Based on more than just this news story: I've been thinking lately that we're just too young of a race yet for the the world to have become as small as it is, and what's worse is the world is getting smaller all the time. The world's shrinkage started with things like the ability to communicate almost instantaneously over long distances (telephone, radio) and later the ability to physically get from almost any point on the planet to any other relatively quickly. These things began to make national borders less and less relevant, and the advent of the Internet has just made that effect more highly pronounced. The problem is essentially the same as with any other technology we've developed: it's evolving orders of magnitude more quickly than humans themselves are evolving, physically and socio-politically. We (humans) are not anywhere near ready to live in a world without borders (look at how we treat each other still!) but the Internet especially is working to erase all borders. Meanwhile, as we're not anywhere near ready for that, one nation or another is always jockeying for the ability to claim the Internet as it's national property, and thus control over Internet policy. Then there's organizations like the United Nations, which would like nothing better than to have ultimate control over the Internet itself -- because, I believe, they think that being able to control the Internet would, ultimately, be a path towards having control over all nations. Which brings me to this point: Will there, eventually, have to be one global governing body? In my opinion, yes, that's going to have to happen one day, as the world is continuing to shrink -- but as previously posited, the human race is not anywhere near the point in it's evolution where that's going to happen. Trying to force it would probably start the War to End All Wars.
You're right, it IS stupid. Robots are property, plain and simple, therefore like any other property, at best the owner of that property would have to have permission from the country in question to have his property operating within it. Otherwise that property could (and probably should) be seized, probably under salvage laws, perhaps as an illegal and unauthorized surveillance device, maybe even as a terrorist weapon.
This is a legitimate concern. Is there room in LEO for 4000 more space vehicles? If there is, will SpaceX design them with the capability to remotely de-orbit them safely when they've reached EOL, or are there just going to be 4000 more obstacles hanging around up there to collide with something else?
Another question I have is, do we really need this in the first place?
Seriously shitcan the streaming shit and buy CDs, problem solved.
Fixed that for you.
The only 'streaming' music I'll listen to is broadcast radio, and you can say what you want about it, but it's ubiquitos, and it's free. I might even go so far as to get HD radio in my vehicle, getting around the fact that FM stereo is half (or less) the quality of CD audio. Shoutcast was nice for a while before the recording industry ruined that for everyone. Just not thrilled with the idea of yet again another 'service' that I'd have to pay for, on top of having to pay for internet connectivity.
Don't have Netflix anymore, and if this is the way of things then they can go fuck themselves or provide their service free of charge. What utter bullshit. You PAY for a service and you have ads shoved in your face? Seriously?
Mock me all you want, buddy. It's not like every human on the planet being able to live indefinitely would be a great idea. You think we have an overpopulation problem and hunger problem now? It'd be many times worse if nobody ever had to die of old age. There'd be rich, powerful people who would supress this technology for that reason alone. It's just more likely they'd supress it for their own selfish reasons instead.
..or, here's an alternate theory: The research will look very promising, then either some fatal flaw that kills people will be discovered, (ostensibly) halting all further research, or it'll just disappear from the news completely and never be heard about again, and anyone inquiring into it will run into a brick wall, beyond which they can discover nothing. It will be assumed that nothing more was done about it. Meanwhile the research goes on in secret, where only the rich and powerful have access to it. The 1% will live indefinitely, while the 99% live a measly 70-90 years on average. Anyone stumbling on the secret and attempting to develop it themselves 'for the benefit of all mankind' will be quietly hushed up, bought out, or suffer a tragic accident.
It's very simple: The rich, who are funding this research, will make goddamned sure that it's as expensive as possible, to make it unavailable to everyone except the rich themselves. Naturally people in positions of power will have access, too. The you and I and the rest of the commoners will be denied it.
..and so the first humans are injured by a self-driving car. "Cars will be safer!" they said. "Humans can't be trusted to operate a motor vehicle!", they said.
Yeah, sure, the autonomous car advocates are going to jump all over my shit again now, just like they always do, saying "It'll be fixed!". Sure it will. This story highlights the very valid point that there are always going to be circumstances where only a human driver can handle the vehicle properly in some situations. This is why there must always be a full set of manual controls in the vehicle, and why all drivers must still always be properly trained, certified, and licensed.
