I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
You are missing the point. You seem to think that this is a bad idea just because no one will ever care about the data. Um, I'll strongly disagree with you. You even state that no one will want to watch you go to work every day.
Let me give you an example. You walk to work every day. One day you are mugged and beaten up and everything removable on you is taken. The police show up in 10-15 min. after your vit. signs show that you are dead. Let's give the system credit and have it dial 911 and submit a police/emergency response the moment that your body recongizes the danger of being mugged. I'd say we'd still need 5-10 minutes transit time for the cops to come to your aid. Well, then it is just "clean up." Well, your handy dandy memory recorder has the entire thing on file and so they send out a BOLO for the suspect.
You could change the scene up and have the mugger actually destory your memory recorder because that's been the common means of catching criminals. Well, the police will then ask for a search warrant for all all recorders that could have viewed the crime or the suspect up to a few hours previous just to note all potential suspects. Depending on how crowded the area was, the police should be able to pick up some record of the crime.
I could see uses for this in a thought control state either a police state or a religious one as well. I'd like the tech just for CYA purposes. You could release your record to clear yourself fairly easily of some crimes. Of course more complicated crimes would crop up after awhile.
If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Individuals can be terrorists. Do you think we'd actually damage our trade relationship with China over this? Hah, I could actually see our government handing theirs a list of "targets" and then using the entire Chinese space defensive tests as an excuse to pour money into space military R&D rather than NASA. If we tried to treat China as a rouge state, it would mean war, which would be the stupidest move ever if we went down that path. We depend on China for alot of cheap crap. Maybe in some respects an economic embargo with China would help our domestic economy, but I think it would do far more harm than good. I'm hoping that the US gov. would just react that we need to build better/cheaper/disposable space assests.
You can't blame the Religious Right for Lieberman's stance on game censorship. At least, not the conventional Religious Christian Right. You may recall Lieberman is well-known for being Jewish...
Um, that doesn't make any sense. I voted against Gore mainly cause the issue wasn't even on Bush's radar. Though Lieberman was making it a big part of the morals issue that he wanted to bring into the white house. Every time that I researched Lieberman he seemed just as "religious right" except Jewish instead of Christian and Democrat instead of Republican. That made him scarier to me because Democrats are on the lookout for Republic Religious folks, but would overlook one of their own doing the same thing. What's bad it that now the Christain Religious Right has gotten into it because of nudity. Grrr. It's almost to the point where I'd like Clinton back. Nah, I've got a better idea. Paris Hilton for President! That says it all right there.
(Of course, I think that Harrison Ford should run for President. I think Harrison Ford would win it just because the average citizen has seen him in movies playing the President. All he would have to do is be a very middle man and he'd get elected.)
That is true. A lot of applications do not heavily use multithreading. But, in the scientific community a lot of applications require it.
If anything, this will be the one great thing to come out of 8+ core desktop systems. I honestly don't think "most" apps even pretend to use more than 1 core very well. Once 8+ cores are one your bare bones Dell home PC then I'd expect to see everything under the sun start to be multithreaded. With the expectation of 32+ or 64+ cores in a decade time, then I could see alot of those little downloadable apps actually being designed to run in the background on just any given core. I'm actually eager to see some of the programming shifts that would take place because of this. From what I've read mostly/. is concerned about the memory bus not beening wide or fast enough to feed an 80 core chip. I'm more interested in "background" processes or algorithms designed just to load and run back there and only occasionally talk with other chips. I'm not worried that we can't figure it out. I'm kinda disappointed that we'd have to have 80+ cores out for a decade or so before we really even start to scratch the surface of what we can do with them. Right now, everyone is thinking of hey you can't breakevery problem into parallel tasks. Well, what if we make an algorithm breakthrough that says we can? But we only find that out after having all that processing at hand? The good news is that all those supercomputer folks have been researching into this area for years. The bad part is that even they'll be surprised when your Joe Average CS person suddenly has access to that type of system. We don't know, yet what it'll really excel at. We'll figure it out after it is sold to 5% of the US public.;)
Just like it did with HDTV standards and the US cell phone market, eh?
While I agree that the law in question is bad, blind faith in the free market, while fashionable, is misplaced.
Um bad examples. HDTV isn't wanted by US consumers. The free market has been working to keep it out. Most people would give.02$ more per TV for a feature, but not $2,000 more for that feature.
Your US cell phone market is a slightly better example. We are drastically behind with our cell phones. What really startles me though is the really dense cities like New York should have cell grids as good or better than other countries. I'm fairly pleased with how its been working out except that we look really stupid when the Europeans with different countries can have standards and things like cell phones work between them. I'm kinda of mixed though because the US had too much land to re-wire. We really need to let other countries do the R&D for 2-3 generations of cell phone before we build anything really long lasting.
So here's where this differs from a traditional "sin" tax. Usually, harmful products like alcohol primarily harm the user. Coca-Cola, for example, does not harm anyone who does not buy it. Oil harms everyone regardless of whether or not they buy it.
Politican's harm everyone that pays taxs. Vehicles can kill up to about 10 people at the most in one event. Tobacco harms the user, and those that are physically close to them. Stupid people harm more people than politicans. Next thing, you'll want to be taxing coal, logging, farmers for all the "wastes" that they release. What next suing Earth for having natural events that level cities? I'd like to see them try that one.
They will be forbidden by the law to pass the cost on to consumers, so this will NOT raise gas prices. So, to recap: 1) oil companies have to pay their fair share to improve the environment; 2) the tax cannot be passed on to cunsumers; 3) This will benefit researchers and universities Do not be fooled by the anti-prop 87 propoganda.
Um, I hate to rain on your parade. That's one of the stupidest things/beliefs that I've ever heard off. Why? The cost will be passed onto their customers through one means or another reguardless of what the average CA citizen thinks. That's basic economics. Oh, if you heartless CA folks really think about it, you'll be the cause of price increases for all those companies consumers to pay for the CA state tax. Personally, I think that the oil companies have nothing against funding their own R&D programs into alt energy sources. What they have is against funding alt energy sources that will make others money at their loss. I'd complain against that long and loudly if I was them as well. Heck, I'd complain long and loudly if I was a consumer of any of those companies in neighboring states!
