Re:In the early 90s we all read the hype
on
The Road To VR
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· Score: 2
I know, it's incredibly frustrating that a company is actually taking their time to develop something properly* so it doesn't flop on release! It makes me angry! ANGRRYYYY!!
*You know, like most people on Slashdot say they wish every company would? VR is something you have to do carefully or it'll end up being declared "another Virtual Boy", and that would kill it fast.
What I have noticed with main-stream sci-fi is that it doesn't involve actual science. Oh, it might have a shiny, modern or even futuristic veneer, but it is really just fantasy. Firefly was really a western set in space in a very different solar system. Even Star Trek seems to often resorts to magical thinking and the "lone hero" narrative, devolving into a morality play or social drama with a futuristic backdrop and technobabble.
Science fiction has never really been about the science. Sure, a "realistic" portrayal of the future of technology can be fun and is one popular avenue of sci-fi, but there is one fundamentally massive problem with that approach: it's actually unrealistic in and of itself. Look at it this way: 50 years ago, the modern smartphone was considered "fantasy" even in sci-fi (hell, Star Trek communicators were large bulky devices with only a fraction of the capability, and they were still considered implausible). The Internet, which radically changed society? A few books guessed at something like it, but most people didn't. The reason the displays in Star Trek TOS are a bunch of flashing lights and crappy displays? Because at the time that was realistic: that's more or less what displays looked like at the time.
Honestly, we have absolutely no idea what the future will look like in terms of technology or science. None whatsoever. All we have are guesses. So, what then is the point of sci-fi? It's to portray what society might look like under certain circumstances, or how humanity might react to x situation, or to explore the ramifications of what would happen if y was invented, or just to tell a cool and interesting story (Star Trek (the TV series), Stargate, I Robot (the book, not the movie), and Star Wars are examples of each of those things, respectively). "Actual science" is only one rather small portion of sci-fi as a whole, because we simply don't know what "actual science" will look like in 200 years, and we can't, and never will be able to. All we can do is guess, or propose interesting "what ifs", and then try to imagine what happens in those cases.
Now, is a lot of mainstream sci-fi utter trash that does nothing interesting? Sure, absolutely. That's Hollywood. But the idea that "actual" sci-fi has to involved only "actual science" is a bit ridiculous.
There are dozens (at least, probably more like hundreds), of small-player Android devices out there which are based on Android's open source. Sure, you lose out on the largest Android store, but there are quite a few other stores out there (Amazon's being probably the biggest, but by no means the only one). You don't often hear about them (because they're made by small players), but they do exist. Heck, I own one (an MP3 player/mini-tablet). Anyone who has the resources to make a tablet can make their own Android device.
Ars Technica generally covers a lot of the same material that Slashdot does, except with proper editing and writing. News-wise they're quite a lot better than Slashdot, IMO (I only really come here for the comments, since Slashdot's moderation system and sheer quantity of comments means you can often find some real gems).
Generally speaking, the deeper the mine is the less likely it is to have to deal with cosmogenically activated radiation sources or direct cosmic radiation. Same reason that these kinds of experiments often use "ancient lead" that has been buried under the seas for thousands of years: the deeper you go. Stuff that has been underground for thousands or millions of years is vastly less likely to have been made radiative from the sun or other cosmic sources.
Because of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Long story short, we can look at how the universe formed from evidence left behind in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and see that it is impossible for normal baryonic matter to explain dark matter. That, and the Bullet Cluster makes little sense without dark matter.
MaximumPC paints this a little bit different. Where only lower end cpu's get a big boost in conjecture with higher end AMD cards.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to in the link. The only comparisons are low(er) end CPUs with high end cards or high end CPUs with low(er) range cards. You don't get a boost if you've got high-end CPUs and a lower end card, but that should be completely obvious: the point of Mantle is to shift the load to the GPU. If the GPU is already maxed out, you won't see much (or any) gains at all.
An excerpt: 'I was told to walk off of the cube and it was physically difficult to step forward into the space where there was no solid footing, even though I knew that there would be a solid floor with a rug right there for me. It's amazing how the mind can trick you.'
Given the game in question is just an Oculus Rift version of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!!, clearly the person testing it is not experienced in the game. As any veteran of it knows, the whole point of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!! is to happily take running leaps off of cubes.
Though this does make me wonder if people who are used to the game already would have the same apprehension over jumping off the (to them) familiar-looking buildings they've jumped off hundreds of times before...
