proud to say). That just sickens me. If 11% of us who supported Gore could just have forgotten all the hype and scare tactics, and voted for Nader, California alone could have floated him past the 5%.
I really hope Gore loses, and I hope the Democrats learn a good lesson about pissing off their constituency. I hope Bush has us all reciting the 10 commandments at gunpoint at the workplace every morning. Just to remind the Democrats what they sacraficed when they sold us out.
Well, definately C has taken place, the number of ballots rejected because of questions raised was 19,000, and last I heard, the race was as narrow as 799 votes. That's um, tight.
Gore would whip Bush's ass, Gore's got about 4" on Bush height-wise. And I'm guessing about 50 pounds. Gore also went through REAL military training at some point in his life. Not some cushy Air Nat'l Guard flight school. Sure Bush's fiesty, but I still think Gore would win.
However, Cheney could probably kill Gore AND Lieberman. Within about 30 seconds. That man is a pit bull.
As much as I disagree with everything Buchanan stands for, he IS a man of honor and ethics. (and wit - I say again, he may not be fit for president, but I have many fond memories of watching him make Michael Kinsey cry on Crossfire back in the early 90's). If only HIS ethics included people of other races and creeds.
It is the job of the ballot designer to make sure that information is properly conveyed to the voter, and that the voter's response to that information is correctly recorded.
PERIOD.
It happens in computer UI design ALL THE TIME. I work for a software company, and I see this happen all the time. Some designer gets a great idea, or reads a new textbook on the subject, and synthesizes a great idea out of there, and presents it to the manager at the design meetings, and they agree, "aw cool, spiffy" (actually, at Apple, it would be different, Steve Jobs would fire the guy and then tell the team how the interface will look if they value their jobs). Then they write the prototype, and the other developers, and QA see it, then it goes into the alpha, and marketing sees it, and goes "aw cool, spiffy", now, what normally happens with QA is, they often "get used" to the interface, because at that point it's usually not fully functional, and they're used to having to work around crap, it's hard to tell when there's a fundamental flaw. Until beta. Then you send the software out to the beta testers, and only if there's an unholy bitching and moaning will the most serious flaws be fixed, because at that point, it's almost like starting over from scratch in many cases, and if beta is already late, you can bet there's already pressure on the engineering team to deliver a product on time. Here's the place where most companies that ship crap products make the wrong decision. Here's where the ballot likely went wrong, they didn't beta test the ballot. Or if they did, they didn't test it well enough, because IN THE FIELD, where it counts, it did not perform it's job. Period. The committee that reviewed it didn't forsee it. The designer didn't forsee it. Not really their fault, and I don't think the fact that it didn't get any testing was anybody's fault either. To suggest it was deliberately confusing is ludicrous -
I never said I didn't like lesbian witches - in fact, one of them is bi, so that makes it a chance at least. . . I do admit that I preferred the much more *normal* relationship Willow (the bi witch) had with Oz (the werewolf).
I beg to differ but, Florida is *NOT* the home-state of Mickey Mouse.
For proof; visit BOTH Disney World, (in Florida), and Disney Land (in California). The evidence lies in Toontown. In Disney Land, Toontown is known as "Toontown". Mickey Mouse keeps a house there. In Disney World, in the Magic Kingdom, it's known as "Toontown Fair", and it is not actually Toontown. Mickey Mouse also keeps a house there, but if you ask employees, they will tell you, that the house in Florida is his vacation home, and the house he lives in is in California. (If you ask where Mickey IS, since he isn't at home, they'll tell you he's at the other house on that day. How I longed to have agents with camcorders at both houses simultaneously, in my futile bid to disprove the actual existance of Mickey Mouse, but alas, my resources are not infinite.)
I'm sorry, I'm a man - but I'm for abortion rights - but I just don't see it as being all that important of an issue.
Use a condom. Or go to Canada. DUH.
There are many other very important issues out there, which the republicans and democrats have sold us out on. Civil Liberties issues, Freedom of speech issues, um - hear about the environment? Global warming? Voting Democrat or Republican is basically choosing which big business interests you want to be sold out to.
Don't worry about a Bush mandate tho - with a republican congress, be sure to be watching out for the following coming soon to a totalitarian regime near you, mandate or no mandate;
The ten commandments recited at every public school with the pledge of allegance.
No, strike that, every public school shut down and replaced with a private Christian school (hey, those Catholic schoolgirl uniforms ain't so bad).