The deciding issue between Gore vs Bush in the first election for me was that Lieberman was for strong video game ratings/censorship in the name of it's for the children. Or let's ban all those somewhat violent games because it leads folks to think Republican thoughts of upgrading the military or bigger boom toys.
There just wasn't enough negatives between the 2 to force me to pick one or the other. They were both "middle of the road" for their respective parties at the the time. The only thing worse though is for "Christians" to censor games "for the childern." Kids may get violent thoughts or see sexually related pics in games if our group doesn't censor their entire industry.
Damn, I hate censors of all parties. Let the kids see the violence, sex, hate, and langauage. Let them see humanity at it's worst. Nah, cause then all the kids would really critically think about what limits the government wants on the liberties of the average citizen and that's not what either party wants.
Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money. Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.
The sad thing is it would have worked perfectly if they started the system out at $250-300.
Um, I love reading futurist's visions of the future. They are just too funny. Here is a game that I like to play. Pick out how many seperate "predictions" the futurist made. Check off the ones you think we'd actually do in the next 5-10 years. If possible, try to find any of his work 5-10 years old and do the same process on it except see how many of his predictions actually came true.
Breifing scanning through the article, it looks like the guy is into robots, AI, bio-enginnering and implant tech. I think that the only one that could be considered off is the robot percentage of the population. Here a brief thing to think about What's the population of land line phones in your home? What is the population of old or active cell phones in your home? I'm more curious if those vacuum cleaner robots improve to where my kids don't have to clean up their rooms before you'd unleash one. I doubt one of those would make it through my home. I'm more interested in little R2D2 type robots that basically is a drink/dinner tray that also puts the dishes into the dishwasher and could put the dishes up afterwards. I don't want a C3P0 around my house. One thing that this guy doesn't quite grasp is that AI and "faking it" are completly different. We'd more likely be able to build a humaniod feeling body that is basically something we most likely already have in use just applied differently. The big robot hurdles that the Japanese are working on/ironing out is having a robot walk around on 2 legs or move around somewhat like a human. Complete human-like movement doesn't even mean that it has an AI though it's just well programed or a set of movement subroutines. I'd predict that we will more likely have "sex bots" that can "gracefully walk around," "feels human to the touch", and perform various sexual acts before we figure out any of the basics of AI. The thing is we could build a robot that "fakes it" or is good enough for the purpose, but doesn't have any AI what so ever. Think of having a lifesized Sims character running around your place with a better body and better movement, but about all that's going on in its head is little tiny thought ballons. Nah, bad comparison some people would think those thought ballons mean them things are actually thinking.
Russia's nuclear arsenal has dwindled rapidly, however due to economic issues and the hard work of Senator Lugar and his Nunn-Lugar Cooperative which has been using US tax dollars to PAY the Russians to disarm (on fo the few use of my tax dollars I approve of).
I agree. I don't mind the government of Russia having nukes, but if they can't afford to watch them or aren't paying their military what those nukes would go on the black market, I'd much rather spend a few billion for them to be disarmed.
Part two deals with disarmament. The US has decreased it's stockpile considerably and continues to do so. The Bush administration was the first to try and reverse this although they seem to have had that idea squashed in Congress.
I'm pro nuke, but I'm against city busters. I think we need more tactical usable nukes. Nukes are the weapon that we can't use because they are too powerful and have tradionally had too much long term cleanup involved. I'd like to see some R&D in what would basically be "clean" nukes for use in artilley.
The Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (CANNWFZ) is being opposed by the US, France, and the UK on grounds that four of the nations are part of the 1992 Tashkent Collective Security Treaty with Russia which requires Russian nuclear weapons to be used in the event of ANY hostilities as aid to those nations. The CANWFZ specifically allows that treay to stay put.
Um, I don't see why those countries shouldn't pass something like that for themselves. It just means that they are "safe" from nukes only as long as Russia has any to politically "defend" them with. If the US, Britian, or France had a real reason to use nukes in the region and Russia didn't want to get involved with a fight with any of those nations, then Russia would just pass on their other treaty. I'd think Russia would actually go to some lengths to keep the region somewhat peaceful just becase they don't want to have to offensively use nukes agains those that could really harm Russia. You are back to MAD or atleast a nice political stand off.
The ironic thing is that only the US has hundreds of thousands of Marines that can be deployed and a strong worldwide military deployment capability -- eliminating nukes will not weaken that capability."
What's the great nice thing about having city buster nukes? Not really having to use them. China, India, or Russia "could" easily field an army that dwarfs that of the US. The US has never wanted to lose any of their soliders. Lately, it's been any military has been tried to be used to change military policy. I could actually see the US developing nuke powered combat robots that were remotely controlled from the US. Think something along the lines of BOLOs just because folks don't want US lives "in danger." The US would be alot scarier internationally if we could build and deploy combat droids. We really don't want to use nukes or any military men on the ground. We would send in millions of combat droids though without thinking twice except for the economic cost.
The days when the US had 40% of world GDP are over; your relative share is falling, and is going to keep falling for years. So learning how to get good agreements is going to be increasingly valuable for you.
Well, for the rich and smart investors, they can own most of those "developing" and/or growing countries. I'd really be curious to what.01% really runs the world. I'd think that same.01% of people will still be running the world in 200 years with only slight changes here and there.
I recall quite clearly the hatred of Reagan, the labeling of him as an idiot cowboy, a religous nut who will bring about a theocracy,... He was the "antichrist" to the American and European left. I was little during the Reagan years. I remember it mostly as the old guy President with the flag behind him alot. Nothing else. I wonder what my kids have thought of Clinton and Bush. Most likely the same.
I recall the horror for the notion that the Soviet state was something to oppose and do away with rather than peacefully coexist with. Um, actually it is a great PR concept and it'll get the US off our butts "doing something." Let's be honest with ourselves, we don't work best without some one to oppose or bet. Without the USSR to fill that role, we really need China there to compete against. I don't mean anything stupid like go to war with China. I mean that the US needs someone or anyone to bring the country into the mindset of lets do new and great things.
