The designs of these devices are not that trivial. They require a power source with most space craft it is either solar or nuclear powered. The solar cells are expensive and the nuclear devices are more even expensive. The cameras and sensors are expensive as well. Also these devices require rad-hardened materials which are not easy to come by as well.
And all of this is forgetting about the cost of actually getting the devices into space to begin with.
Duplication isn't trivial for most devices, but if you are going to make a billion of them. It makes sense to set up a system that produces these rapidly and then duplication becomes trivial after setting up the system. Sending 2-5 items into space isn't worth setting up the type of system which makes these thing trivial as well.
As a general rule, nobody wants to be in state courts if they can help it. There are exceptions, and there are some good state courts, but you still would almost always rather be in federal court. If they could figure out a way to put all trade secrets cases in the commercial division in New York, for a counterexample of a good state court system, they might do it. But depending on the patchwork of inconsistent quality and law in state courts, if you're a big company in particular you'd rather just deal with federal courts.
That is the cost of those companies rooting themselves in those states.
And we don't know what all of these feedback mechanisms are going to be and what their consequences are going to be either. But if we start having mass die-offs of phytoplankton, most animals will die off including us.
Earth's feedback mechanisms, are made to cope with temperature change over tens of thousands of years, not in a century or two. So either we can change now to help stabilize this change before it gets really bad or we can just sit back and watch it happen and continually adapt to all of the changes, while we kill off a lot of different species and alter the planet completely.
"Constitutional rights? Bah! Who needs 'em!" seems to be the watchword of the new millenium.
//unless they're gun rights, of course. The gun nuts get everything they want.
I thought this was illegal at first. But a little research says that this is perfectly legal. If a prisoner wants to have an unrecorded conversation with his/her lawyer they can do that in person.
The freezing point of pure water is 0 degrees Celsius. The freezing point of salt water is -2 degrees Celsius.
Why is this important information? Because as the Antarctic Sea Ice melts it dumps water into the ocean, which lowers the salinity of that water and raises the temperature at which the water can freeze. Which creates a larger area of ice.
(They mention this in the video but it still seems important to state) Venus is much more inhabitable than Mars is. The biggest issue at the moment is the fact that Venus's surface temperature is above 450 C. We currently know how to make a planet warmer over time, but we don't know how to make a planet that much cooler for multiple reasons. Partially because of the fact that with a sulfuric atmosphere and that temperature it becomes very difficult to even get any machines there for colonization.
Also no visible light reaches the surface due to its thick atmosphere. And one final note about Venus, its rotation is so slow it takes 243 days for it to complete one rotation. Therefore a year on Venus is shorter than a day on Venus.
In other words it would take a lot better technology to colonize Venus that it would take to colonize Mars. We could begin on Mars mostly with current technology, a few things would probably need to be improved first, but that could be done in the next decade or so.
But in order to build a colony on Venus we would need to invent the technology to keep the colony off of the surface. And this technology is not easy to test here on earth, because we would need to duplicate Venus conditions and NASA likes to test the crap out of its technology before sending it. While I understand that it is a shorter trip, and it has better gravity. I don't think it would be easier or cheaper at this time.
In the long run a colony should definitely be looked at on Venus, partially because it could teach humans how to terraform planets which would definitely be helpful in the long run. But when we talk about colonizing other planets Mars makes the most since at this time with current technology.
If it was a Dyson Sphere, we wouldn't be seeing any light at all from it.
Most things need some sunlight to survive. So why would you block out all of the sun's light? Unless you are in a different solar system, but then you run into the issue of needing to transfer the power great distances.
I guess this would only work if you setup a solar system to be mined with robots or maybe to create a wormhole. Otherwise you would need some light to get through.
If you want to include those numbers, make sure to do it over the long term. This is the first thing that I have seen that actually talks about power generation over the long term.
Wind and solar have minuscule costs over the long term (just maintenance on the machines and lines). However, for fossil fuels there is the constant cost of getting the fossil fuels and bringing them to the plant. Yes wind and solar have more of a startup cost, because of the amount of machines required to generate the same amount of energy, but over the long term they should be cheaper.
I read an interview with Weir that says that the Windstorm on Mars is the one thing that couldn't have happened as it did in the book. But it was necessary to strand Watney.
