I'd settle for a good real-time collision detection/avoidance algorithm, so that the robot wouldn't knock into anyone. Most of what makes a robot dangerous is its lack of understanding of physics, not its lack of understanding of ethics.
I can't speak for other people, but I buy Macs because I can't stand using Windows, and MacOS/X is the best-supported and easiest-to-use Unix-like OS that's currently available. The extra cost isn't a problem, since I only buy a computer once every 5 years or so anyway.
Bitcoin is currently dropping in price. Incredibly fast since the fight/fork was announced.
Can you provide some evidence of that? I don't know much about Bitcoin, but a quick google got me to this graph which shows a Bitcoin's value to be fairly stable since the beginning of the year.
Oh, riiight! "We don't have any partners outside those cities yet, so the rest of you can go fuck yourselves". Got it.
I realize that fucking yourself is one of the primary activities the Internet is used for, but you also have the option of investigating your home's solar situation using other tools, such as, say, Google's search engine. Assuming even minimal competence, you really don't need to have your hand held every step of the way.
or one could use a non-obtuse language that doesn't have Turing complete preprocessor macro system, and make less errors from the start
Or more errors, since your less capable preprocessor macro system can't do as much of the scut work on your behalf, which means you'll have to write (and debug) more code by hand.
So, make a public announcement offering double the number of bitcoins the extortionist is demanding as a reward for the person's capture?
"The extortionist" is usually an entire gang of people, not just one person. I don't know how many bitcoins you'd have to offer to get someone to capture the Russian Mafia, and I can't imagine that gambit ending well in any case.
Sociological issues aside, getting bit by one of these scams is functionally equivalent to having your hard drive become corrupted, and the obvious solution is the same -- restore your data from backup.
The thing that motivates people to pay $$$ to the scammers (and thus motivates the scammers to keep causing trouble) is that too many people don't back up their data, and thus it costs them less to pay off the scammers than it would to reconstruct whatever was on their hard drive.
Given the low cost of hard drives these days, it seems to me that every computer sold should come with a second hard drive pre-installed and a Time Machine-style automatic incremental backup system already activated -- and maybe even a shiny red button somewhere that says "revert computer to yesterday's state", or something. That way the "I don't think about how my computer works, it's just a magic box to me" crowd would no longer face an expensive new crisis every six months.
Apple laptops are already pretty much an aluminum case filled with lithium ion batteries, they might as well add wheels to one and ride it to and from the Starbucks.
And when that patch fucks the communications system and makes it impossible to do OTA updates???
I have no idea if Tesla implements this (although I'd imagine they do), but most systems have a way to boot into "Safe Mode" in order to resolve this chicken-and-egg issue.
The "Safe Mode" firmware is read-only and never modified by an OTA update, and it only has to be smart enough to download a (hopefully working) OTA update, install it on to the normal/non-safe partition, and then reboot itself.
Most people who deny that our pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm, deny because they simply don't want to believe it and no amount of evidence will change their mind.
You might be right, but I suspect that something sufficiently dramatic and close-to-home (e.g. the permanent evacuation of Miami, or Disneyland underwater, or the loss of California as an agricultural area) would probably convince a lot of the deniers.
I know God is real, and I've come to discover prayer does help too.
Interesting; I found just the opposite. When I was a programming n00b working on my C assignments in college, and it was the night before it was due and I couldn't figure out why it was crashing, I tried praying, hoping, wishing, random changes to the code, furrowing my brow at the screen, loud cursing, exhaustive special-case-logic, and a dozen other increasingly desperate non-methods to "make the code work" without actually understanding it.
Just before the 4 AM deadline for submissions, the code would still be crashing, so I'd give up, email in the non-working code, and get a poor grade.
Eventually I realized that the only way to get the code to work was to understand what I was doing, and that if I didn't understand something I needed to learn about it (through experimentation, or reading the man pages, or asking a fellow programmer for help, or simplifying the program to make it more manageable, or etc) until I did understand it. Once I understood what was really going on under the hood, the nature of the problem (and therefore its solution) usually became obvious and trivial.