In short, for those of you who were not in high school and college during Reagan's years, he was treated and referred to much like Bush Jr. today. However Reagan was a far better public speaker and came off a little better. Hated and reviled by the left much as the right hates and reviles Clinton.
So is it just that nearly any republican president what wants some updated military hardware gets labeled the same?
The answer isn't less nuclear weapons, per se -- we'll always find a new way to kill each other. The answer is in getting people who want to kill others indescriminantly out of power.
Well, that's not going to happen. I'm just glad we didn't glaze the entire middle east with nukes after 9/11 myself. Humans are that stupid and vengeful. It's really surprising that we didn't change our nuclear policy just because of 9/11. I've thought that we've over-reacting in alot of negative ways, but some of the worst are those that would have liked to just wipe out all Middle Eastern life for 9/11. In some respects, its a good thing that we haven't developed space yet. We'd have actually used kinetic strikes if we had them in our inventory of useable weapons. Our problem is that we are liable to invent a real planet buster or atleast a contient wreaker and have not developed an off planet long term survival base. We'd end up using those really big weapons given enough time.
I know its not what your looking for but the Justice Dept. has a list of Principal FOIA contacts at Federal Agencies here. It is the most complete list of FOIA contacts I have seen and is where I go to start most FOIA requests.
Thank's for the link. I've never personally used FOIA, but I've read articles and such that were written because they had FOIA to use. My vision would be a simple statement, but really hard to actually do. I'd want one big web site with all government FOIA data already there. They could even pass a few more FOIA related laws to have all the associated agencies submitted all their FOIA data into this massive FOIA website/agency. I'd think that it would take $100 M to get off the ground and a few million a year to run, but the long term benefits should be worth it.
I don't think the funding angle works. If a scientist publishes a bad paper and other scientists can not duplicate his results then his standing diminshes and his funding dries up. What bad paper? I'm mainly talking that to actually give a "good" paper and not a "political" paper it would require long term 30-50 years of monitoring and then a big paper near the end of scientist's life. That we've been giving these guys funding since the 70s. I'd wait until 2020 or 2030 before making any long term decisions on this short term data collected. I'd actually believe that we know next to nothing about long term global/local climate data. Give them another 200-300 years and then we'll start scratching the surface.
On the other hand any scientist who writes a paper debunking global warming instantly becomes rich because the right wing and the corporations throw money at him like it's going out of business. I'm not quite sure of that claim. I know that our US companies are too short sighted. We need a few companies that are looking at the long term. I'd honestly bet that most of them aren't pouring money into debuking global warming per se, but to refine what they really want to know. The corporates want to know if it'll really be as bad as religious "global warming" will end all the good first world civilizations on the planet crowd make it out to be. They really don't want that crowd making any rules or regulations that their industries have to follow. That's basic common sense right there.
I don't have stats but I bet right now there is more money in doing research that debunks global warming then research that supports it.
That's an "evil" statement right there. When I say "funding," I mean for more research doing the same long term monitoring. I don't mean that any given scientist is for or against global warming. I mean that we just need alot more long term data. The funding is just so the basics take place not for political reports.
Faster processors are great, but when will we see massive improvements in data storage.
Um, what kinda of "massive improvements" in data storage where you looking for? I'd say by the time these things come out that we will be seeing hard drives with more than a TB. I'm more curious if the HD marketing will switch to TB or keep things in GB for awhile. Did you mean massive R/W speed improvements? I don't think that'll be as much of an issue. We really need 16-32 GB of RAM or maybe that magnetic ram that pops into the tech news every once and awhile. Or did you mean for removable optical data storage so we'd have optical media discs at.5-1 TB? I see the market for storage splitting into speed on one hand and storage volume on the other. I don't think most people other than techies and gamers will go the speed route. The average home user/ small business will go down the most storage volume for the buck. Actually, I see the business market going for things alike the Dell DataSafe with mulitple drives just as another level of reducancy. I see all those as data storage improvements. What kinda of HD improvements were you wanting? I really want that holographic storage that IBM research does an article or two about every few years. That'll leave this USB Flash drives in the dust. I'd love to have a Holographic key chain that had.5-1 TB of storage on it.
I have yet to see a credible answer as to why the majority of the best scientific minds in the world would somehow be involved in a conspiracy of inventing climate change. Why?
One word: funding.
Have we lost faith in the scientific process? Do we disbelieve that it is possible to make hypotheses and discover through investigation the nature of our reality?
Um, I take it that most people are just fed up with scientists and the entire global warming debate at all. They've been fedup since shortly after global warming has been announced to be a really long term problem. Most early research (70s and 80s) was stating nothing to worry about for a good 200-300 years and more like 1,000-2,000 down the line. Let's be honest. Humanity isn't at the stage, yet to objectively defend itself against really long term threats. We are fairly good at personal survival, and regional survival. China is our longest lasting cultural entity that we have. Their government has gone through many changes. We need a governmental/social structure that will last/have actual real power 500-1,000 years down the line. The only institution that I can really think of lasting that long is the Cathloic church. We need an organization devoted to preserving humanity against all unlikely and likely long term threats.
People who keep repeating that climate change is a conspiracy remind me of someone who has just been told they have a cancer and are in denial. WAKE UP! Ugh.
Back to my "funding" again. It slightly is a conspiracy, but not in the tradional sense. We really should design and build long term monitoring of the Earth's biosphere. I mean build a system to monitor this planet for a good 1-2K years. We really should have built such a system in the mid 60s or early 70s even if the system had to double as a spy stat network. The truth is we don't know. I've been fedup with the subject after trying to stay somewhat current. I took numerous HS classes in the early 90s. They were still not sure and every scientist wanted funding to establish a longer term base line. Our knowledgable people didn't think that we had nearly enough data. From what I've seen since then. I still think that we don't have enough data, but political folks are wanting to cut funding of all that long term monitoring. Which means, that to ensure future support they have to show a need/cause to the politicans. I'm kinda mixed myself. I think that alot of global climating monitoring should be cut and we should build several really long term stats to do the monitoring instead of all the Phds doing field work. We have alot of brain power that I think should be redirected to other uses. If we could extend the human life span to 200-300 years then we would start taking a more serious interest in global warming if only for personal survival.