Banned flag burning.
Book burning.
Aquittal for Microsoft.
All national forests and preserves sold to Texaco.
Dismantling of the EPA.
Flat income tax.
No "death tax" (inheritance tax).
No "marriage penalty" (normal tax rules for jointly filing couples).
Concealed carry permits nationwide.
Drinking age raised to 100.
Drunk driving laws rescinded (he's from Texas, remember?)
Capital gains rate cut to 0.
Labor unions outlawed.
Church of scientology banned.
No gays in the military, or anywhere else.
Pr0n filtered banned from "America's Internet". (hell, we invented it, we can filter it dammit, we're Americans dammit!)
Most TV stations taken off the air.
Most Hollywood producers thrown in jail.
A new "red scare".
Castro shitting bricks (which is the real reason Bush may win Florida. Lots of really pissed off Cuban exiles there. LOTS).
More jails.
Lethal injection banned, replaced by "a tall tree, and a short rope".
Cows, cows, everywhere COWS!
Slashdot Mirror
They're not talking about replacing all humans with robot pilots. That's absurd. There will be just way too many situations that even very good AI would not be able to handle.
However, the majority of bombing missions have already been replaced by robots. They're called Cruise Missiles. This thing is just a reusable Cruise Missile. With a predetermined target, this thing can unload 3000 pounds of ordinance, and fly back home - and reload. A single Cruise Missile is about $800,000. Way too fuckin expensive for your little 3rd-world tinpot raids. Use one of these drones to launch an airstrike, and keep it coming as quickly as you can reattach bombs. If your enemy does not have air superiority, you can keep using these things, they won't be shot down as easily as Cruise Missiles because they're smarter, and can fly much faster and higher, and have a remote-pilot option. Plus, a crucial advantage, it can pull probably 20-30 G turns, where a human pilot can only survive about 10. That's a huge defensive advantage when evading enemy fire.
Remember during the gulf war when we were worried that we were going to run out of Cruise Missiles? VERY expensive weapons. This weapon is meant to address that problem - we were flying expensive jets, risking pilots to do little more than dump bombs on static, undefended targets. A robot can do that.
If you don't have air superiority, then you use human piloted air superiority fighters and GET air superiority, then you bring in the drones. If you don't have air superiority, clearly these things will be shot down by the dozen by even a poorly equipped air defense. Or, the communications mechanisms and safeguards will be hacked. So you can see, these things have very limited uses, but there IS a good place for them.
Now it's soapbox time. What are Cruise Missiles, and fighter-bombers REALLY replacing?
Battleships. Like the old Iowa-class battleships. Sure, there were a lot of good reasons to discontinue use of these weapons, chief among them was the sheer manpower required to keep them running, but what they could do: They could sit off the coast, safe from enemy antiaircraft fire, behind their protective screen of carrier-launched interceptors as air defense, and lob 16" shells 200 miles inland. With modern computer guidance, these shells could be as accurate as Cruise Missiles, could be retrofitted for nuclear capabilities, and could reach 90% of the world's population (within 200 miles of any water). The battlecruiser could place as much ordinance on a target as three aircraft carriers launching strikes around the clock, and the battlecruiser could do it in any weather, without risking pilots, or requiring air superiority. But they aren't high-tech. WWII-era battlecruisers just aren't as sexy as remote piloted bomber drones.
Oh well. Humans make mistakes, machines make mistakes. Humans are supposed to LEARN from their mistakes.
IIRC, there are only two galaxies (excluding ours) visible to the naked eye, Andromeda, and the Magellenic clouds. Everything else you see with your naked eye is a star.
Atoms are so small you can't see them with the naked eye.
Galaxy clusters are so large, and so distant that you can't see them with the naked eye.
I just thought of another fine place these schedules could be traded.
Gnutella.
Besides, where are you going to find schedule data in the right format?
I'm sure there could be a market for that on Hotline. . .
or buddy-networks.
OR - possibly there's a place where you can get it in the wrong format, but with a little clever text processing, one could reformat it to the correct format. Of course, the hackers would have to stay ahead of every little TiVo software update to avoid the same problems our Samba brethren get from every SP Microsoft releases.
Um, you're saying TiVo has protections to prevent copying?
But what about the "Save to VCR" feature? Hell, someone could simply dump that to a video capture card.
I don't think that any such hacks would be worth the effort, nor do I think TiVo would care.
