The lab that built the supercomputer is the long-term support. That's computer science, not just computer engineering or computer techniques. Sony's $500 6-SPU Cell + Gb-e per node was an excellent choice, especially since raw Cell blades cost $5000 at the time.
What's the cheapest Zigbee/controller/sensor that I could cook up to do this? Then I could write Linux apps to manage the data from the Zigbee network.
Well, I'm not Sony, but how much could they charge for a "PS3 Developer Version", compared to probably something like the rumored $12+ for every licensed game required by all the locked down PS3s? Their entire business model depends on relatively cheap PS3s, subsidized by probably $100, and an average of 9+ licensed games bought per console to break even. You're talking about reversing that, with a console that can play pirated games including the "piracy fee" in the cost. By the time you convince Sony execs that "only a hundred of the 500 pirated games would have been bought if it were all piracy-protected", your PS3 costs $1900. Sony does sell developer HW with capabilities like that, but it's no way to compete with XBox or Wii.
And I'm fairly reasonable, without a Sony paycheck. The Sony execs are going to be even more vehemently against changing what has so far been a successful bizmodel. Even if changing it would be even more successful. Corporate execs hate risk, especially ones who are at the top of the global content cartel.
I disagree with Sony that the negative effects would outweigh the positive effects. However, if any developer could write a game that could play on PS3, using Linux with full access to PPC, SPUs and RSX (all the PS3 HW), they could indeed write games that any PS3 owner could get and play. Those games would directly compete with Sony-licensed games, but without paying Sony a license, and without paying for a Sony development environment. So Sony would not get any revenue from those games, which is where all their profit comes from (the console is sold at a loss). And it would make it harder for Sony to negotiate with even big developers, like EA and movie studios like Lucas (though maybe just those a little smaller than that), to get license money for "the real thing", when they could threaten to do it the free way instead. So I see why Sony wants to lock every game into licensing.
However, that explosion in games would sell a lot more consoles. Not just to developers and hackers, but to people playing all those other games. It would drive down game prices, especially with free games competing. But cheaper games would sell many more copies. Overall I expect that the bigger share of the platform market and the overwhelming number of games ("something for everyone, no matter how lame") would mean more licensed games sold, even if a much smaller slice of a much, much bigger pie. But Sony is a company that loves "premiums", so I don't think Sony's execs see it that way. Especially since Sony is a record label and movie studio, which means it's a big part of the RIAA and MPAA crusades against openness, so its corporate culture has talked itself into the value of DRM and exclusion despite repeated lessons to the contrary.
I don't have statistical studies of anything to demonstrate that opening the platform would grow Sony's profits rather than shrink them. Sony doesn't have actual data to the contrary, either. So it's my gut feeling against Sony's, and Sony's of course wins. But it does seem to be losing lots of important battles, and overall the war. Maybe eventually some kind of desperation will get Sony to change course. Like if a really definitive crack showed openness is easier, while closedness is much harder and doesn't save that much anymore. Maybe this crack, or the next one following up on it, are the ones.
It sure looks like Sony's ripping the Linux option out of the PS3 is what finally coaxed crackers to jailbreak the resulting PS3. For years while hackers had Linux to play around with, even though it was crippled (low RAM, GPU lockout, so all processing including display on the PPC/512MB), there were no jailbreaks. Then no Linux, and a few months later a jailbreak. It really makes Sony's original "give 'em Linux" strategy look like it worked better to protect the console than any DRM or other lockout has for any other platform.
So maybe Sony can "return to Eden". Sony could reinstate Linux as an option on PS3. Probably they'd have to up the ante, unlocking either the VRAM or the entire GPU, to attract developers back to legitimate "PS3 hacking". Which could drain down the developer pool away from more cracking that actually does compete with Sony games. The current hack would be out of the bag, and it would have some momentum for a while, but Sony could throw a bone that would slow that momentum possibly to stagnation.
Meanwhile, does this HW hack let even new PS3s without the "OtherOS" option boot Linux anyway, as if it were a game, off the DVD/Blu-Ray? Does that let a bootable Linux get access to the VRAM and/or GPU? Because if it does, then even people who just want to hack Linux will be lending momentum to the same hack that enables pirating games.