This sounds like a really good first step. It's a pity that it's taken this long for them to get around to it though. What's really bad though is that it'll most likely take years for this to roll out. What I'd really like is a www.fia.gov that was a single site that any citizen could request and instantly recieve a copy of all FIA information that the government: federal, state, and local can legally give out to citizens. I'd actually like them to spend a few hundred million on a project like that.
You don't need to leave your phone on. You don't need to buy a phone with a camera. Admittedly, most people do both, and the real problem with your idea is bandwidth, which will be fixed if/when 3G/4G is commonplace. Also, most people have phones in bags or pockets while not using them, so at least the cameras would be worthless then.
I know that we aren't quite there yet. I can easily envision 5, 10, 15 years down the line. It will likely be prototyped in other countries with better cellphone grids though. The thing is most folks don't want to pay for all the "services" that cell phone companies would love to charge you for. I'm working my up to affording just a cell phone for me in addition to the one that my wife has. I could afford another $5-10 a month but not much more. The cell phone companies aren't going to build it just cause. There will have to be a damned for that much bandwidth. Once it is there, then it will be abused. I wouldn't even be worried about the government trying to download and save everything for a good 10-20 years down the line. There would just be too much information there to sort through. You'd have to develop some program to listen to all the conversations in the country and decide which ones are really important to send your thought police/terrorist task force after. We might be able to hand the data storage requirements of storing all the conversations now. I don't think that we are anywhere near actually automating the process of listening through millions of recordings though.
So if no one buys a PS3, Sony obviously won't produce six million. If people buy them and buy NO games, NO blu-ray discs, and NO accessories (extra controllers, etc.) then Sony will be in quite a bit of trouble.
And what idiot will be going out and buying a PS3 without buying any PS game or accessory? If you could afford to do that, then more power to you. If anyone actually bought one though, they'd end up keeping it and buying a few games. Then they'd rant at how they blew so much money for a PS3.
But we don't have telescreens in every room that can listen and watch us. Yes, they listen to our phone calls without a warrant, but no, you don't have to guard your facial expression for fear of being tortured in Room 101. Saying that our situation is that bad trivializes the suffering and deaths of those whose situation is that bad.
One thing even Hari Seldon's predictions couldn't forsee is a radical tech advance. It was stated several times if a radically new tech was created all of his predictions wouldn't be nearlly as useful. I'll have you know that we don't need telescreens in every room. It's becoming where you have to have a cellphone to communicate in the industrialized world. My wife has one, but I don't. I really feel the need/want for one, but would like to have one on the just in case prinicple. Our tech hasn't gotten their yet. With every adult carrying around a cellphone with video/camera phone why do you need a telescreen in any room?
Not long ago there was a fuss about the FBI using that OnStar or a similiar service to bug a vehicle. The evidence got thrown out not because the court had anything against the FBI using the service to bug the car, but that due to the FBI bugging the services usual features weren't avaible. So that basically means that as long as the cell phone companies can make sure that you have total access to the service that you've paid for that the FBI or other bodies could be using them for monitoring devices.
I doubt that we'll ever get as bad as 1984 was, but I do see the tech being here and only slight modifications made to new cell phone models would be required to have the effect of the telescreen in every room. There are new cell phone models every year so slipping them into most hands wouldn't be a problem. You could even have kid phones that were designed to call only their parents, a handful of friends, and emergency response personnel that everyone knew where GPS tracked. Then all you need is have several kidnappings stopped because of the tech. and soon every kid would have a GPS tracker with any other features that could be included.
But in reality we have clean-cut, Christian soldiers torturing people to death because they think they're fighting for freedom and democracy. People will do horrible things for noble words, and still sleep like babies at night. Evil is more complex and insidious than Orwell made it out to be.
We don't really have to become like 1984. The public attention span seems to be about 15 seconds. So as long as an issue can be sound bited down and easily forgotten most people wouldn't bother to change the system or take action on things that should bother them.
Anyway, rambling aside, our world is not like the one Orwell created in his books. There are similarities, yes, but ours differs from his in nature and degree. If you use up all your superlatives now, if you shout "tyranny" now, what words will you use when it gets worse?
Our system will be much, much better/smoother than Orwell's because ours has millions of people working on it. Orwell's only had his own visions to go on.
As for the lawsuit, isn't that the whole debate about the net neutrality issue? What is different from SBC trying to extort more money from Google for data passing over its lines than AT&T trying to extort more money from Comcast or RoadRunner for the same reason?
Different issue. Over Comcast's packetcable thing, the data of the call only goes over Comcast's backbone(and no other part of the net), then it is handed off as a normal phone call.
This comment just struck me as very, very dangerous. I'd hope that the/. crowd would recongize the difference between net neutrality and what Comcast is doing with it's VOIP service. Basically, Comcast is keeping its internal data packets on their own network as long as possible so that they don't have to interface with other ISPs and have negative effects like loss of service or just having to pay for network connection charges.
Net Neutrality is all those third party networks where charging Comcast to maintain the high priority of the data packets or otherwise down grading the data packets priority, which would reduce Comcast's VOIP service.
I understand the difference. I'll hope most of/. understands the difference. Would my mom or more importantly my congress person know and understand the difference?
Superpower wars aren't about military force anymore(if they ever were). It's about economic force.
Are we ahead or not at the moment? In raw US money terms, it may seem like it. Though if you compare relative incomes and how far your money can go in your local economy, are we still ahead? Every time that I see any product with a "Made in China" label I feel like we are losing the long term economic war. China has the numbers advantage on us. There isn't anything special about being in the US that makes us smarter or more productive. China can copy everything that we have left that gives us an edge on the global market. Then what would we have left?
I don't worry about China's human rights policy or their government. I worry that long term say another 200-500 years that China's economy will still be going strong and really expanding out into the rest of the solar system while the US just pretends that we are the global superpower because by money terms our dollar is higher and we'll continue to reap those kinds of benefits for the rich and upper classes. For the rest of us, we'll be looking to China for our standards of labor. Whatever we do to compete has to be cheaper or vastly better than what they can do. I just don't see that happening without some really radical tech improvements.
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I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
You are missing the point. You seem to think that this is a bad idea just because no one will ever care about the data. Um, I'll strongly disagree with you. You even state that no one will want to watch you go to work every day.