Pretty much this. "We fucked up and embarassed ourselves, so we're going to take it out on you because we can". That's what it reads like. Was the guy who owned the car black, too?
That's all you needed to read, you can stop right there.
I do not believe there will ever be 'driverless' trucks, any more than there will be 'driverless' cars. The safety risk is too great, especially when you're talking about a vehicle with a combined mass of over 40 tons hurtling down the road at high speeds. The potential for dozens or even hundreds dying because hardware or software went haywire is just too great to ignore. There needs to be someone there to at least hit the brakes.
In a world where many seemed to be moving towards things being less disposable, I was shocked at this 'Keurig' thing to start with. More waste? More 'single use', throw-away, non-biodegradable food-related things? What the actual fuck? Seriously, there needs to be LESS of this sort of thing, not MORE of it, and I'd be happy to see this whole 'K-cup' thing go away for good. Get a decent French press and make your coffee that way, it's 100% reusable and makes excellent coffee to your specification, and they're inexpensive. Want only one cup? They make little French presses that are appropriate for a single serving. Everything else this article is about? Screw that, make your own cocktails and whatever else the way they've always been made, there's NO reason to change it. Stop being lazy, people! We don't need more shit in landfills!
I was listening to rock and metal as a teenager, things like Motorhead, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult. I still enjoy hearing the 'soundtrack of my life' from back then, but I can think of nothing more boring and tedious than listening to nothing but all of that for the rest of my life. I enjoy hearing new music on a regular basis. Of course there is some utter and complete crap out there, too, that I can completely do without, but that's not different than it ever was for me either. Looking at me, you wouldn't think that I'd've latched on to Beastie Boys or Kid Rock or Rage Against the Machine, but I did.
My bottom line: You want to preserve your youth? ACT LIKE IT. Don't allow yourself to 'calcify' in any way, physically or mentally, and you won't. Keep reading, keep learning, keep hearing and seeing new and different things, and for fuck's sakekeep moving. You let your body turn to shit? Your mind will soon follow. And vice-versa.
There's also this magic device called a 'volume control' that allows you to turn the sound all the way down. Some even have a more magic button called a 'mute' button.
b-b-b-but I have to have constant stimulation or I'll cry!
Get over it, Nancy. People will eventually get tired of having to pay for 'streaming services' one way or another, and they'll come back to free broadcast radio.
The 'trouble' with modern religion in general is that it has nothing to do with spiritual beliefs or helping people, it has to do with a few influential people consoldating power over entire groups of people by leveraging their pathological need to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing supernatural being. Of late this has resulted in women being kidnapped and turned into sex slaves, children stolen and turned into suicide bombers and 'child warriors', and a growing number getting their heads chopped off on YouTube. It also seems to be resulting in people being encouraged to turn away from logic, reason, fact-based learning, the sciences, and education in general, and turning towards ignorance (sometimes willful), superstition, and mysticism. I'd be perfectly happy to see religion in general go the way of the dinosaurs. We, as a species, need to finally grow out of any need for these things and embrace reason.
Bracing for the inevitable hate that will follow..
There's this little thing called 'presets' that allow you to jump around between stations with a simple push of a button, you should try it. I don't listen to commercials.:-)
There WILL be a driver, they WILL need to see outside. Seriously where do you people come up with this crap? Let's just put people inside a closed metal box they can't see out of and have zero control over. Yeah sure great idea, what nightmare Universe did you come from anyway?
Why is it so many of you people seem to have been born completely deficient in any sort of sense of humor, and instead someone substituted this rediculous level of absolute literalness? For fuck's sake, loosen up! People like you give me a headache.
You're either poor and terminally butthurt over it, or you're just another shitty troll, in which case please voluntarily return to your containment unit (aka 4chan/b) or we'll be forced to use The Hose on you. Again.
Elon Musk built this car in a cave!!! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!!
That's why. Say what you want about the man, but he's probably the closest thing to a real-life Tony Stark as we're going to get. In a world that seems to otherwise be content with the status-quo, he's pushing the envelope and bringing us the future of things. THAT'S why.