Nothing you said is actually true of any of the other machines we make. I have cited many examples. Having a central heater, a separate fireplace, a toaster, an oven and a stove and a hair dryer don't make the home look like a factory. I have also said multiple times that the mobile robots can use either an articulated track, snake or other locomotion that doesn't require any new infrastructure, but work better than legs, and perhaps a simple track on the side of stairs that many homes already have in greater complexity for moving old people - which is nearly a robot itself.
I think you're just not thinking about how we already are well down the path to the robotic forms I am describing because you're thinking of only the science fiction that was written before we had much home automation at all yet. We already have autonomous robot vacuums, mops, even dishwashers that are pretty complex. Our cars are pretty sophisticated robots, especially the few that already parallel park themselves. Our home HVAC systems are becoming pretty smart robots totally unrecognizable as "humanoid", and the smart grid intelligence and automation is just coming over the horizon.
We will have many more robots without humanoid form within the next 10 years, before we have even a single humanoid home robot that is anything but a gimmick purely for its humanoid shape, not because that shape is nearly as practical as the nonhumanoid shapes we'll already have.
In any case, I'm repeating my arguments. Nice talking to you.
Proliferating nukes is for traitors to all humanity. No proliferation makes anyone safer, and each new proliferation makes us exponentially more in danger. People who give their country's secrets to other countries, especially when that makes their fellow citizens more in danger, are traitors to their country.
You, Anonymous gibberish Coward, are bending over for insanity.
While I agree with you that Chavez is no threat to the US, I will also note that all the deficiencies in Venezuela that you cite were also true of the US under Bush/Cheney, but those autocrats also managed to get the US back into making nuke weapons, under their newly introduced first strike doctrine (which they'd demonstrated with conventional forces in Iraq, but which they explicitly declared in nuke policy). And yes, America had enough of their leftist crap, and chose someone other than their designated successor - who quickly introduced the most aggressive nuke weapon reductions in at least 20 years, and perhaps of all time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union also practiced the kind of political extremism and management incompetence you described, but produced more nukes than any other country, including the US, and was a serious threat to the US, the world, and everyone's safety from nuke war for almost half a century, and its people struggled to end its regime for the entire time, eventually succeeding. Iran isn't too different, and it's trying (and slowly succeeding) to get nukes, while its people struggle to throw off its tyranny.
The point being that incompetence in government, extremism in politics and success in getting nukes are totally independent variables.
I don't know how unpopular Chavez actually is with "everybody" in Venezuela, since he first won election with 56% in 1998, his 1999 constitution was voted in by 80%, 2006 reelection with 63%, and last year over 54% voted to eliminate term limits, which allows Chavez to run as long as he's so popular among Venezuelans - more popular than any American president since Nixon. He's surely unpopular with a lot of people who used to have things a lot better in Venezuela, but the large majority has it better under Chavez, and they seem bent on keeping him. I don't like him, because he's an autocrat. But since Venezuelans keep electing him in democratic elections, and he doesn't actually pose any threat to the US - even leaving our huge oil imports unaffected even as Bush/Cheney worked directly to undermine his government - I don't care whether Venezuelans' standards for a democratic republic are different from mine. After all, I lived with Bush/Cheney for 8 long years, and the majority of Americans accepted their tyrannies and incompetence, with a huge and in-play nuke arsenal, so I'm not going to preach to Venezuelans who don't threaten me.
As I said, there's no real point to having a single machine do all these tasks. The arms should be part of the washing machine, though they probably won't be like human arms but rather the arms of a "mangle" (commercial clothes folding machine). Then a separate robot that moves things around the house should move the clothes to the closet. That mobile robot sould probably have tank tracks with articulations that can climb stairs, or a conveyor track on the stairs to a separate robot per storey, or a snake shape, or any of the many mobile robot designs already working that are nothing like humanoid. The closet should have arms to accept and hang the clothes, or a rolling stack of shelves to take and dispense the clothes.
The point is that the robots shapes will be the shapes of the objects they're managing, and the different function will be included in separate robots instead of one single body. The reasons the human body is the shape it is have a lot to do with the fact that humans must have a single body, in a single shape, evolved to very different conditions than the shape of a house and the objects in it, and their other lifecycle apart from the time humans are using them.