Let me give you an example. You walk to work every day. One day you are mugged and beaten up and everything removable on you is taken. The police show up in 10-15 min. after your vit. signs show that you are dead. Let's give the system credit and have it dial 911 and submit a police/emergency response the moment that your body recongizes the danger of being mugged. I'd say we'd still need 5-10 minutes transit time for the cops to come to your aid. Well, then it is just "clean up." Well, your handy dandy memory recorder has the entire thing on file and so they send out a BOLO for the suspect.
You could change the scene up and have the mugger actually destory your memory recorder because that's been the common means of catching criminals. Well, the police will then ask for a search warrant for all all recorders that could have viewed the crime or the suspect up to a few hours previous just to note all potential suspects. Depending on how crowded the area was, the police should be able to pick up some record of the crime.
I could see uses for this in a thought control state either a police state or a religious one as well. I'd like the tech just for CYA purposes. You could release your record to clear yourself fairly easily of some crimes. Of course more complicated crimes would crop up after awhile.
If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Individuals can be terrorists. Do you think we'd actually damage our trade relationship with China over this? Hah, I could actually see our government handing theirs a list of "targets" and then using the entire Chinese space defensive tests as an excuse to pour money into space military R&D rather than NASA. If we tried to treat China as a rouge state, it would mean war, which would be the stupidest move ever if we went down that path. We depend on China for alot of cheap crap. Maybe in some respects an economic embargo with China would help our domestic economy, but I think it would do far more harm than good. I'm hoping that the US gov. would just react that we need to build better/cheaper/disposable space assests.
You can't blame the Religious Right for Lieberman's stance on game censorship. At least, not the conventional Religious Christian Right. You may recall Lieberman is well-known for being Jewish ...
Um, that doesn't make any sense. I voted against Gore mainly cause the issue wasn't even on Bush's radar. Though Lieberman was making it a big part of the morals issue that he wanted to bring into the white house. Every time that I researched Lieberman he seemed just as "religious right" except Jewish instead of Christian and Democrat instead of Republican. That made him scarier to me because Democrats are on the lookout for Republic Religious folks, but would overlook one of their own doing the same thing. What's bad it that now the Christain Religious Right has gotten into it because of nudity. Grrr. It's almost to the point where I'd like Clinton back. Nah, I've got a better idea. Paris Hilton for President! That says it all right there.
(Of course, I think that Harrison Ford should run for President. I think Harrison Ford would win it just because the average citizen has seen him in movies playing the President. All he would have to do is be a very middle man and he'd get elected.)
That is true. A lot of applications do not heavily use multithreading. But, in the scientific community a lot of applications require it.
/. is concerned about the memory bus not beening wide or fast enough to feed an 80 core chip. I'm more interested in "background" processes or algorithms designed just to load and run back there and only occasionally talk with other chips. I'm not worried that we can't figure it out. I'm kinda disappointed that we'd have to have 80+ cores out for a decade or so before we really even start to scratch the surface of what we can do with them. Right now, everyone is thinking of hey you can't breakevery problem into parallel tasks. Well, what if we make an algorithm breakthrough that says we can? But we only find that out after having all that processing at hand? The good news is that all those supercomputer folks have been researching into this area for years. The bad part is that even they'll be surprised when your Joe Average CS person suddenly has access to that type of system. We don't know, yet what it'll really excel at. We'll figure it out after it is sold to 5% of the US public. ;)
If anything, this will be the one great thing to come out of 8+ core desktop systems. I honestly don't think "most" apps even pretend to use more than 1 core very well. Once 8+ cores are one your bare bones Dell home PC then I'd expect to see everything under the sun start to be multithreaded. With the expectation of 32+ or 64+ cores in a decade time, then I could see alot of those little downloadable apps actually being designed to run in the background on just any given core. I'm actually eager to see some of the programming shifts that would take place because of this. From what I've read mostly
Just like it did with HDTV standards and the US cell phone market, eh?
.02$ more per TV for a feature, but not $2,000 more for that feature.
While I agree that the law in question is bad, blind faith in the free market, while fashionable, is misplaced.
Um bad examples. HDTV isn't wanted by US consumers. The free market has been working to keep it out. Most people would give
Your US cell phone market is a slightly better example. We are drastically behind with our cell phones. What really startles me though is the really dense cities like New York should have cell grids as good or better than other countries. I'm fairly pleased with how its been working out except that we look really stupid when the Europeans with different countries can have standards and things like cell phones work between them. I'm kinda of mixed though because the US had too much land to re-wire. We really need to let other countries do the R&D for 2-3 generations of cell phone before we build anything really long lasting.
So here's where this differs from a traditional "sin" tax. Usually, harmful products like alcohol primarily harm the user. Coca-Cola, for example, does not harm anyone who does not buy it. Oil harms everyone regardless of whether or not they buy it.
Politican's harm everyone that pays taxs. Vehicles can kill up to about 10 people at the most in one event. Tobacco harms the user, and those that are physically close to them. Stupid people harm more people than politicans. Next thing, you'll want to be taxing coal, logging, farmers for all the "wastes" that they release. What next suing Earth for having natural events that level cities? I'd like to see them try that one.
They will be forbidden by the law to pass the cost on to consumers, so this will NOT raise gas prices. So, to recap: 1) oil companies have to pay their fair share to improve the environment; 2) the tax cannot be passed on to cunsumers; 3) This will benefit researchers and universities Do not be fooled by the anti-prop 87 propoganda.
Um, I hate to rain on your parade. That's one of the stupidest things/beliefs that I've ever heard off. Why? The cost will be passed onto their customers through one means or another reguardless of what the average CA citizen thinks. That's basic economics. Oh, if you heartless CA folks really think about it, you'll be the cause of price increases for all those companies consumers to pay for the CA state tax. Personally, I think that the oil companies have nothing against funding their own R&D programs into alt energy sources. What they have is against funding alt energy sources that will make others money at their loss. I'd complain against that long and loudly if I was them as well. Heck, I'd complain long and loudly if I was a consumer of any of those companies in neighboring states!