The point in AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!! is to walk off the cube in the game, i.e. using the game controls. The difficulty the user here had was stepping forward in real life while wearing the headset that made it look like he would be physically stepping off a cube (even though he knew he wouldn't).
It actually brings up an interesting point about VR/AR: mixing the real world (where there is a physical floor ahead of you) with the virtual one (where it appears there isn't), and overcoming the self-preservation instinct by stepping forwards anyways could potentially lead to the self-preservation instinct being dangerously suppressed over time. With current video games, it's easy to know the difference between the real and virtual world. But with VR, specially VR that replicates physical actions into the game world (so that stepping forward in the game involves stepping forward in real life, not just pressing a key), that line may well become significantly blurred to the point where video games might actually have harmful effects (in this case, suppressing the instinct to not step off buildings).
... they'll take that knowledge back to train their gang and will use it against the local civilian population
That would be terrible if they started using integrals and cell osmosis against the locals! We must put an end to this education at once!
Yes, because everyone knows integrals and cell osmosis are totally worthless knowledge when designing and using ballistic, biochemical, or nuclear weaponry.
From reading TFA, it's obvious that this isn't a group of skilled craftspeople coming together to share ideas, equipment, and workspace, but rather an attempt to educate the proles in how this new technology can be used to make Christmas ornaments. More like "Summer College" classes for your 6th grader than a real attempt at collaboration.
The downside to this approach, at least from my point of view, is that the people who would use the equipment access to work on real projects are going to be stuck waiting in line behind 1,000 stay-at-home moms, who are laser-cutting snowflakes with their kids faces on them because they have nothing more productive to do with their time.
Might I suggest that if you have a "real" project, maybe you should be getting your own equipment instead of tying up public infrastructure which is specifically designed and intended to be accessible by people who aren't already skilled craftspeople. Because everyone who is now a skilled craftsperson wasn't at one point, and the only way to become skilled is by practice (and that is kinda the point behind this initiative).
Your complaint sounds vaguely like a Ferrari owner complaining they can't go 150mph on public freeways. No shit, public freeways aren't for intended for racing, and public "makerspace" equipment isn't intended for serious projects.
I, May of 2000, President Clinton unscrambled GPS for civilian usage.
I always wondered why he did this. To create the GPS industry? I don't think so. Instead I think it was with the full knowledge that in a short time, the NSA could track people using it.
Not exactly. GPS was always available for public usage, they just turn off "selective availability", which increased the accuracy of civilian GPS (from the ~50 meter accuracy down to meter or sub-meter accuracy).
All mammals are, by definition, born with the ability to digest milk, therefore they have the genes to do that. It can happen that those genes are epi-genitically turned off in adults that are not exposed to milk. However, the genes would be still there.
The genes for digestion are still there, yes, but they shut off after childhood unless you have a specific genetic mutation that allows lifelong production of lactase. Source 1, source 2.
Yes, it's been considered. Radio waves are non-ionizing, which means they cannot cause direct damage to DNA (the radiation effect that typically causes cancer). The only potential health risk with radio frequencies is heating effects, and head-mounted devices simply don't have enough power for that to be a serious risk. There are a few scientists who postulate it is theoretically possible for long term exposure to low-power radio waves to cause damage, but there is no known scientific means for such damage to occur (studies to date have been mostly inconclusive, but the general trend is that radio waves no matter how close to the head cannot cause damage from head mounted or handheld devices).
The plow is still in use, as are most basic farming techniques (albeit in a form that early farmers wouldn't recognize). The summary specifies technologies that have mostly or entirely faded away, which happens to be (in large part) 19th century communications/traveling tech.
Scientific reasoning is justification that there is no evidence for a god.
No scientific evidence. It is an improper extension of the scientific method to claim that everything* that lacks scientific evidence therefore does not or cannot exist.
*Obviously, science can make such a claim about many things: anything that you would expect their to be scientific evidence for (i.e. anything natural) can be proven by science to not exist based on a lack of evidence. However, something that is strictly and purely supernatural (which God is pre-eminently) is by the very definition of the word "supernatural" beyond having a nature that science can speak about. Or, in other words, God doesn't have mass, charge, length, time, temperature, or quantity of any kind, and since those are exactly what science deals with, science cannot make any claims whatsoever about God in any way.