As for my wife, what I said was that my needs for another humanoid are satisfied by my wife. All of the tasks I'm talking about robots doing are now done by she and I equally, and neither of us need to do them, while none of them need a humanoid. As for what I need a humanoid for that my wife does, that's none of your business:).
No, a fetish is actually any feature that is not directly required by the necessities of the result but rather is arbitrarily required to achieve it anyway. This is true in its original meaning in sexuality and spiritual practice, and in technology. The human form, as I have pointed out, is not necessary to complete these tasks, but is an arbitrary requirement.
What is "normal" has nothing to do with the definition of fetish, except in slang about sex that is not correct in general usage.
I think the arrogance lies in thinking we'll start out replacing human tasks with a robot that is as versatile as a human. I just ran down all the automation we've already got, none of which is human in form, but all of which is the point from which incremental automation is on the verge of being robotic. The tasks I'm talking about doing with robots haven't been done for the several hundred million years of human evolution, and indeed mostly haven't been done, certainly not well, since humans stopped evolving as much as we instead change the environment to suit our genetics.
So the baby steps are giving the clothes dryer arms to fold shirts, which aren't going to look much like human arms to work right, not replicating a human body to do it as clumsily as humans do. Even though humans can also do other things adequately to survive to reproduce, a separate body in very different form to do those things is beyond the realm of human evolution - except that we've evolved to make robots which don't look like us.
Well, that perspective might already have been true of all our appliances. Why don't we have one single appliance that does it all? Indeed, why do we have separate space heaters, water heaters, and cookers? Why do we have shop vacs and carpet vacs? Landline handsets and mobile handsets (indeed that one shows the problems of "one size fits all" that we're trying, badly, and mainly only because it's enforced by carriers).
The Unix perspective that's informed so much in technology since the 1970s is the value of a "device" that does one thing, completely and well, but leaves different uses to other things. Which is why I have both a toaster and a broiler, even though they're redundant. And why I'll probably prefer to have a dishwasher unloader robot that's separate from my separate clothes washer/dryer changer, folder and stower robots. Indeed, I've got separate washer and dryer, though they're 80%+ the same, and kinda big, even though there are combo units which cost less but aren't as good.
These robots I described all tend to have tasks that humans aren't well adapted to do. They're maintenance tasks for things humans are adapted to use, but the maintenance of the object requires fairly arduous and tedious work for the human form. The robot forms would probably not resemble humans much, as they already don't in industry where there are already some applications of machines to the tasks.
Humans are multipurpose, because we're individuals. Robots need have no such limitation. Which is why cars don't look at all like people - they look like the shape humans fit into.
Note that this story says absolutely nothing about whether or not Venezuela actually has any nuclear programme or ambitions. The only "Venezuela" in this story is a fake one, made up to sting these traitors.
But this story does tell us something about how Americans have been led to believe that Venezuela does aspire to get a nuke. It's not clear exactly what it tells us about that, but it tells us something about it.
No, I don't want a track. I want a robot that can follow me around anywhere. And one that's built into, or sits on, my washing machine, my dishwasher, my closet. Getting things between stationary robots that enhance features of stationary furniture can be other, mobile robots, that serve multiple functions each requiring transport or mobility.
My home already accommodates many things not at all humanoid, indeed often better than it accommodates my own body (I bump things that have necessary shapes for function, but my human form is not completely compatible with).
It's not because I don't want to seem to have a humanoid fetish, it's because I don't actually have a humanoid fetish, and I don't want to pay/wait extra for a humanoid version. I want things that fit my home and my body, and a humanoid shape is more like the plug for the socket I want than it is a model for the socket.
I don't need a humanoid robot. I've already got the humanoid that needs augmentation: myself. If I need another humanoid, I've got a wife. I need nonhumanoids for all the things my wife won't/can't do. What I really need is a robot chair that carries me around Jazzfest, defaulting to my preferred scheduled stages and food booths, then bars around New Orleans, while arranging the best meeting places with my friends. I need a chair that will take me up and down stairs, carrying groceries and stuff. Something in my garage that will load and unload my car (which should be a lot more robotic, like finding its own parking and doing basic errands without me), delivering the stuff to wherever in my house it goes. Take out the trash, to the curb, after separating the recycling. Make my bed, carry laundry from floor to hamper to washer to dryer, folding it back into the closets and drawers. Unload the dishwasher into the cabinets. Walk the dog.