I think it was this more than anything else that cemented my atheism -- the repeated experience of prayer not making a bit of difference, followed by the realization that only the application of logic and observation would lead me to the correct solution.
with the costs going up across the board as it is, we dont need any new taxes. especially here in NY
You misunderstand how a carbon tax would work.
It would be revenue-neutral, which is to say the money collected by the tax on carbon would be used to reduce the tax load of the population as a whole. All the money collected would be given back to the taxpayers.
As such, costs would actually go down for everyone except people/businesses who emit a lot of CO2.
Heavy CO2-emitters would pay more, of course, which would give them a clear economic incentive to find less CO2-intensive ways of doing business, which is the point of the exercise.
It's a great example of the sort of "market-based reform" that Republicans used to champion as an alternative to command-and-control strategies, back before they went batshit.
It would do more than completely eliminating coal burning plants. Transportation generates a similar amount of CO2 to coal burning power plants.
CO2 emissions in transportation are being reduced as well, via higher fuel economy standards, development of electric cars, etc.
This isn't a scenario where any one improvement will "solve" the problem. The problem has to be attacked on many fronts simultaneously, and all of the partial reductions will start to add up over time.
It's a massive restructuring of our society and economy on shaky grounds.
Hardly. The proposal merely sets targets and leaves it up to the individual states how to reach them. The states don't even have to submit a proposal until 2016, and don't have to start making any actual changes until 2020. The administration is bending over backwards to make this as easy as possible, and still conservatives are crying like they're being waterboarded.
What happens when the next imaginary ecothreat comes through?
There's your problem -- you think global warming is imaginary, and therefore the amount of resources that can justifiably be allocated to fighting it is zero. There's no point in discussing mitigation strategies with when you haven't even accepted that there actually is a problem that needs to be solved. Most likely at some point in the next 5, 10, 15 years the evidence will become obvious enough to overcome your ideological blinders; but in the meantime the rest of us need to start working on a fix now, rather than waiting for you to be convinced.
Legislature? Obama doesn't need any stinking legislature. He's Emperor Lameduck! He rules by executive order!
Interesting fact: In 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA not only the authority to regulate CO2 emissions, but the responsibility to do so.
So you're right, Obama doesn't need the legislature to do this, because the legislature already gave him (or more precisely, gave the EPA) the power to do this back in 1970.
If the legislature doesn't like what the EPA is doing, they can of course pass new legislation limiting what the EPA can do. Assuming the legislature is still capable of passing anything, of course.
The US power industry puts out 5% of the worlds carbon and this plan will cut it by 1.5% over how many years? China on average is bringing on a new power plant every 10 days. Please explain how this insignificant but costly plan is going to affect climate change?
The same way that going to the gym once or twice helps a person lose weight -- not by a whole lot, but you have to start the ball rolling somehow.
Also, it's a lot easier to convince other nations to reduce their emissions when you've started reducing your emissions first. Otherwise they just accuse you of "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy.
I agree they have no obligation. I was pointing out that hypocrisy of acting like they are green or trying to help the planet when they clearly are not - which it sounds like you agree with me on.
Which is better for the planet, an auto industry that is moving towards renewably-powered electric cars, or one where electric cars remain an insignificant niche market indefinitely?
Because Tesla is the company that is driving the move towards the former by making electric cars that people actually want to buy, and scaling production up so that people can afford them.
Just because you don't like the means they are using to achieve that goal doesn't mean they aren't heading towards that goal.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd settle for a good real-time collision detection/avoidance algorithm, so that the robot wouldn't knock into anyone. Most of what makes a robot dangerous is its lack of understanding of physics, not its lack of understanding of ethics.
How do I do that when looking at MacBooks on eBay?
Ask the seller to do it for you. If they can't (or won't), don't bid.
I can't speak for other people, but I buy Macs because I can't stand using Windows, and MacOS/X is the best-supported and easiest-to-use Unix-like OS that's currently available. The extra cost isn't a problem, since I only buy a computer once every 5 years or so anyway.