It's not an either/or situation: drones are probably at least 10-15 years away from being able to replace fighters, possibly longer (given there are still many technical issues to work out). Even then, drones might not completely replace manned aircraft: there are simply too many easy ways to take out drones.
Drones will take on most of the roles of aircraft (and already are), but they're not an adequate replacement right now, not by a long shot.
TFS (and TFA, actually) are poorly phrased: the actual research article (the linked PDF) specifies (and I quote):
The aim of our work is to go beyond the present, sophis-ticated defenses, and to detect "stealthy" fraudulent users,
namely, those that manage to fool those defenses for a relatively long period of time. Our concrete objective is to catch
these stealthy fraudulent users within the first 4 months of
activity. Our results indicate that, with our methods, we are
able to detect 68% of these users with a 5% false positive
rate; and we are able to reduce by 2:3 times the number of
these users active for over 10 months.
So they didn't increase their detection rate by 68%, they increased it to 68%. And 5% false positive is pretty good: 95% confidence interval is standard in scientific research (outside things like physics which is able to achieve much much higher confidence by means of vastly larger data sets), which means a 5% false positive is exactly what you'd expect with proper scientific methodology ( based on a quick scan that seems to be exactly what they were aiming for). And of course higher false positive is actually better in the case of fraud detection than lower detection rate (since little is harmed by a false positive, while false negatives can directly result in people losing money).
Seems to me if you're building body armor, you'd want to target a technology that can pump out a bit more than one piece a week, no? And let me guess, "if" means "totally already exists and we're colonizing the universe now"?
Because body armor is meant to be worn by a human, and every human has a different body shape (sometimes significantly different) from everyone else. Since poorly-fitted body armor can severely impair maneuverability (which is often extremely important in situations where you'd want to wear body armor in the first place), being able to easily create a suit of armor that exactly matches a given body shape is incredibly useful.
Most people, when they say "capable of playing", mean that it can actually be played on those settings, i.e. that the frame rate is high enough for the game to be considered playable. Generally, this means an average frame rate of ~30 and minimums of 20 or more (although that depends a bit on the reviewer, some people consider a frame rate of 30 totally unplayable, personally anything above 20 can still be played).
That approach is in fact one of the proposals for a replacement to the kilogram. The problem is counting 10^23 atoms of a material (and getting pure material to work with).
You would have done better with the technologies at hand at the time how?
You would have practiced science using methodologies nearly a century out of date when? See that's the thing about science -- it's supposed to change in response to new data. And it usually does, except for some of our basic units of measurement, which remain stubbornly stuck in the past. That's why it's an embarassment. The whooshing sound you heard is the point sailing over your head.
You have a better idea for a mass unit? The scientific community would absolutely love to hear about it, because every other idea either doesn't work at all, or isn't practically measurable (sure, you could define it as x number of atoms of y substance, but good luck counting out a few trillion atoms with precision every time you want to make an accurate measurement).
Most of the basic units of measurement in science have in fact been redefined when someone came up with a better system. Mass, however, it turns out, is really bloody hard to do better. I wouldn't call it "embarrassing" when the laws of physics prevent you from doing any better.
Except now all you have is a ratio of two masses, rather than an absolute quantity. What exactly would you balance the kilogram reference against?
Unless one of those masses is the reference that you define as the kilogram, in which case you have the "absolute" mass. All masses are defined in terms of some ratio to a fixed reference mass. It's not a terribly good system, but if you have a better one that actually works, the scientists would love to hear about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, it's incredibly frustrating that a company is actually taking their time to develop something properly* so it doesn't flop on release! It makes me angry! ANGRRYYYY!!
*You know, like most people on Slashdot say they wish every company would? VR is something you have to do carefully or it'll end up being declared "another Virtual Boy", and that would kill it fast.
What I have noticed with main-stream sci-fi is that it doesn't involve actual science. Oh, it might have a shiny, modern or even futuristic veneer, but it is really just fantasy. Firefly was really a western set in space in a very different solar system. Even Star Trek seems to often resorts to magical thinking and the "lone hero" narrative, devolving into a morality play or social drama with a futuristic backdrop and technobabble.