Some of those tasks might best be done by a humanoid, since humans have done them adequately for so long. Really they mostly need hands and arms, but maybe not, and feet, but only because we've got steps, and probably something more like tank tracks which can deform on the roller axles to "walk" or something like it.
Having any or all of those tasks built into a single humanoid, or a team, is creepy. It's more a latent desire to enslave other humans than a desire to offload tasks to whatever just gets them done. Making them humanoid seems like a lot of extra work for just a fetish. So there's probably a market for AI "Real Doll" robots, but the stuff I don't want any part of doing should probably be a lot more abstract in form factor.
The most useful change in credit cards would be giving buyers a stack of one time passwords, each one issued to the vendor tied to the specific parties and dollar amount of the transaction, with a short expiration date.
The best way to do it would be a smartphone app that took a token from the vendor, the vendor's ID (another onetime string from a vendor pool of onetime ID#s), encrypted it with the dollar amount and a onetime ID# from the buyer's pool, and sent it over the network to the credit corp. The credit corp would decrypt it and credit the vendor's account. That way no ID info is shared that can be reused.
If they want to make a physical credit card that does those things once connected to a network (like a chipcard), great. Let them put a fingerprint sensor and PIN on the card, along with a display of the available credit remaining and outstanding balance to date. But the one time passwords are by far the most value to deliver to the consumer, and therefore to the vendor, too.
The benefit this project brags about is how the wireless nodes will consume so little power that the builtin batteries will deliver power longer than their 10 year shelf life. That's not really "eliminating batteries" as they claim, because actually eliminating batteries would mean the sensors would have an indefinitely long life, not one limited by the shelf life of the batteries.
But since the nodes are using the building electrical power network for transmissions, why not just plug them directly into the power wires? That would indeed truly eliminate the battery entirely, except maybe a rechargeable for backup. And if plugged in, why bother with wireless at all?
There's no "global conspiracy". There are, however, increasing amounts of data showing HFCS increases cancer, diabetes and other disease risks. My wife has worked in the beverage business, in labs, for many years, and she agrees that the execs probably have research documenting the risks, based on her actual experience of what goes on, and how the beverage industry has been moving to reduce HFCS for several years, even though it's very profitable and easy.
You call a myth what people in the industry expect will be fully documented when there are more studies, which have been lacking due to resistance by the HFCS industry. You are the one who obviously doesn't understand science. And you're an obnoxious, hyperbolic strawman jerk.
Sometime in the future, the corn syrup industry (which includes the entire beverage industry, and much of the food industry) is going to see revealed the evidence that its scientists and execs all knew that their corn syrup products were increasing people's cancer, diabetes and other disease rates, and was habit forming. Even as they worked to cover up those evil facts with cheerful, healthy marketing. Exactly like the tobacco industry. Then there'll be hell to pay.
Unless Sorkin includes some mathematical proof of god's existence in this book, his inclusion of assertions that any of what he describes is due to god merely discredits the entire book.
Why can't superstitious people keep their faith inside metaphysics where it actually has validity, instead of spilling it all over actual material reality?
As long as Ubuntu can't use iTunes (and no, not some other content mall that doesn't have all that iTunes has), Ubuntu can't compete with Windows for the home user market, or probably the school market, or even for a lot of the business market.
Yes, Apple's content monopoly is the key to protecting Windows' OS monopoly. The world is as strange as it is round.
Tom Ridge was the first Homeland Security chief, installed by Bush/Cheney. He's the guy who helped Bush/Cheney fake terror alerts timed to win elections. Ridge was Pennsylvania's governor until shortly before he headed Homeland Security, after decades at the top of Pennsylvania politics and police.
The PA Homeland Security department is completely compliant with Tom Ridge's way of doing business.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah - they're a nerd. Why do you read Slashdot? For the pictures?