Just like you can die in a car accident, no matter what kind of car you drive. And yet, you're still safer in a Volvo than in a Pinto.
Bitcoin is currently dropping in price. Incredibly fast since the fight/fork was announced.
Can you provide some evidence of that? I don't know much about Bitcoin, but a quick google got me to this graph which shows a Bitcoin's value to be fairly stable since the beginning of the year.
A single bit flip can have catastrophic results without compression too, if it's the wrong bit.
Oh, riiight! "We don't have any partners outside those cities yet, so the rest of you can go fuck yourselves". Got it.
I realize that fucking yourself is one of the primary activities the Internet is used for, but you also have the option of investigating your home's solar situation using other tools, such as, say, Google's search engine. Assuming even minimal competence, you really don't need to have your hand held every step of the way.
The biggest problems I've seen with the robo-mower idea are related to cost.
If cost is an issue, there are some really inexpensive controllers available at your local hardware store. :)
or one could use a non-obtuse language that doesn't have Turing complete preprocessor macro system, and make less errors from the start
Or more errors, since your less capable preprocessor macro system can't do as much of the scut work on your behalf, which means you'll have to write (and debug) more code by hand.
Anytime you make a cross-platform app, you end up with suckage everywhere. Go native or go home.
Au contraire -- my "hello world" kicks ass on every platform.
So, make a public announcement offering double the number of bitcoins the extortionist is demanding as a reward for the person's capture?
"The extortionist" is usually an entire gang of people, not just one person. I don't know how many bitcoins you'd have to offer to get someone to capture the Russian Mafia, and I can't imagine that gambit ending well in any case.
Sociological issues aside, getting bit by one of these scams is functionally equivalent to having your hard drive become corrupted, and the obvious solution is the same -- restore your data from backup.
The thing that motivates people to pay $$$ to the scammers (and thus motivates the scammers to keep causing trouble) is that too many people don't back up their data, and thus it costs them less to pay off the scammers than it would to reconstruct whatever was on their hard drive.
Given the low cost of hard drives these days, it seems to me that every computer sold should come with a second hard drive pre-installed and a Time Machine-style automatic incremental backup system already activated -- and maybe even a shiny red button somewhere that says "revert computer to yesterday's state", or something. That way the "I don't think about how my computer works, it's just a magic box to me" crowd would no longer face an expensive new crisis every six months.
Apple laptops are already pretty much an aluminum case filled with lithium ion batteries, they might as well add wheels to one and ride it to and from the Starbucks.
And when that patch fucks the communications system and makes it impossible to do OTA updates???
I have no idea if Tesla implements this (although I'd imagine they do), but most systems have a way to boot into "Safe Mode" in order to resolve this chicken-and-egg issue.
The "Safe Mode" firmware is read-only and never modified by an OTA update, and it only has to be smart enough to download a (hopefully working) OTA update, install it on to the normal/non-safe partition, and then reboot itself.
We China are not gonna cut our CO2 emission what so ever. Haha, you sucker.
Actually, they already have.
Most people who deny that our pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm, deny because they simply don't want to believe it and no amount of evidence will change their mind.
You might be right, but I suspect that something sufficiently dramatic and close-to-home (e.g. the permanent evacuation of Miami, or Disneyland underwater, or the loss of California as an agricultural area) would probably convince a lot of the deniers.
And what happens when states start blowing this directive off? If they don't start making actual, very costly changes, what will the EPA do?
If a state fails to come up with a plan, the Federal government will come up with a plan for them, and enforce it.
I was working at my first job writing my first program ever that was not a homework assignment, I decided to write it as a multi-threaded program
^^^ 2015 nominee for most terrifying sentence on Slashdot :)
I know God is real, and I've come to discover prayer does help too.
Interesting; I found just the opposite. When I was a programming n00b working on my C assignments in college, and it was the night before it was due and I couldn't figure out why it was crashing, I tried praying, hoping, wishing, random changes to the code, furrowing my brow at the screen, loud cursing, exhaustive special-case-logic, and a dozen other increasingly desperate non-methods to "make the code work" without actually understanding it.