Slashdot Mirror
Based on more than just this news story: I've been thinking lately that we're just too young of a race yet for the the world to have become as small as it is, and what's worse is the world is getting smaller all the time. The world's shrinkage started with things like the ability to communicate almost instantaneously over long distances (telephone, radio) and later the ability to physically get from almost any point on the planet to any other relatively quickly. These things began to make national borders less and less relevant, and the advent of the Internet has just made that effect more highly pronounced. The problem is essentially the same as with any other technology we've developed: it's evolving orders of magnitude more quickly than humans themselves are evolving, physically and socio-politically. We (humans) are not anywhere near ready to live in a world without borders (look at how we treat each other still!) but the Internet especially is working to erase all borders. Meanwhile, as we're not anywhere near ready for that, one nation or another is always jockeying for the ability to claim the Internet as it's national property, and thus control over Internet policy. Then there's organizations like the United Nations, which would like nothing better than to have ultimate control over the Internet itself -- because, I believe, they think that being able to control the Internet would, ultimately, be a path towards having control over all nations. Which brings me to this point: Will there, eventually, have to be one global governing body? In my opinion, yes, that's going to have to happen one day, as the world is continuing to shrink -- but as previously posited, the human race is not anywhere near the point in it's evolution where that's going to happen. Trying to force it would probably start the War to End All Wars.
You're right, it IS stupid. Robots are property, plain and simple, therefore like any other property, at best the owner of that property would have to have permission from the country in question to have his property operating within it. Otherwise that property could (and probably should) be seized, probably under salvage laws, perhaps as an illegal and unauthorized surveillance device, maybe even as a terrorist weapon.
Do they label the containers of his donated blood 'GH 325'?
This is a legitimate concern. Is there room in LEO for 4000 more space vehicles? If there is, will SpaceX design them with the capability to remotely de-orbit them safely when they've reached EOL, or are there just going to be 4000 more obstacles hanging around up there to collide with something else?
Another question I have is, do we really need this in the first place?
Seriously shitcan the streaming shit and buy CDs, problem solved.
Fixed that for you.
The only 'streaming' music I'll listen to is broadcast radio, and you can say what you want about it, but it's ubiquitos, and it's free. I might even go so far as to get HD radio in my vehicle, getting around the fact that FM stereo is half (or less) the quality of CD audio. Shoutcast was nice for a while before the recording industry ruined that for everyone. Just not thrilled with the idea of yet again another 'service' that I'd have to pay for, on top of having to pay for internet connectivity.
Don't have Netflix anymore, and if this is the way of things then they can go fuck themselves or provide their service free of charge. What utter bullshit. You PAY for a service and you have ads shoved in your face? Seriously?
The future is now. http://www.johnwallaceart.com/...
Mock me all you want, buddy. It's not like every human on the planet being able to live indefinitely would be a great idea. You think we have an overpopulation problem and hunger problem now? It'd be many times worse if nobody ever had to die of old age. There'd be rich, powerful people who would supress this technology for that reason alone. It's just more likely they'd supress it for their own selfish reasons instead.
..or, here's an alternate theory: The research will look very promising, then either some fatal flaw that kills people will be discovered, (ostensibly) halting all further research, or it'll just disappear from the news completely and never be heard about again, and anyone inquiring into it will run into a brick wall, beyond which they can discover nothing. It will be assumed that nothing more was done about it. Meanwhile the research goes on in secret, where only the rich and powerful have access to it. The 1% will live indefinitely, while the 99% live a measly 70-90 years on average. Anyone stumbling on the secret and attempting to develop it themselves 'for the benefit of all mankind' will be quietly hushed up, bought out, or suffer a tragic accident.
It's very simple: The rich, who are funding this research, will make goddamned sure that it's as expensive as possible, to make it unavailable to everyone except the rich themselves. Naturally people in positions of power will have access, too. The you and I and the rest of the commoners will be denied it.
..and so the first humans are injured by a self-driving car. "Cars will be safer!" they said. "Humans can't be trusted to operate a motor vehicle!", they said.
Yeah, sure, the autonomous car advocates are going to jump all over my shit again now, just like they always do, saying "It'll be fixed!". Sure it will. This story highlights the very valid point that there are always going to be circumstances where only a human driver can handle the vehicle properly in some situations. This is why there must always be a full set of manual controls in the vehicle, and why all drivers must still always be properly trained, certified, and licensed.