The lab that built the supercomputer is the long-term support. That's computer science, not just computer engineering or computer techniques. Sony's $500 6-SPU Cell + Gb-e per node was an excellent choice, especially since raw Cell blades cost $5000 at the time.
What's the cheapest Zigbee/controller/sensor that I could cook up to do this? Then I could write Linux apps to manage the data from the Zigbee network.
Do they mean all of Fox News' ancient viewers who order Viagra between segments when McCain's VP candidate is on?
Well, I'm not Sony, but how much could they charge for a "PS3 Developer Version", compared to probably something like the rumored $12+ for every licensed game required by all the locked down PS3s? Their entire business model depends on relatively cheap PS3s, subsidized by probably $100, and an average of 9+ licensed games bought per console to break even. You're talking about reversing that, with a console that can play pirated games including the "piracy fee" in the cost. By the time you convince Sony execs that "only a hundred of the 500 pirated games would have been bought if it were all piracy-protected", your PS3 costs $1900. Sony does sell developer HW with capabilities like that, but it's no way to compete with XBox or Wii.
And I'm fairly reasonable, without a Sony paycheck. The Sony execs are going to be even more vehemently against changing what has so far been a successful bizmodel. Even if changing it would be even more successful. Corporate execs hate risk, especially ones who are at the top of the global content cartel.
I disagree with Sony that the negative effects would outweigh the positive effects. However, if any developer could write a game that could play on PS3, using Linux with full access to PPC, SPUs and RSX (all the PS3 HW), they could indeed write games that any PS3 owner could get and play. Those games would directly compete with Sony-licensed games, but without paying Sony a license, and without paying for a Sony development environment. So Sony would not get any revenue from those games, which is where all their profit comes from (the console is sold at a loss). And it would make it harder for Sony to negotiate with even big developers, like EA and movie studios like Lucas (though maybe just those a little smaller than that), to get license money for "the real thing", when they could threaten to do it the free way instead. So I see why Sony wants to lock every game into licensing.
However, that explosion in games would sell a lot more consoles. Not just to developers and hackers, but to people playing all those other games. It would drive down game prices, especially with free games competing. But cheaper games would sell many more copies. Overall I expect that the bigger share of the platform market and the overwhelming number of games ("something for everyone, no matter how lame") would mean more licensed games sold, even if a much smaller slice of a much, much bigger pie. But Sony is a company that loves "premiums", so I don't think Sony's execs see it that way. Especially since Sony is a record label and movie studio, which means it's a big part of the RIAA and MPAA crusades against openness, so its corporate culture has talked itself into the value of DRM and exclusion despite repeated lessons to the contrary.
I don't have statistical studies of anything to demonstrate that opening the platform would grow Sony's profits rather than shrink them. Sony doesn't have actual data to the contrary, either. So it's my gut feeling against Sony's, and Sony's of course wins. But it does seem to be losing lots of important battles, and overall the war. Maybe eventually some kind of desperation will get Sony to change course. Like if a really definitive crack showed openness is easier, while closedness is much harder and doesn't save that much anymore. Maybe this crack, or the next one following up on it, are the ones.
It sure looks like Sony's ripping the Linux option out of the PS3 is what finally coaxed crackers to jailbreak the resulting PS3. For years while hackers had Linux to play around with, even though it was crippled (low RAM, GPU lockout, so all processing including display on the PPC/512MB), there were no jailbreaks. Then no Linux, and a few months later a jailbreak. It really makes Sony's original "give 'em Linux" strategy look like it worked better to protect the console than any DRM or other lockout has for any other platform.
So maybe Sony can "return to Eden". Sony could reinstate Linux as an option on PS3. Probably they'd have to up the ante, unlocking either the VRAM or the entire GPU, to attract developers back to legitimate "PS3 hacking". Which could drain down the developer pool away from more cracking that actually does compete with Sony games. The current hack would be out of the bag, and it would have some momentum for a while, but Sony could throw a bone that would slow that momentum possibly to stagnation.
Meanwhile, does this HW hack let even new PS3s without the "OtherOS" option boot Linux anyway, as if it were a game, off the DVD/Blu-Ray? Does that let a bootable Linux get access to the VRAM and/or GPU? Because if it does, then even people who just want to hack Linux will be lending momentum to the same hack that enables pirating games.