The other thing that is mentioned is the radioactive heater (OK it was a power source, but it is only used for the heat it gives off) that Watney retrieves. At the moment it is possible, just not surviving being close to it, but this could change in the near future. The book is set around 2030, so this one could be possible by then.
Both of these sites tell me that the US has a problem with gun violence. Now as to whether the solution is to get better mental health treatment, limit gun sales, limit types of guns that are sold, or anything else, I am not sure. But like most problems today there is not a simple solution, and anyone who says that this will be solved with one thing (whether it is more guns or no guns) doesn't understand reality.
But in the US we can't continue to ignore this, because it is going to keep happening until we do something about it. I just wish we had a government that would attempt to do something about this.
First let me admit, that I have no understanding of the amount of code in these cars and especially the amount of code in the fuel pumps and engine.
But as a software engineer, I have setup many test modes. And I have done this many times previously to setup a test mode that provides the correct results, then tried to construct code to achieve the desired results.
So my question here is: Could the person who wrote this code originally, have been writing code for the desired operation that got included later, without their knowledge?
Don't get me wrong the person who wrote the bit of code to detect the situation the car was in to get it to run in this mode is definitely wrong and those who made the decision to add this in are in the wrong. But the original code, might not have been written with malicious intent.
Ebola is not an airborne virus. Therefore if you detect it early enough in the first people you can vaccinate those around them.
And if you read about Ebola's normal course, it would normally take about a week for things to get very bad for patients (bleeding and diarrhea ). Yes, the vaccine might not work and 2,000 some people may have gotten lucky, or it could work for 90% of them and 200 of them got lucky. This does seem like a promising step forward, if people can put aside their disbelief and cynicism, but then again this is slashdot.
Really... is it that convenient or is it because cancer is caused by cell mutations and every cancer and victim has a slightly different mutation. And some people have been surviving Ebola, which means their bodies have created antibodies.
Cancer will probably take more than 100 years after this point to completely wipe out. With medicine these days we will probably see better treatments for it and more people will survive over time, but cancer will not be wiped out any time soon.
Sorry I was in a hurry to type this, but I get two vials a month of Humalog. And that is what costs me that much money. And Humalog was first approved in 1996, so it should either have already ended its patent or be about to end its patent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_lispro
I am pretty sure the drug company's have more than made their initial investment back from the creation of these types of insulin.
I just want the ability that I lost, the ability to make my own insulin... so why not
As a type 1 diabetic I am all for this. Currently a vial (500 units) of insulin costs between $250 and $400 (before insurance). Since this was done originally in 1978, there shouldn't be a patent to worry about. And since diabetics need this to live, I really don't care too much about the profits of the drug manufacturer, when it probably costs them less than $5 to make a vial.
Drones are saving large numbers of our soldiers as well as keeping innocents safe in conflicts. No longer need we bomb an entire city to kill one or two bad guys. That drone may have a human operator or be on auto pilot.
But my point is that smaller robots may well be of more vital importance than huge robots. We do not need to stomp down cities like Godzilla. But a small drone with a small grenade flying through a bedroom window can kill an enemy without killing thousands of innocents.
I do see that very large robots could get the public more aware and more eager to see high function robots and that might lead to better funding and training of engineers which is great. But in the end the tiny robot is what we really need the most. A self driving car may well have the "robotics" built into the dash board and look like any other car. The robot is essentially invisible. And the robot can actually be spread about in various nooks and crannies of a machine. We need not fixate on a robot that we can see as an entity in itself. Imagine a very simple robot such that each leg of a table adjusts so that the table is level and does not rock on its legs. The robotics could be concealed within the table legs and no one would suspect unless the table was moved and the legs needed to adjust themselves to the new place on the floor.
This is an interesting argument for more robots...
Now we just need you to prove that you aren't Skynet.
Actually the survivability isn't completely known either. There is a good theory that I heard about the K–Pg Extinction which stated that surface temperatures reached about 700 degrees Fahrenheit about 2 to 8 hours after the impact. The theory is that the asteroid threw a ton of earth into the atmosphere, which all then began to fall back to the earth, which created the temperature change almost completely around the world. This explains the death of all insects, the death of all plankton and why all fossils stopped being found for about 10 million years after this occurred.