The deciding issue between Gore vs Bush in the first election for me was that Lieberman was for strong video game ratings/censorship in the name of it's for the children. Or let's ban all those somewhat violent games because it leads folks to think Republican thoughts of upgrading the military or bigger boom toys.
There just wasn't enough negatives between the 2 to force me to pick one or the other. They were both "middle of the road" for their respective parties at the the time. The only thing worse though is for "Christians" to censor games "for the childern." Kids may get violent thoughts or see sexually related pics in games if our group doesn't censor their entire industry.
Damn, I hate censors of all parties. Let the kids see the violence, sex, hate, and langauage. Let them see humanity at it's worst. Nah, cause then all the kids would really critically think about what limits the government wants on the liberties of the average citizen and that's not what either party wants.
Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money. Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.
The sad thing is it would have worked perfectly if they started the system out at $250-300.
Um, I love reading futurist's visions of the future. They are just too funny. Here is a game that I like to play. Pick out how many seperate "predictions" the futurist made. Check off the ones you think we'd actually do in the next 5-10 years. If possible, try to find any of his work 5-10 years old and do the same process on it except see how many of his predictions actually came true.
Breifing scanning through the article, it looks like the guy is into robots, AI, bio-enginnering and implant tech. I think that the only one that could be considered off is the robot percentage of the population. Here a brief thing to think about What's the population of land line phones in your home? What is the population of old or active cell phones in your home? I'm more curious if those vacuum cleaner robots improve to where my kids don't have to clean up their rooms before you'd unleash one. I doubt one of those would make it through my home. I'm more interested in little R2D2 type robots that basically is a drink/dinner tray that also puts the dishes into the dishwasher and could put the dishes up afterwards. I don't want a C3P0 around my house. One thing that this guy doesn't quite grasp is that AI and "faking it" are completly different. We'd more likely be able to build a humaniod feeling body that is basically something we most likely already have in use just applied differently. The big robot hurdles that the Japanese are working on/ironing out is having a robot walk around on 2 legs or move around somewhat like a human. Complete human-like movement doesn't even mean that it has an AI though it's just well programed or a set of movement subroutines. I'd predict that we will more likely have "sex bots" that can "gracefully walk around," "feels human to the touch", and perform various sexual acts before we figure out any of the basics of AI. The thing is we could build a robot that "fakes it" or is good enough for the purpose, but doesn't have any AI what so ever. Think of having a lifesized Sims character running around your place with a better body and better movement, but about all that's going on in its head is little tiny thought ballons. Nah, bad comparison some people would think those thought ballons mean them things are actually thinking.
Russia's nuclear arsenal has dwindled rapidly, however due to economic issues and the hard work of Senator Lugar and his Nunn-Lugar Cooperative which has been using US tax dollars to PAY the Russians to disarm (on fo the few use of my tax dollars I approve of).
I agree. I don't mind the government of Russia having nukes, but if they can't afford to watch them or aren't paying their military what those nukes would go on the black market, I'd much rather spend a few billion for them to be disarmed.
Part two deals with disarmament. The US has decreased it's stockpile considerably and continues to do so. The Bush administration was the first to try and reverse this although they seem to have had that idea squashed in Congress.
I'm pro nuke, but I'm against city busters. I think we need more tactical usable nukes. Nukes are the weapon that we can't use because they are too powerful and have tradionally had too much long term cleanup involved. I'd like to see some R&D in what would basically be "clean" nukes for use in artilley.
The Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (CANNWFZ) is being opposed by the US, France, and the UK on grounds that four of the nations are part of the 1992 Tashkent Collective Security Treaty with Russia which requires Russian nuclear weapons to be used in the event of ANY hostilities as aid to those nations. The CANWFZ specifically allows that treay to stay put.
Um, I don't see why those countries shouldn't pass something like that for themselves. It just means that they are "safe" from nukes only as long as Russia has any to politically "defend" them with. If the US, Britian, or France had a real reason to use nukes in the region and Russia didn't want to get involved with a fight with any of those nations, then Russia would just pass on their other treaty. I'd think Russia would actually go to some lengths to keep the region somewhat peaceful just becase they don't want to have to offensively use nukes agains those that could really harm Russia. You are back to MAD or atleast a nice political stand off.
The ironic thing is that only the US has hundreds of thousands of Marines that can be deployed and a strong worldwide military deployment capability -- eliminating nukes will not weaken that capability."
What's the great nice thing about having city buster nukes? Not really having to use them. China, India, or Russia "could" easily field an army that dwarfs that of the US. The US has never wanted to lose any of their soliders. Lately, it's been any military has been tried to be used to change military policy. I could actually see the US developing nuke powered combat robots that were remotely controlled from the US. Think something along the lines of BOLOs just because folks don't want US lives "in danger." The US would be alot scarier internationally if we could build and deploy combat droids. We really don't want to use nukes or any military men on the ground. We would send in millions of combat droids though without thinking twice except for the economic cost.
The days when the US had 40% of world GDP are over; your relative share is falling, and is going to keep falling for years. So learning how to get good agreements is going to be increasingly valuable for you.
.01% really runs the world. I'd think that same .01% of people will still be running the world in 200 years with only slight changes here and there.
Well, for the rich and smart investors, they can own most of those "developing" and/or growing countries. I'd really be curious to what
I recall quite clearly the hatred of Reagan, the labeling of him as an idiot cowboy, a religous nut who will bring about a theocracy, ... He was the "antichrist" to the American and European left.
I was little during the Reagan years. I remember it mostly as the old guy President with the flag behind him alot. Nothing else. I wonder what my kids have thought of Clinton and Bush. Most likely the same.
I recall the horror for the notion that the Soviet state was something to oppose and do away with rather than peacefully coexist with.
Um, actually it is a great PR concept and it'll get the US off our butts "doing something." Let's be honest with ourselves, we don't work best without some one to oppose or bet. Without the USSR to fill that role, we really need China there to compete against. I don't mean anything stupid like go to war with China. I mean that the US needs someone or anyone to bring the country into the mindset of lets do new and great things.
In short, for those of you who were not in high school and college during Reagan's years, he was treated and referred to much like Bush Jr. today. However Reagan was a far better public speaker and came off a little better. Hated and reviled by the left much as the right hates and reviles Clinton.