Nothing you said is actually true of any of the other machines we make. I have cited many examples. Having a central heater, a separate fireplace, a toaster, an oven and a stove and a hair dryer don't make the home look like a factory. I have also said multiple times that the mobile robots can use either an articulated track, snake or other locomotion that doesn't require any new infrastructure, but work better than legs, and perhaps a simple track on the side of stairs that many homes already have in greater complexity for moving old people - which is nearly a robot itself.
I think you're just not thinking about how we already are well down the path to the robotic forms I am describing because you're thinking of only the science fiction that was written before we had much home automation at all yet. We already have autonomous robot vacuums, mops, even dishwashers that are pretty complex. Our cars are pretty sophisticated robots, especially the few that already parallel park themselves. Our home HVAC systems are becoming pretty smart robots totally unrecognizable as "humanoid", and the smart grid intelligence and automation is just coming over the horizon.
We will have many more robots without humanoid form within the next 10 years, before we have even a single humanoid home robot that is anything but a gimmick purely for its humanoid shape, not because that shape is nearly as practical as the nonhumanoid shapes we'll already have.
In any case, I'm repeating my arguments. Nice talking to you.
Proliferating nukes is for traitors to all humanity. No proliferation makes anyone safer, and each new proliferation makes us exponentially more in danger. People who give their country's secrets to other countries, especially when that makes their fellow citizens more in danger, are traitors to their country.
You, Anonymous gibberish Coward, are bending over for insanity.
While I agree with you that Chavez is no threat to the US, I will also note that all the deficiencies in Venezuela that you cite were also true of the US under Bush/Cheney, but those autocrats also managed to get the US back into making nuke weapons, under their newly introduced first strike doctrine (which they'd demonstrated with conventional forces in Iraq, but which they explicitly declared in nuke policy). And yes, America had enough of their leftist crap, and chose someone other than their designated successor - who quickly introduced the most aggressive nuke weapon reductions in at least 20 years, and perhaps of all time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union also practiced the kind of political extremism and management incompetence you described, but produced more nukes than any other country, including the US, and was a serious threat to the US, the world, and everyone's safety from nuke war for almost half a century, and its people struggled to end its regime for the entire time, eventually succeeding. Iran isn't too different, and it's trying (and slowly succeeding) to get nukes, while its people struggle to throw off its tyranny.
The point being that incompetence in government, extremism in politics and success in getting nukes are totally independent variables.
I don't know how unpopular Chavez actually is with "everybody" in Venezuela, since he first won election with 56% in 1998, his 1999 constitution was voted in by 80%, 2006 reelection with 63%, and last year over 54% voted to eliminate term limits, which allows Chavez to run as long as he's so popular among Venezuelans - more popular than any American president since Nixon. He's surely unpopular with a lot of people who used to have things a lot better in Venezuela, but the large majority has it better under Chavez, and they seem bent on keeping him. I don't like him, because he's an autocrat. But since Venezuelans keep electing him in democratic elections, and he doesn't actually pose any threat to the US - even leaving our huge oil imports unaffected even as Bush/Cheney worked directly to undermine his government - I don't care whether Venezuelans' standards for a democratic republic are different from mine. After all, I lived with Bush/Cheney for 8 long years, and the majority of Americans accepted their tyrannies and incompetence, with a huge and in-play nuke arsenal, so I'm not going to preach to Venezuelans who don't threaten me.
As I said, there's no real point to having a single machine do all these tasks. The arms should be part of the washing machine, though they probably won't be like human arms but rather the arms of a "mangle" (commercial clothes folding machine). Then a separate robot that moves things around the house should move the clothes to the closet. That mobile robot sould probably have tank tracks with articulations that can climb stairs, or a conveyor track on the stairs to a separate robot per storey, or a snake shape, or any of the many mobile robot designs already working that are nothing like humanoid. The closet should have arms to accept and hang the clothes, or a rolling stack of shelves to take and dispense the clothes.
The point is that the robots shapes will be the shapes of the objects they're managing, and the different function will be included in separate robots instead of one single body. The reasons the human body is the shape it is have a lot to do with the fact that humans must have a single body, in a single shape, evolved to very different conditions than the shape of a house and the objects in it, and their other lifecycle apart from the time humans are using them.