For my $ TiVo was too expensive.
and there were a number of other problems.
TiVo didn't work well with my DISH system. The IR Blaster didn't blast very well. Sometimes picked wrong channels, sometimes didn't work at all.
TiVo wasn't reliable, it would *sometimes* not record programs I had told it to record, on one occasion, I was recording a 3 hr movie, it cut it off at 2 hours. Rather frustrating.
I returned it.
Then I found out that DISH network sold a system called DishPlayer. 12 hours flat recording (because it records the digital signal directly). Since I was already a DISH customer, it was only $172, plus $10/month for the "service" (which kind of sucks, it's nothing DISH doesn't already give - guide downloads? just to enable the recording features). But it also has games, Doom, You Don't Know Jack, and Solitaire. The UI for listing programs recorded, and the recording schedule is together - unified. One of the things I hated about TiVo was that though it was easy to see what was recorded, it was difficult to get from there to the to do list. (three clicks - and waits for very slow screen refreshes).
The DISHPlayer also has WebTV, but I'm not going to sign up for that. Unfortunately, there's no lifetime deal for signing up for the monthly service, and as far as I can tell, it's not as easily hackable as TiVo. But for me, it was far better than TiVo in many ways.
if you don't like it, there are many other fine discussion boards you can spew on. Mr. Barkto.
given the split in the popular vote, house and senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the VOTERS had in mind.
Watching any of the financial news channels, most commentators are rather OPEN about saying that they prefer gridlock, a system where government can't get anything done. This is because it is assumed that anything government gets done will be destructive in nature. gridlock is good for business.
. . . and they double-team the intern?
How can anyone with half
a brain think their vote will be valid by voting for two people for the same office?
In the case of MY county, there were some spots for city council where you were supposed to vote for TWO candidates. Instructions were pretty clearly marked tho.
. . . and Microsoft.
you can freakin take them.
"Florida? But that's America's wang. . ."
-Homer Simpson
time to change your sig
That's the thing, we're all (Americans) stuck on this idea of "democracy" and it's not really our fault. It's "their" fault. They. Them. The ones who taught us in kindergarten how great America is because we're free, and a democracy. The ones who go to the UN and get permission to bomb someplace because they're "not a democracy" those poor Americans, living under the opressive tyranny of a republic. Let's send in a few hundred tomahawks, bomb some democracy into em. Yeah! Let's arrest and try the electoral college on crimes against humanity! yeah!
To be fair; Gore showed his moral fiber, and his worth, this morning by standing up on national TV and announcing that even though he won the popular vote, he may have lost the electoral vote, and if that's the case, he respects that, and that it should not be challenged because it's constitutional, and it's the foundation of everything that we believe in as a nation. Well, that's not quite true (the electoral college was a concession to get smaller states to join the union, a political compromise - in geek terms, a kludge). But anyway, it sure eased my mind a bit about the questions I had about the man's sense of honor.
Yeah, but I live in California, where Gore had a 12% margin. My Nader vote didn't hurt Gore one damn bit. And here, the most ecologically sensitive and left-leaning, and online demographic in the US, California, Nader only got 4%. (well, 6% in MY county; proud to say). That just sickens me. If 11% of us who supported Gore could just have forgotten all the hype and scare tactics, and voted for Nader, California alone could have floated him past the 5%.
I really hope Gore loses, and I hope the Democrats learn a good lesson about pissing off their constituency. I hope Bush has us all reciting the 10 commandments at gunpoint at the workplace every morning. Just to remind the Democrats what they sacraficed when they sold us out.
Well, definately C has taken place, the number of ballots rejected because of questions raised was 19,000, and last I heard, the race was as narrow as 799 votes. That's um, tight.
Gore would whip Bush's ass, Gore's got about 4" on Bush height-wise. And I'm guessing about 50 pounds. Gore also went through REAL military training at some point in his life. Not some cushy Air Nat'l Guard flight school. Sure Bush's fiesty, but I still think Gore would win.
However, Cheney could probably kill Gore AND Lieberman. Within about 30 seconds. That man is a pit bull.
As much as I disagree with everything Buchanan stands for, he IS a man of honor and ethics. (and wit - I say again, he may not be fit for president, but I have many fond memories of watching him make Michael Kinsey cry on Crossfire back in the early 90's). If only HIS ethics included people of other races and creeds.
EXACTLY:
It is the job of the ballot designer to make sure that information is properly conveyed to the voter, and that the voter's response to that information is correctly recorded.