So is it just that nearly any republican president what wants some updated military hardware gets labeled the same?
The answer isn't less nuclear weapons, per se -- we'll always find a new way to kill each other. The answer is in getting people who want to kill others indescriminantly out of power.
Well, that's not going to happen. I'm just glad we didn't glaze the entire middle east with nukes after 9/11 myself. Humans are that stupid and vengeful. It's really surprising that we didn't change our nuclear policy just because of 9/11. I've thought that we've over-reacting in alot of negative ways, but some of the worst are those that would have liked to just wipe out all Middle Eastern life for 9/11. In some respects, its a good thing that we haven't developed space yet. We'd have actually used kinetic strikes if we had them in our inventory of useable weapons. Our problem is that we are liable to invent a real planet buster or atleast a contient wreaker and have not developed an off planet long term survival base. We'd end up using those really big weapons given enough time.
If I want security, I will be in a noisy open Jeep at 50 mph discussing the secrets with the other person I am communicating with.
I CAN'T HEAR YOU. CAN YOU SPEAK UP!
I know its not what your looking for but the Justice Dept. has a list of Principal FOIA contacts at Federal Agencies here. It is the most complete list of FOIA contacts I have seen and is where I go to start most FOIA requests.
Thank's for the link. I've never personally used FOIA, but I've read articles and such that were written because they had FOIA to use. My vision would be a simple statement, but really hard to actually do. I'd want one big web site with all government FOIA data already there. They could even pass a few more FOIA related laws to have all the associated agencies submitted all their FOIA data into this massive FOIA website/agency. I'd think that it would take $100 M to get off the ground and a few million a year to run, but the long term benefits should be worth it.
I don't think the funding angle works. If a scientist publishes a bad paper and other scientists can not duplicate his results then his standing diminshes and his funding dries up.
What bad paper? I'm mainly talking that to actually give a "good" paper and not a "political" paper it would require long term 30-50 years of monitoring and then a big paper near the end of scientist's life. That we've been giving these guys funding since the 70s. I'd wait until 2020 or 2030 before making any long term decisions on this short term data collected. I'd actually believe that we know next to nothing about long term global/local climate data. Give them another 200-300 years and then we'll start scratching the surface.
On the other hand any scientist who writes a paper debunking global warming instantly becomes rich because the right wing and the corporations throw money at him like it's going out of business.
I'm not quite sure of that claim. I know that our US companies are too short sighted. We need a few companies that are looking at the long term. I'd honestly bet that most of them aren't pouring money into debuking global warming per se, but to refine what they really want to know. The corporates want to know if it'll really be as bad as religious "global warming" will end all the good first world civilizations on the planet crowd make it out to be. They really don't want that crowd making any rules or regulations that their industries have to follow. That's basic common sense right there.
I don't have stats but I bet right now there is more money in doing research that debunks global warming then research that supports it.
That's an "evil" statement right there. When I say "funding," I mean for more research doing the same long term monitoring. I don't mean that any given scientist is for or against global warming. I mean that we just need alot more long term data. The funding is just so the basics take place not for political reports.
Faster processors are great, but when will we see massive improvements in data storage.
.5-1 TB? I see the market for storage splitting into speed on one hand and storage volume on the other. I don't think most people other than techies and gamers will go the speed route. The average home user/ small business will go down the most storage volume for the buck. Actually, I see the business market going for things alike the Dell DataSafe with mulitple drives just as another level of reducancy. I see all those as data storage improvements. What kinda of HD improvements were you wanting? I really want that holographic storage that IBM research does an article or two about every few years. That'll leave this USB Flash drives in the dust. I'd love to have a Holographic key chain that had .5-1 TB of storage on it.
Um, what kinda of "massive improvements" in data storage where you looking for? I'd say by the time these things come out that we will be seeing hard drives with more than a TB. I'm more curious if the HD marketing will switch to TB or keep things in GB for awhile. Did you mean massive R/W speed improvements? I don't think that'll be as much of an issue. We really need 16-32 GB of RAM or maybe that magnetic ram that pops into the tech news every once and awhile. Or did you mean for removable optical data storage so we'd have optical media discs at
I have yet to see a credible answer as to why the majority of the best scientific minds in the world would somehow be involved in a conspiracy of inventing climate change. Why?
One word: funding.
Have we lost faith in the scientific process? Do we disbelieve that it is possible to make hypotheses and discover through investigation the nature of our reality?
Um, I take it that most people are just fed up with scientists and the entire global warming debate at all. They've been fedup since shortly after global warming has been announced to be a really long term problem. Most early research (70s and 80s) was stating nothing to worry about for a good 200-300 years and more like 1,000-2,000 down the line. Let's be honest. Humanity isn't at the stage, yet to objectively defend itself against really long term threats. We are fairly good at personal survival, and regional survival. China is our longest lasting cultural entity that we have. Their government has gone through many changes. We need a governmental/social structure that will last/have actual real power 500-1,000 years down the line. The only institution that I can really think of lasting that long is the Cathloic church. We need an organization devoted to preserving humanity against all unlikely and likely long term threats.
People who keep repeating that climate change is a conspiracy remind me of someone who has just been told they have a cancer and are in denial. WAKE UP! Ugh.
Back to my "funding" again. It slightly is a conspiracy, but not in the tradional sense. We really should design and build long term monitoring of the Earth's biosphere. I mean build a system to monitor this planet for a good 1-2K years. We really should have built such a system in the mid 60s or early 70s even if the system had to double as a spy stat network. The truth is we don't know. I've been fedup with the subject after trying to stay somewhat current. I took numerous HS classes in the early 90s. They were still not sure and every scientist wanted funding to establish a longer term base line. Our knowledgable people didn't think that we had nearly enough data. From what I've seen since then. I still think that we don't have enough data, but political folks are wanting to cut funding of all that long term monitoring. Which means, that to ensure future support they have to show a need/cause to the politicans. I'm kinda mixed myself. I think that alot of global climating monitoring should be cut and we should build several really long term stats to do the monitoring instead of all the Phds doing field work. We have alot of brain power that I think should be redirected to other uses. If we could extend the human life span to 200-300 years then we would start taking a more serious interest in global warming if only for personal survival.