As for my wife, what I said was that my needs for another humanoid are satisfied by my wife. All of the tasks I'm talking about robots doing are now done by she and I equally, and neither of us need to do them, while none of them need a humanoid. As for what I need a humanoid for that my wife does, that's none of your business :).
No, a fetish is actually any feature that is not directly required by the necessities of the result but rather is arbitrarily required to achieve it anyway. This is true in its original meaning in sexuality and spiritual practice, and in technology. The human form, as I have pointed out, is not necessary to complete these tasks, but is an arbitrary requirement.
What is "normal" has nothing to do with the definition of fetish, except in slang about sex that is not correct in general usage.
I think the arrogance lies in thinking we'll start out replacing human tasks with a robot that is as versatile as a human. I just ran down all the automation we've already got, none of which is human in form, but all of which is the point from which incremental automation is on the verge of being robotic. The tasks I'm talking about doing with robots haven't been done for the several hundred million years of human evolution, and indeed mostly haven't been done, certainly not well, since humans stopped evolving as much as we instead change the environment to suit our genetics.
So the baby steps are giving the clothes dryer arms to fold shirts, which aren't going to look much like human arms to work right, not replicating a human body to do it as clumsily as humans do. Even though humans can also do other things adequately to survive to reproduce, a separate body in very different form to do those things is beyond the realm of human evolution - except that we've evolved to make robots which don't look like us.
Well, that perspective might already have been true of all our appliances. Why don't we have one single appliance that does it all? Indeed, why do we have separate space heaters, water heaters, and cookers? Why do we have shop vacs and carpet vacs? Landline handsets and mobile handsets (indeed that one shows the problems of "one size fits all" that we're trying, badly, and mainly only because it's enforced by carriers).
The Unix perspective that's informed so much in technology since the 1970s is the value of a "device" that does one thing, completely and well, but leaves different uses to other things. Which is why I have both a toaster and a broiler, even though they're redundant. And why I'll probably prefer to have a dishwasher unloader robot that's separate from my separate clothes washer/dryer changer, folder and stower robots. Indeed, I've got separate washer and dryer, though they're 80%+ the same, and kinda big, even though there are combo units which cost less but aren't as good.
These robots I described all tend to have tasks that humans aren't well adapted to do. They're maintenance tasks for things humans are adapted to use, but the maintenance of the object requires fairly arduous and tedious work for the human form. The robot forms would probably not resemble humans much, as they already don't in industry where there are already some applications of machines to the tasks.
Humans are multipurpose, because we're individuals. Robots need have no such limitation. Which is why cars don't look at all like people - they look like the shape humans fit into.
Note that this story says absolutely nothing about whether or not Venezuela actually has any nuclear programme or ambitions. The only "Venezuela" in this story is a fake one, made up to sting these traitors.
But this story does tell us something about how Americans have been led to believe that Venezuela does aspire to get a nuke. It's not clear exactly what it tells us about that, but it tells us something about it.
No, I don't want a track. I want a robot that can follow me around anywhere. And one that's built into, or sits on, my washing machine, my dishwasher, my closet. Getting things between stationary robots that enhance features of stationary furniture can be other, mobile robots, that serve multiple functions each requiring transport or mobility.
My home already accommodates many things not at all humanoid, indeed often better than it accommodates my own body (I bump things that have necessary shapes for function, but my human form is not completely compatible with).
It's not because I don't want to seem to have a humanoid fetish, it's because I don't actually have a humanoid fetish, and I don't want to pay/wait extra for a humanoid version. I want things that fit my home and my body, and a humanoid shape is more like the plug for the socket I want than it is a model for the socket.
I don't need a humanoid robot. I've already got the humanoid that needs augmentation: myself. If I need another humanoid, I've got a wife. I need nonhumanoids for all the things my wife won't/can't do. What I really need is a robot chair that carries me around Jazzfest, defaulting to my preferred scheduled stages and food booths, then bars around New Orleans, while arranging the best meeting places with my friends. I need a chair that will take me up and down stairs, carrying groceries and stuff. Something in my garage that will load and unload my car (which should be a lot more robotic, like finding its own parking and doing basic errands without me), delivering the stuff to wherever in my house it goes. Take out the trash, to the curb, after separating the recycling. Make my bed, carry laundry from floor to hamper to washer to dryer, folding it back into the closets and drawers. Unload the dishwasher into the cabinets. Walk the dog.