If this actually happened today, people could survive the impact, the temperature change (being underground previously allowed mammals to survive) , but the overall climate change that would happen for the next 5-10 years, would be very difficult to survive. All plants caught fire previously and that smoke along with the dust from the impact and the volcanic activity that would happen afterwards, would cast a cloud that would make it very difficult for anything to grow for quite a while after it. Not to mention the fact that the fires and lack of plants would severely deplete the oxygen levels around the world. Human survivability would depend on how prepared we were, but also how long the earth's surface is uninhabitable after the impact, if it is longer than 5 years, I don't see how we could survive.
Plus, a lot of Slashdot's readers are American, and some of us are geeks who like -- wait for this -- football!
I am an American and I like football (and I am not a Patriots fan). But the science here is merely measuring PSI on footballs and testing it under different temperatures and pressures. This set of testing could have been done by a 13 year old. It is nothing new, nothing that technological or challenging and it most likely will have little to no impact on anything other than giving news stations and websites something to talk about for a few days. Oh the Patriots might get a fine, or possibly lose a draft pick.
And the summary has no mention of any specific science or technology here.
Slashdot Mirror
The designs of these devices are not that trivial. They require a power source with most space craft it is either solar or nuclear powered. The solar cells are expensive and the nuclear devices are more even expensive. The cameras and sensors are expensive as well. Also these devices require rad-hardened materials which are not easy to come by as well.
And all of this is forgetting about the cost of actually getting the devices into space to begin with.
Duplication isn't trivial for most devices, but if you are going to make a billion of them. It makes sense to set up a system that produces these rapidly and then duplication becomes trivial after setting up the system. Sending 2-5 items into space isn't worth setting up the type of system which makes these thing trivial as well.
As a general rule, nobody wants to be in state courts if they can help it. There are exceptions, and there are some good state courts, but you still would almost always rather be in federal court. If they could figure out a way to put all trade secrets cases in the commercial division in New York, for a counterexample of a good state court system, they might do it. But depending on the patchwork of inconsistent quality and law in state courts, if you're a big company in particular you'd rather just deal with federal courts.
That is the cost of those companies rooting themselves in those states.
The Earth has feedback mechanisms to keep things cozy.
Yeah but these feedback mechanisms have serious consequences as well.
The oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic because they are absorbing some of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
The warmer oceans are causing some species to die off http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/unusual-warming-kills-gulf-of-maine-cod-151029.htm
And we don't know what all of these feedback mechanisms are going to be and what their consequences are going to be either. But if we start having mass die-offs of phytoplankton, most animals will die off including us.
Earth's feedback mechanisms, are made to cope with temperature change over tens of thousands of years, not in a century or two. So either we can change now to help stabilize this change before it gets really bad or we can just sit back and watch it happen and continually adapt to all of the changes, while we kill off a lot of different species and alter the planet completely.
"Constitutional rights? Bah! Who needs 'em!" seems to be the watchword of the new millenium.
I thought this was illegal at first. But a little research says that this is perfectly legal. If a prisoner wants to have an unrecorded conversation with his/her lawyer they can do that in person.
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-jail-record-telephone-conversation-lawyer.html
If mercury itself can be made that accurate and we did it over 100 years ago, I tend to struggle why in the hell we would use anything else today.
Mercury thermometers could break occasionally. Mercury_poisoning
And Mercury is not an abundant element to find especially because it is liquid at room temperature.
The freezing point of pure water is 0 degrees Celsius. The freezing point of salt water is -2 degrees Celsius.
Why is this important information? Because as the Antarctic Sea Ice melts it dumps water into the ocean, which lowers the salinity of that water and raises the temperature at which the water can freeze. Which creates a larger area of ice.
(They mention this in the video but it still seems important to state) Venus is much more inhabitable than Mars is. The biggest issue at the moment is the fact that Venus's surface temperature is above 450 C. We currently know how to make a planet warmer over time, but we don't know how to make a planet that much cooler for multiple reasons. Partially because of the fact that with a sulfuric atmosphere and that temperature it becomes very difficult to even get any machines there for colonization.