PERIOD.
It happens in computer UI design ALL THE TIME. I work for a software company, and I see this happen all the time. Some designer gets a great idea, or reads a new textbook on the subject, and synthesizes a great idea out of there, and presents it to the manager at the design meetings, and they agree, "aw cool, spiffy" (actually, at Apple, it would be different, Steve Jobs would fire the guy and then tell the team how the interface will look if they value their jobs). Then they write the prototype, and the other developers, and QA see it, then it goes into the alpha, and marketing sees it, and goes "aw cool, spiffy", now, what normally happens with QA is, they often "get used" to the interface, because at that point it's usually not fully functional, and they're used to having to work around crap, it's hard to tell when there's a fundamental flaw. Until beta. Then you send the software out to the beta testers, and only if there's an unholy bitching and moaning will the most serious flaws be fixed, because at that point, it's almost like starting over from scratch in many cases, and if beta is already late, you can bet there's already pressure on the engineering team to deliver a product on time. Here's the place where most companies that ship crap products make the wrong decision. Here's where the ballot likely went wrong, they didn't beta test the ballot. Or if they did, they didn't test it well enough, because IN THE FIELD, where it counts, it did not perform it's job. Period. The committee that reviewed it didn't forsee it. The designer didn't forsee it. Not really their fault, and I don't think the fact that it didn't get any testing was anybody's fault either. To suggest it was deliberately confusing is ludicrous -
> Those people voted Buchanan, period. If it was a mistake, I'm sorry but they blew it.
I hope you're not in the business of designing computer interfaces.
he is; he wrote vi.
I never said I didn't like lesbian witches - in fact, one of them is bi, so that makes it a chance at least. . . I do admit that I preferred the much more *normal* relationship Willow (the bi witch) had with Oz (the werewolf).
heh, they're both the antichrist as far as I'm concerned.
I beg to differ but, Florida is *NOT* the home-state of Mickey Mouse.
For proof; visit BOTH Disney World, (in Florida), and Disney Land (in California). The evidence lies in Toontown. In Disney Land, Toontown is known as "Toontown". Mickey Mouse keeps a house there. In Disney World, in the Magic Kingdom, it's known as "Toontown Fair", and it is not actually Toontown. Mickey Mouse also keeps a house there, but if you ask employees, they will tell you, that the house in Florida is his vacation home, and the house he lives in is in California. (If you ask where Mickey IS, since he isn't at home, they'll tell you he's at the other house on that day. How I longed to have agents with camcorders at both houses simultaneously, in my futile bid to disprove the actual existance of Mickey Mouse, but alas, my resources are not infinite.)
I'm sorry, I'm a man - but I'm for abortion rights - but I just don't see it as being all that important of an issue.
Use a condom. Or go to Canada. DUH.
There are many other very important issues out there, which the republicans and democrats have sold us out on. Civil Liberties issues, Freedom of speech issues, um - hear about the environment? Global warming? Voting Democrat or Republican is basically choosing which big business interests you want to be sold out to.
Don't worry about a Bush mandate tho - with a republican congress, be sure to be watching out for the following coming soon to a totalitarian regime near you, mandate or no mandate;
The ten commandments recited at every public school with the pledge of allegance.
No, strike that, every public school shut down and replaced with a private Christian school (hey, those Catholic schoolgirl uniforms ain't so bad).
Banned flag burning.
Book burning.
Aquittal for Microsoft.
All national forests and preserves sold to Texaco.
Dismantling of the EPA.
Flat income tax.
No "death tax" (inheritance tax).
No "marriage penalty" (normal tax rules for jointly filing couples).
Concealed carry permits nationwide.
Drinking age raised to 100.
Drunk driving laws rescinded (he's from Texas, remember?)
Capital gains rate cut to 0.
Labor unions outlawed.
Church of scientology banned.
No gays in the military, or anywhere else.
Pr0n filtered banned from "America's Internet". (hell, we invented it, we can filter it dammit, we're Americans dammit!)
Most TV stations taken off the air.
Most Hollywood producers thrown in jail.
A new "red scare".
Castro shitting bricks (which is the real reason Bush may win Florida. Lots of really pissed off Cuban exiles there. LOTS).
More jails.
Lethal injection banned, replaced by "a tall tree, and a short rope".
Cows, cows, everywhere COWS!
are they selling that bumper sticker yet?