Some of those tasks might best be done by a humanoid, since humans have done them adequately for so long. Really they mostly need hands and arms, but maybe not, and feet, but only because we've got steps, and probably something more like tank tracks which can deform on the roller axles to "walk" or something like it.
Having any or all of those tasks built into a single humanoid, or a team, is creepy. It's more a latent desire to enslave other humans than a desire to offload tasks to whatever just gets them done. Making them humanoid seems like a lot of extra work for just a fetish. So there's probably a market for AI "Real Doll" robots, but the stuff I don't want any part of doing should probably be a lot more abstract in form factor.
The most useful change in credit cards would be giving buyers a stack of one time passwords, each one issued to the vendor tied to the specific parties and dollar amount of the transaction, with a short expiration date.
The best way to do it would be a smartphone app that took a token from the vendor, the vendor's ID (another onetime string from a vendor pool of onetime ID#s), encrypted it with the dollar amount and a onetime ID# from the buyer's pool, and sent it over the network to the credit corp. The credit corp would decrypt it and credit the vendor's account. That way no ID info is shared that can be reused.
If they want to make a physical credit card that does those things once connected to a network (like a chipcard), great. Let them put a fingerprint sensor and PIN on the card, along with a display of the available credit remaining and outstanding balance to date. But the one time passwords are by far the most value to deliver to the consumer, and therefore to the vendor, too.
The benefit this project brags about is how the wireless nodes will consume so little power that the builtin batteries will deliver power longer than their 10 year shelf life. That's not really "eliminating batteries" as they claim, because actually eliminating batteries would mean the sensors would have an indefinitely long life, not one limited by the shelf life of the batteries.
But since the nodes are using the building electrical power network for transmissions, why not just plug them directly into the power wires? That would indeed truly eliminate the battery entirely, except maybe a rechargeable for backup. And if plugged in, why bother with wireless at all?
There's no "global conspiracy". There are, however, increasing amounts of data showing HFCS increases cancer, diabetes and other disease risks. My wife has worked in the beverage business, in labs, for many years, and she agrees that the execs probably have research documenting the risks, based on her actual experience of what goes on, and how the beverage industry has been moving to reduce HFCS for several years, even though it's very profitable and easy.
You call a myth what people in the industry expect will be fully documented when there are more studies, which have been lacking due to resistance by the HFCS industry. You are the one who obviously doesn't understand science. And you're an obnoxious, hyperbolic strawman jerk.
Sometime in the future, the corn syrup industry (which includes the entire beverage industry, and much of the food industry) is going to see revealed the evidence that its scientists and execs all knew that their corn syrup products were increasing people's cancer, diabetes and other disease rates, and was habit forming. Even as they worked to cover up those evil facts with cheerful, healthy marketing. Exactly like the tobacco industry. Then there'll be hell to pay.
Unless Sorkin includes some mathematical proof of god's existence in this book, his inclusion of assertions that any of what he describes is due to god merely discredits the entire book.
Why can't superstitious people keep their faith inside metaphysics where it actually has validity, instead of spilling it all over actual material reality?
As long as Ubuntu can't use iTunes (and no, not some other content mall that doesn't have all that iTunes has), Ubuntu can't compete with Windows for the home user market, or probably the school market, or even for a lot of the business market.
Yes, Apple's content monopoly is the key to protecting Windows' OS monopoly. The world is as strange as it is round.
Except the Democratic governor was "appalled", and halted the practice once he found out.
Republicans are never appalled, except by people exercising our rights, and never halt a tyrannical practice, even when found out.
Tom Ridge was the first Homeland Security chief, installed by Bush/Cheney. He's the guy who helped Bush/Cheney fake terror alerts timed to win elections. Ridge was Pennsylvania's governor until shortly before he headed Homeland Security, after decades at the top of Pennsylvania politics and police.
The PA Homeland Security department is completely compliant with Tom Ridge's way of doing business.