Science fiction has never really been about the science. Sure, a "realistic" portrayal of the future of technology can be fun and is one popular avenue of sci-fi, but there is one fundamentally massive problem with that approach: it's actually unrealistic in and of itself. Look at it this way: 50 years ago, the modern smartphone was considered "fantasy" even in sci-fi (hell, Star Trek communicators were large bulky devices with only a fraction of the capability, and they were still considered implausible). The Internet, which radically changed society? A few books guessed at something like it, but most people didn't. The reason the displays in Star Trek TOS are a bunch of flashing lights and crappy displays? Because at the time that was realistic: that's more or less what displays looked like at the time.
Honestly, we have absolutely no idea what the future will look like in terms of technology or science. None whatsoever. All we have are guesses. So, what then is the point of sci-fi? It's to portray what society might look like under certain circumstances, or how humanity might react to x situation, or to explore the ramifications of what would happen if y was invented, or just to tell a cool and interesting story (Star Trek (the TV series), Stargate, I Robot (the book, not the movie), and Star Wars are examples of each of those things, respectively). "Actual science" is only one rather small portion of sci-fi as a whole, because we simply don't know what "actual science" will look like in 200 years, and we can't, and never will be able to. All we can do is guess, or propose interesting "what ifs", and then try to imagine what happens in those cases.
Now, is a lot of mainstream sci-fi utter trash that does nothing interesting? Sure, absolutely. That's Hollywood. But the idea that "actual" sci-fi has to involved only "actual science" is a bit ridiculous.
There are dozens (at least, probably more like hundreds), of small-player Android devices out there which are based on Android's open source. Sure, you lose out on the largest Android store, but there are quite a few other stores out there (Amazon's being probably the biggest, but by no means the only one). You don't often hear about them (because they're made by small players), but they do exist. Heck, I own one (an MP3 player/mini-tablet). Anyone who has the resources to make a tablet can make their own Android device.
Ars Technica generally covers a lot of the same material that Slashdot does, except with proper editing and writing. News-wise they're quite a lot better than Slashdot, IMO (I only really come here for the comments, since Slashdot's moderation system and sheer quantity of comments means you can often find some real gems).
Generally speaking, the deeper the mine is the less likely it is to have to deal with cosmogenically activated radiation sources or direct cosmic radiation. Same reason that these kinds of experiments often use "ancient lead" that has been buried under the seas for thousands of years: the deeper you go. Stuff that has been underground for thousands or millions of years is vastly less likely to have been made radiative from the sun or other cosmic sources.
Because of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Long story short, we can look at how the universe formed from evidence left behind in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and see that it is impossible for normal baryonic matter to explain dark matter. That, and the Bullet Cluster makes little sense without dark matter.
MaximumPC paints this a little bit different. Where only lower end cpu's get a big boost in conjecture with higher end AMD cards.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to in the link. The only comparisons are low(er) end CPUs with high end cards or high end CPUs with low(er) range cards. You don't get a boost if you've got high-end CPUs and a lower end card, but that should be completely obvious: the point of Mantle is to shift the load to the GPU. If the GPU is already maxed out, you won't see much (or any) gains at all.
An excerpt: 'I was told to walk off of the cube and it was physically difficult to step forward into the space where there was no solid footing, even though I knew that there would be a solid floor with a rug right there for me. It's amazing how the mind can trick you.'
Given the game in question is just an Oculus Rift version of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!!, clearly the person testing it is not experienced in the game. As any veteran of it knows, the whole point of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!! is to happily take running leaps off of cubes.
Though this does make me wonder if people who are used to the game already would have the same apprehension over jumping off the (to them) familiar-looking buildings they've jumped off hundreds of times before...
The point in AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAA!!!!! is to walk off the cube in the game, i.e. using the game controls. The difficulty the user here had was stepping forward in real life while wearing the headset that made it look like he would be physically stepping off a cube (even though he knew he wouldn't).
It actually brings up an interesting point about VR/AR: mixing the real world (where there is a physical floor ahead of you) with the virtual one (where it appears there isn't), and overcoming the self-preservation instinct by stepping forwards anyways could potentially lead to the self-preservation instinct being dangerously suppressed over time. With current video games, it's easy to know the difference between the real and virtual world. But with VR, specially VR that replicates physical actions into the game world (so that stepping forward in the game involves stepping forward in real life, not just pressing a key), that line may well become significantly blurred to the point where video games might actually have harmful effects (in this case, suppressing the instinct to not step off buildings).
... they'll take that knowledge back to train their gang and will use it against the local civilian population
That would be terrible if they started using integrals and cell osmosis against the locals! We must put an end to this education at once!