This sounds like a really good first step. It's a pity that it's taken this long for them to get around to it though. What's really bad though is that it'll most likely take years for this to roll out. What I'd really like is a www.fia.gov that was a single site that any citizen could request and instantly recieve a copy of all FIA information that the government: federal, state, and local can legally give out to citizens. I'd actually like them to spend a few hundred million on a project like that.
You don't need to leave your phone on. You don't need to buy a phone with a camera. Admittedly, most people do both, and the real problem with your idea is bandwidth, which will be fixed if/when 3G/4G is commonplace. Also, most people have phones in bags or pockets while not using them, so at least the cameras would be worthless then.
I know that we aren't quite there yet. I can easily envision 5, 10, 15 years down the line. It will likely be prototyped in other countries with better cellphone grids though. The thing is most folks don't want to pay for all the "services" that cell phone companies would love to charge you for. I'm working my up to affording just a cell phone for me in addition to the one that my wife has. I could afford another $5-10 a month but not much more. The cell phone companies aren't going to build it just cause. There will have to be a damned for that much bandwidth. Once it is there, then it will be abused. I wouldn't even be worried about the government trying to download and save everything for a good 10-20 years down the line. There would just be too much information there to sort through. You'd have to develop some program to listen to all the conversations in the country and decide which ones are really important to send your thought police/terrorist task force after. We might be able to hand the data storage requirements of storing all the conversations now. I don't think that we are anywhere near actually automating the process of listening through millions of recordings though.
So if no one buys a PS3, Sony obviously won't produce six million. If people buy them and buy NO games, NO blu-ray discs, and NO accessories (extra controllers, etc.) then Sony will be in quite a bit of trouble.
And what idiot will be going out and buying a PS3 without buying any PS game or accessory? If you could afford to do that, then more power to you. If anyone actually bought one though, they'd end up keeping it and buying a few games. Then they'd rant at how they blew so much money for a PS3.
But we don't have telescreens in every room that can listen and watch us. Yes, they listen to our phone calls without a warrant, but no, you don't have to guard your facial expression for fear of being tortured in Room 101. Saying that our situation is that bad trivializes the suffering and deaths of those whose situation is that bad.
One thing even Hari Seldon's predictions couldn't forsee is a radical tech advance. It was stated several times if a radically new tech was created all of his predictions wouldn't be nearlly as useful. I'll have you know that we don't need telescreens in every room. It's becoming where you have to have a cellphone to communicate in the industrialized world. My wife has one, but I don't. I really feel the need/want for one, but would like to have one on the just in case prinicple. Our tech hasn't gotten their yet. With every adult carrying around a cellphone with video/camera phone why do you need a telescreen in any room?
Not long ago there was a fuss about the FBI using that OnStar or a similiar service to bug a vehicle. The evidence got thrown out not because the court had anything against the FBI using the service to bug the car, but that due to the FBI bugging the services usual features weren't avaible. So that basically means that as long as the cell phone companies can make sure that you have total access to the service that you've paid for that the FBI or other bodies could be using them for monitoring devices.
I doubt that we'll ever get as bad as 1984 was, but I do see the tech being here and only slight modifications made to new cell phone models would be required to have the effect of the telescreen in every room. There are new cell phone models every year so slipping them into most hands wouldn't be a problem. You could even have kid phones that were designed to call only their parents, a handful of friends, and emergency response personnel that everyone knew where GPS tracked. Then all you need is have several kidnappings stopped because of the tech. and soon every kid would have a GPS tracker with any other features that could be included.
But in reality we have clean-cut, Christian soldiers torturing people to death because they think they're fighting for freedom and democracy. People will do horrible things for noble words, and still sleep like babies at night. Evil is more complex and insidious than Orwell made it out to be.
We don't really have to become like 1984. The public attention span seems to be about 15 seconds. So as long as an issue can be sound bited down and easily forgotten most people wouldn't bother to change the system or take action on things that should bother them.
Anyway, rambling aside, our world is not like the one Orwell created in his books. There are similarities, yes, but ours differs from his in nature and degree. If you use up all your superlatives now, if you shout "tyranny" now, what words will you use when it gets worse?
Our system will be much, much better/smoother than Orwell's because ours has millions of people working on it. Orwell's only had his own visions to go on.
As for the lawsuit, isn't that the whole debate about the net neutrality issue? What is different from SBC trying to extort more money from Google for data passing over its lines than AT&T trying to extort more money from Comcast or RoadRunner for the same reason?
/. crowd would recongize the difference between net neutrality and what Comcast is doing with it's VOIP service. Basically, Comcast is keeping its internal data packets on their own network as long as possible so that they don't have to interface with other ISPs and have negative effects like loss of service or just having to pay for network connection charges.
/. understands the difference. Would my mom or more importantly my congress person know and understand the difference?
Different issue. Over Comcast's packetcable thing, the data of the call only goes over Comcast's backbone(and no other part of the net), then it is handed off as a normal phone call.
This comment just struck me as very, very dangerous. I'd hope that the
Net Neutrality is all those third party networks where charging Comcast to maintain the high priority of the data packets or otherwise down grading the data packets priority, which would reduce Comcast's VOIP service.
I understand the difference. I'll hope most of
Superpower wars aren't about military force anymore(if they ever were). It's about economic force.
Are we ahead or not at the moment? In raw US money terms, it may seem like it. Though if you compare relative incomes and how far your money can go in your local economy, are we still ahead? Every time that I see any product with a "Made in China" label I feel like we are losing the long term economic war. China has the numbers advantage on us. There isn't anything special about being in the US that makes us smarter or more productive. China can copy everything that we have left that gives us an edge on the global market. Then what would we have left?
I don't worry about China's human rights policy or their government. I worry that long term say another 200-500 years that China's economy will still be going strong and really expanding out into the rest of the solar system while the US just pretends that we are the global superpower because by money terms our dollar is higher and we'll continue to reap those kinds of benefits for the rich and upper classes. For the rest of us, we'll be looking to China for our standards of labor. Whatever we do to compete has to be cheaper or vastly better than what they can do. I just don't see that happening without some really radical tech improvements.