Also no visible light reaches the surface due to its thick atmosphere. And one final note about Venus, its rotation is so slow it takes 243 days for it to complete one rotation. Therefore a year on Venus is shorter than a day on Venus.
In other words it would take a lot better technology to colonize Venus that it would take to colonize Mars. We could begin on Mars mostly with current technology, a few things would probably need to be improved first, but that could be done in the next decade or so.
But in order to build a colony on Venus we would need to invent the technology to keep the colony off of the surface. And this technology is not easy to test here on earth, because we would need to duplicate Venus conditions and NASA likes to test the crap out of its technology before sending it. While I understand that it is a shorter trip, and it has better gravity. I don't think it would be easier or cheaper at this time.
In the long run a colony should definitely be looked at on Venus, partially because it could teach humans how to terraform planets which would definitely be helpful in the long run. But when we talk about colonizing other planets Mars makes the most since at this time with current technology.
If it was a Dyson Sphere, we wouldn't be seeing any light at all from it.
Most things need some sunlight to survive. So why would you block out all of the sun's light? Unless you are in a different solar system, but then you run into the issue of needing to transfer the power great distances.
I guess this would only work if you setup a solar system to be mined with robots or maybe to create a wormhole. Otherwise you would need some light to get through.
If you want to include those numbers, make sure to do it over the long term. This is the first thing that I have seen that actually talks about power generation over the long term.
Wind and solar have minuscule costs over the long term (just maintenance on the machines and lines). However, for fossil fuels there is the constant cost of getting the fossil fuels and bringing them to the plant. Yes wind and solar have more of a startup cost, because of the amount of machines required to generate the same amount of energy, but over the long term they should be cheaper.
I read an interview with Weir that says that the Windstorm on Mars is the one thing that couldn't have happened as it did in the book. But it was necessary to strand Watney.
The other thing that is mentioned is the radioactive heater (OK it was a power source, but it is only used for the heat it gives off) that Watney retrieves. At the moment it is possible, just not surviving being close to it, but this could change in the near future. The book is set around 2030, so this one could be possible by then.
There are two sites I would like to point out as well.
A map view of every mass killing (4 or more people) in the US since 2006. By the way 218 of the 290 listed here were done using a gun.
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/GDContent/mass-killings/index.html#explore
Also a list of homicides per country, (yes I know not every homicide is committed with a gun, but it is still pretty telling). I suggest sorting it via Rate which is homicides per 100,00 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Both of these sites tell me that the US has a problem with gun violence. Now as to whether the solution is to get better mental health treatment, limit gun sales, limit types of guns that are sold, or anything else, I am not sure. But like most problems today there is not a simple solution, and anyone who says that this will be solved with one thing (whether it is more guns or no guns) doesn't understand reality.
But in the US we can't continue to ignore this, because it is going to keep happening until we do something about it. I just wish we had a government that would attempt to do something about this.
First let me admit, that I have no understanding of the amount of code in these cars and especially the amount of code in the fuel pumps and engine.
But as a software engineer, I have setup many test modes. And I have done this many times previously to setup a test mode that provides the correct results, then tried to construct code to achieve the desired results.
So my question here is: Could the person who wrote this code originally, have been writing code for the desired operation that got included later, without their knowledge?
Don't get me wrong the person who wrote the bit of code to detect the situation the car was in to get it to run in this mode is definitely wrong and those who made the decision to add this in are in the wrong. But the original code, might not have been written with malicious intent.
or else becoming intermediaries who translate the customer's product requirements into engineering solutions
So they take the specifications from the customers and take them down to the engineers?
I believe these will be the first people to be laid off. Hopefully they have some kind of great idea like a jump-to-conclusions mat.
Start an internet provider company that provides a gigabit network, and actual customer service. And don't rape your customers with the charges!
Ebola is not an airborne virus. Therefore if you detect it early enough in the first people you can vaccinate those around them.
And if you read about Ebola's normal course, it would normally take about a week for things to get very bad for patients (bleeding and diarrhea ). Yes, the vaccine might not work and 2,000 some people may have gotten lucky, or it could work for 90% of them and 200 of them got lucky. This does seem like a promising step forward, if people can put aside their disbelief and cynicism, but then again this is slashdot.