Just before the 4 AM deadline for submissions, the code would still be crashing, so I'd give up, email in the non-working code, and get a poor grade.
Eventually I realized that the only way to get the code to work was to understand what I was doing, and that if I didn't understand something I needed to learn about it (through experimentation, or reading the man pages, or asking a fellow programmer for help, or simplifying the program to make it more manageable, or etc) until I did understand it. Once I understood what was really going on under the hood, the nature of the problem (and therefore its solution) usually became obvious and trivial.
I think it was this more than anything else that cemented my atheism -- the repeated experience of prayer not making a bit of difference, followed by the realization that only the application of logic and observation would lead me to the correct solution.
Some people, when trying to analyze a buggy program, think "I know, I'll use a debugger". Now they have two buggy programs to analyze.
-- a grumpy old programmer
with the costs going up across the board as it is, we dont need any new taxes. especially here in NY
You misunderstand how a carbon tax would work.
It would be revenue-neutral, which is to say the money collected by the tax on carbon would be used to reduce the tax load of the population as a whole. All the money collected would be given back to the taxpayers.
As such, costs would actually go down for everyone except people/businesses who emit a lot of CO2.
Heavy CO2-emitters would pay more, of course, which would give them a clear economic incentive to find less CO2-intensive ways of doing business, which is the point of the exercise.
It's a great example of the sort of "market-based reform" that Republicans used to champion as an alternative to command-and-control strategies, back before they went batshit.
It would do more than completely eliminating coal burning plants. Transportation generates a similar amount of CO2 to coal burning power plants.
CO2 emissions in transportation are being reduced as well, via higher fuel economy standards, development of electric cars, etc.
This isn't a scenario where any one improvement will "solve" the problem. The problem has to be attacked on many fronts simultaneously, and all of the partial reductions will start to add up over time.
It's a massive restructuring of our society and economy on shaky grounds.
Hardly. The proposal merely sets targets and leaves it up to the individual states how to reach them. The states don't even have to submit a proposal until 2016, and don't have to start making any actual changes until 2020. The administration is bending over backwards to make this as easy as possible, and still conservatives are crying like they're being waterboarded.
What happens when the next imaginary ecothreat comes through?
There's your problem -- you think global warming is imaginary, and therefore the amount of resources that can justifiably be allocated to fighting it is zero. There's no point in discussing mitigation strategies with when you haven't even accepted that there actually is a problem that needs to be solved. Most likely at some point in the next 5, 10, 15 years the evidence will become obvious enough to overcome your ideological blinders; but in the meantime the rest of us need to start working on a fix now, rather than waiting for you to be convinced.
Legislature? Obama doesn't need any stinking legislature. He's Emperor Lameduck! He rules by executive order!
Interesting fact: In 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA not only the authority to regulate CO2 emissions, but the responsibility to do so.
So you're right, Obama doesn't need the legislature to do this, because the legislature already gave him (or more precisely, gave the EPA) the power to do this back in 1970.
If the legislature doesn't like what the EPA is doing, they can of course pass new legislation limiting what the EPA can do. Assuming the legislature is still capable of passing anything, of course.
The US power industry puts out 5% of the worlds carbon and this plan will cut it by 1.5% over how many years? China on average is bringing on a new power plant every 10 days. Please explain how this insignificant but costly plan is going to affect climate change?
The same way that going to the gym once or twice helps a person lose weight -- not by a whole lot, but you have to start the ball rolling somehow.
Also, it's a lot easier to convince other nations to reduce their emissions when you've started reducing your emissions first. Otherwise they just accuse you of "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy.
I agree they have no obligation. I was pointing out that hypocrisy of acting like they are green or trying to help the planet when they clearly are not - which it sounds like you agree with me on.
Which is better for the planet, an auto industry that is moving towards renewably-powered electric cars, or one where electric cars remain an insignificant niche market indefinitely?
Because Tesla is the company that is driving the move towards the former by making electric cars that people actually want to buy, and scaling production up so that people can afford them.
Just because you don't like the means they are using to achieve that goal doesn't mean they aren't heading towards that goal.