Seven years ago, I remember reading an article in Popular Mechanics (the article's long gone, unfortunately) about an idea for a completely autonomous robotic system to explore and develop space.
The plan was to construct a simple network of small mining robots that ran on tracks that they themselves laid down. Minerals mined would initially go to the construction of more tracks, track-riding robots, micro-smelters, and power sources (solar or otherwise). In this way, you could construct a self-sufficient mining operation with minimal initial investment that would grow at an almost exponential rate, given sufficient local resources. Land on an asteroid, send minerals and metals out of it a year or two later - avoid the gravity well entirely.
At the time, though, it was just an idea and we didn't have the tech to pull it off. You need some relatively sophisticated AI decision techniques to deal with the nitty-gritty details of such an operation, as we're finding from even such comparatively simple things as the mars rovers today, and it's hard to reproduce the robot-critters on the spot. It's for reasons like the first, though, that I originally got interested in CS and majored in it, and I think we're getting close. Depending on this Hubble work and similar projects, robotics may have finally caught up too.
Instead of worrying about how to get the materials into orbit to build in space, we should start using what's already there. Here's to hoping.
While $375 million is nothing to shake a stick at, it's worth noting that the Hubble was launched in April 1990 at a cost of $2 billion US. Robotics, communications, and short-term automated decision-making have progressed signficantly in the last 14 years to make this feasible.
Evolution has addressed this with its email "VFolders" for some time; these act much like a saved search across all of your folders.
A simple example is creating a VFolder that will show all items flagged "Important", allowing you to immediately view and modify any such email. Any changes you make to messages within a VFolder applies to that actual message, wherever it resides, kind of like a hard-link.
Indeed. Working with modern fMRI equipment at Stanford's hospital labs, we generate over 6 GB of voxel data per patient, for just 10x10 mm progressive scans at a resolution of about 1.5 mm. Three dimensional video, as long as it's voxel- and not vector-based, will present significant data storage challenges.
Perhaps centralization could be a long-term goal of internet 'improvement' projects, but so far I've seen nothing to warrant this in I2 itself.
Using it on campus, the only difference is that we get faster connections to other edu's - from what I've used of it, I2 is not a redesign of the entire informational highway system, but rather the metaphorical addition of freeways, as yet mostly restricted to academia (check out http://internet2.stanford.edu/technical.html). I2, in my experience, has simply acted as a background add-on to the net, only making itself known when it happens to boost your connection speeds. I have never run across any 'censorship hook' as yet while using I2.
Also, why bother with Big-Brother hardware anyway? It's far easier to snoop and censor with software, and you can then keep an eye on preexisting installations with much lower overhead. As a snooping agency, you're only restricting yourself if you rely on physical wiretaps and such. An I2 rife with wiretaps would only be a drop in the sea anyway, if we're to assume the worst.
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The plan was to construct a simple network of small mining robots that ran on tracks that they themselves laid down. Minerals mined would initially go to the construction of more tracks, track-riding robots, micro-smelters, and power sources (solar or otherwise). In this way, you could construct a self-sufficient mining operation with minimal initial investment that would grow at an almost exponential rate, given sufficient local resources. Land on an asteroid, send minerals and metals out of it a year or two later - avoid the gravity well entirely.
At the time, though, it was just an idea and we didn't have the tech to pull it off. You need some relatively sophisticated AI decision techniques to deal with the nitty-gritty details of such an operation, as we're finding from even such comparatively simple things as the mars rovers today, and it's hard to reproduce the robot-critters on the spot. It's for reasons like the first, though, that I originally got interested in CS and majored in it, and I think we're getting close. Depending on this Hubble work and similar projects, robotics may have finally caught up too.
Instead of worrying about how to get the materials into orbit to build in space, we should start using what's already there. Here's to hoping.
While $375 million is nothing to shake a stick at, it's worth noting that the Hubble was launched in April 1990 at a cost of $2 billion US. Robotics, communications, and short-term automated decision-making have progressed signficantly in the last 14 years to make this feasible.
Evolution has addressed this with its email "VFolders" for some time; these act much like a saved search across all of your folders.
A simple example is creating a VFolder that will show all items flagged "Important", allowing you to immediately view and modify any such email. Any changes you make to messages within a VFolder applies to that actual message, wherever it resides, kind of like a hard-link.
Indeed. Working with modern fMRI equipment at Stanford's hospital labs, we generate over 6 GB of voxel data per patient, for just 10x10 mm progressive scans at a resolution of about 1.5 mm. Three dimensional video, as long as it's voxel- and not vector-based, will present significant data storage challenges.
tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of the night. what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? -> blake, isn't it?
Perhaps centralization could be a long-term goal of internet 'improvement' projects, but so far I've seen nothing to warrant this in I2 itself.
Using it on campus, the only difference is that we get faster connections to other edu's - from what I've used of it, I2 is not a redesign of the entire informational highway system, but rather the metaphorical addition of freeways, as yet mostly restricted to academia (check out http://internet2.stanford.edu/technical.html). I2, in my experience, has simply acted as a background add-on to the net, only making itself known when it happens to boost your connection speeds. I have never run across any 'censorship hook' as yet while using I2.
Also, why bother with Big-Brother hardware anyway? It's far easier to snoop and censor with software, and you can then keep an eye on preexisting installations with much lower overhead. As a snooping agency, you're only restricting yourself if you rely on physical wiretaps and such. An I2 rife with wiretaps would only be a drop in the sea anyway, if we're to assume the worst.
& on that cheerful note, adieu.