Pretty much this. "We fucked up and embarassed ourselves, so we're going to take it out on you because we can". That's what it reads like. Was the guy who owned the car black, too?
That's all you needed to read, you can stop right there.
I do not believe there will ever be 'driverless' trucks, any more than there will be 'driverless' cars. The safety risk is too great, especially when you're talking about a vehicle with a combined mass of over 40 tons hurtling down the road at high speeds. The potential for dozens or even hundreds dying because hardware or software went haywire is just too great to ignore. There needs to be someone there to at least hit the brakes.
In a world where many seemed to be moving towards things being less disposable, I was shocked at this 'Keurig' thing to start with. More waste? More 'single use', throw-away, non-biodegradable food-related things? What the actual fuck? Seriously, there needs to be LESS of this sort of thing, not MORE of it, and I'd be happy to see this whole 'K-cup' thing go away for good. Get a decent French press and make your coffee that way, it's 100% reusable and makes excellent coffee to your specification, and they're inexpensive. Want only one cup? They make little French presses that are appropriate for a single serving. Everything else this article is about? Screw that, make your own cocktails and whatever else the way they've always been made, there's NO reason to change it. Stop being lazy, people! We don't need more shit in landfills!
I was listening to rock and metal as a teenager, things like Motorhead, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult. I still enjoy hearing the 'soundtrack of my life' from back then, but I can think of nothing more boring and tedious than listening to nothing but all of that for the rest of my life. I enjoy hearing new music on a regular basis. Of course there is some utter and complete crap out there, too, that I can completely do without, but that's not different than it ever was for me either. Looking at me, you wouldn't think that I'd've latched on to Beastie Boys or Kid Rock or Rage Against the Machine, but I did.
My bottom line: You want to preserve your youth? ACT LIKE IT. Don't allow yourself to 'calcify' in any way, physically or mentally, and you won't. Keep reading, keep learning, keep hearing and seeing new and different things, and for fuck's sake keep moving. You let your body turn to shit? Your mind will soon follow. And vice-versa.
b-b-b-but I have to have constant stimulation or I'll cry!
Get over it, Nancy. People will eventually get tired of having to pay for 'streaming services' one way or another, and they'll come back to free broadcast radio.
The 'trouble' with modern religion in general is that it has nothing to do with spiritual beliefs or helping people, it has to do with a few influential people consoldating power over entire groups of people by leveraging their pathological need to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing supernatural being. Of late this has resulted in women being kidnapped and turned into sex slaves, children stolen and turned into suicide bombers and 'child warriors', and a growing number getting their heads chopped off on YouTube. It also seems to be resulting in people being encouraged to turn away from logic, reason, fact-based learning, the sciences, and education in general, and turning towards ignorance (sometimes willful), superstition, and mysticism. I'd be perfectly happy to see religion in general go the way of the dinosaurs. We, as a species, need to finally grow out of any need for these things and embrace reason.
Bracing for the inevitable hate that will follow..
There's this little thing called 'presets' that allow you to jump around between stations with a simple push of a button, you should try it. I don't listen to commercials. :-)
I have a better idea: Don't buy any 'Internet of Things' devices in the first place. Nobody needs them.
The more stupid crap like this I read or hear, the more and more I'm glad I still listen to nice, free FM radio, and my own collection of CDs.
Take the 'recycled' water and use it for agriculture, industry, and landscaping, and leave the 'first use' water for people.
There WILL be a driver, they WILL need to see outside. Seriously where do you people come up with this crap? Let's just put people inside a closed metal box they can't see out of and have zero control over. Yeah sure great idea, what nightmare Universe did you come from anyway?
Why is it so many of you people seem to have been born completely deficient in any sort of sense of humor, and instead someone substituted this rediculous level of absolute literalness? For fuck's sake, loosen up! People like you give me a headache.
You're either poor and terminally butthurt over it, or you're just another shitty troll, in which case please voluntarily return to your containment unit (aka 4chan/b) or we'll be forced to use The Hose on you. Again.
Elon Musk built this car in a cave!!! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!!
That's why.
Say what you want about the man, but he's probably the closest thing to a real-life Tony Stark as we're going to get. In a world that seems to otherwise be content with the status-quo, he's pushing the envelope and bringing us the future of things. THAT'S why.