Really... is it that convenient or is it because cancer is caused by cell mutations and every cancer and victim has a slightly different mutation. And some people have been surviving Ebola, which means their bodies have created antibodies.
Cancer will probably take more than 100 years after this point to completely wipe out. With medicine these days we will probably see better treatments for it and more people will survive over time, but cancer will not be wiped out any time soon.
Sorry I was in a hurry to type this, but I get two vials a month of Humalog. And that is what costs me that much money. And Humalog was first approved in 1996, so it should either have already ended its patent or be about to end its patent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_lispro
I am pretty sure the drug company's have more than made their initial investment back from the creation of these types of insulin.
I just want the ability that I lost, the ability to make my own insulin... so why not
As a type 1 diabetic I am all for this. Currently a vial (500 units) of insulin costs between $250 and $400 (before insurance). Since this was done originally in 1978, there shouldn't be a patent to worry about. And since diabetics need this to live, I really don't care too much about the profits of the drug manufacturer, when it probably costs them less than $5 to make a vial.
Drones are saving large numbers of our soldiers as well as keeping innocents safe in conflicts. No longer need we bomb an entire city to kill one or two bad guys. That drone may have a human operator or be on auto pilot.
But my point is that smaller robots may well be of more vital importance than huge robots. We do not need to stomp down cities like Godzilla. But a small drone with a small grenade flying through a bedroom window can kill an enemy without killing thousands of innocents.
I do see that very large robots could get the public more aware and more eager to see high function robots and that might lead to better funding and training of engineers which is great. But in the end the tiny robot is what we really need the most. A self driving car may well have the "robotics" built into the dash board and look like any other car. The robot is essentially invisible. And the robot can actually be spread about in various nooks and crannies of a machine. We need not fixate on a robot that we can see as an entity in itself. Imagine a very simple robot such that each leg of a table adjusts so that the table is level and does not rock on its legs. The robotics could be concealed within the table legs and no one would suspect unless the table was moved and the legs needed to adjust themselves to the new place on the floor.
This is an interesting argument for more robots...
Now we just need you to prove that you aren't Skynet.
... it means you wait until the votes are counted to declare a winner instead of when the press tells you who the winner is.
But then the "news" companies won't be able to predict the polls properly!!!
And how will the world go on if this happens?
Thanks MIT!!! Now we can't set up small barriers to stop the robots from making their advances.
Not to mention it is a "robotic cheetah"... good luck out running that.
Actually the survivability isn't completely known either. There is a good theory that I heard about the K–Pg Extinction which stated that surface temperatures reached about 700 degrees Fahrenheit about 2 to 8 hours after the impact. The theory is that the asteroid threw a ton of earth into the atmosphere, which all then began to fall back to the earth, which created the temperature change almost completely around the world. This explains the death of all insects, the death of all plankton and why all fossils stopped being found for about 10 million years after this occurred.
If this actually happened today, people could survive the impact, the temperature change (being underground previously allowed mammals to survive) , but the overall climate change that would happen for the next 5-10 years, would be very difficult to survive. All plants caught fire previously and that smoke along with the dust from the impact and the volcanic activity that would happen afterwards, would cast a cloud that would make it very difficult for anything to grow for quite a while after it. Not to mention the fact that the fires and lack of plants would severely deplete the oxygen levels around the world. Human survivability would depend on how prepared we were, but also how long the earth's surface is uninhabitable after the impact, if it is longer than 5 years, I don't see how we could survive.
Plus, a lot of Slashdot's readers are American, and some of us are geeks who like -- wait for this -- football!
I am an American and I like football (and I am not a Patriots fan). But the science here is merely measuring PSI on footballs and testing it under different temperatures and pressures. This set of testing could have been done by a 13 year old. It is nothing new, nothing that technological or challenging and it most likely will have little to no impact on anything other than giving news stations and websites something to talk about for a few days. Oh the Patriots might get a fine, or possibly lose a draft pick.
And the summary has no mention of any specific science or technology here.
Why is this story here?
What is next a Real Housewives story?
Oh, and Al Gore rapes bunnies!!!!!
I come here for news, not for a reference to a youtube video that everyone has seen.