Yes, because everyone knows integrals and cell osmosis are totally worthless knowledge when designing and using ballistic, biochemical, or nuclear weaponry.
He has a point.
From reading TFA, it's obvious that this isn't a group of skilled craftspeople coming together to share ideas, equipment, and workspace, but rather an attempt to educate the proles in how this new technology can be used to make Christmas ornaments. More like "Summer College" classes for your 6th grader than a real attempt at collaboration.
The downside to this approach, at least from my point of view, is that the people who would use the equipment access to work on real projects are going to be stuck waiting in line behind 1,000 stay-at-home moms, who are laser-cutting snowflakes with their kids faces on them because they have nothing more productive to do with their time.
Might I suggest that if you have a "real" project, maybe you should be getting your own equipment instead of tying up public infrastructure which is specifically designed and intended to be accessible by people who aren't already skilled craftspeople. Because everyone who is now a skilled craftsperson wasn't at one point, and the only way to become skilled is by practice (and that is kinda the point behind this initiative).
Your complaint sounds vaguely like a Ferrari owner complaining they can't go 150mph on public freeways. No shit, public freeways aren't for intended for racing, and public "makerspace" equipment isn't intended for serious projects.
I, May of 2000, President Clinton unscrambled GPS for civilian usage.
I always wondered why he did this. To create the GPS industry? I don't think so. Instead I think it was with the full knowledge that in a short time, the NSA could track people using it.
Not exactly. GPS was always available for public usage, they just turn off "selective availability", which increased the accuracy of civilian GPS (from the ~50 meter accuracy down to meter or sub-meter accuracy).
All mammals are, by definition, born with the ability to digest milk, therefore they have the genes to do that. It can happen that those genes are epi-genitically turned off in adults that are not exposed to milk. However, the genes would be still there.
The genes for digestion are still there, yes, but they shut off after childhood unless you have a specific genetic mutation that allows lifelong production of lactase. Source 1, source 2.
Yes, it's been considered. Radio waves are non-ionizing, which means they cannot cause direct damage to DNA (the radiation effect that typically causes cancer). The only potential health risk with radio frequencies is heating effects, and head-mounted devices simply don't have enough power for that to be a serious risk. There are a few scientists who postulate it is theoretically possible for long term exposure to low-power radio waves to cause damage, but there is no known scientific means for such damage to occur (studies to date have been mostly inconclusive, but the general trend is that radio waves no matter how close to the head cannot cause damage from head mounted or handheld devices).
The plow is still in use, as are most basic farming techniques (albeit in a form that early farmers wouldn't recognize). The summary specifies technologies that have mostly or entirely faded away, which happens to be (in large part) 19th century communications/traveling tech.
Scientific reasoning is justification that there is no evidence for a god.
No scientific evidence. It is an improper extension of the scientific method to claim that everything* that lacks scientific evidence therefore does not or cannot exist.
*Obviously, science can make such a claim about many things: anything that you would expect their to be scientific evidence for (i.e. anything natural) can be proven by science to not exist based on a lack of evidence. However, something that is strictly and purely supernatural (which God is pre-eminently) is by the very definition of the word "supernatural" beyond having a nature that science can speak about. Or, in other words, God doesn't have mass, charge, length, time, temperature, or quantity of any kind, and since those are exactly what science deals with, science cannot make any claims whatsoever about God in any way.
It's not an either/or situation: drones are probably at least 10-15 years away from being able to replace fighters, possibly longer (given there are still many technical issues to work out). Even then, drones might not completely replace manned aircraft: there are simply too many easy ways to take out drones.
Drones will take on most of the roles of aircraft (and already are), but they're not an adequate replacement right now, not by a long shot.
Well, they got her into space in one piece. It's the whole "getting them back down in one piece" that was tricky.
No, they didn't (although she technically wasn't the first US civilian to be sent to space, they sent up a Senator before her).
TFS (and TFA, actually) are poorly phrased: the actual research article (the linked PDF) specifies (and I quote):
The aim of our work is to go beyond the present, sophis-ticated defenses, and to detect "stealthy" fraudulent users, namely, those that manage to fool those defenses for a relatively long period of time. Our concrete objective is to catch these stealthy fraudulent users within the first 4 months of activity. Our results indicate that, with our methods, we are able to detect 68% of these users with a 5% false positive rate; and we are able to reduce by 2:3 times the number of these users active for over 10 months.
So they didn't increase their detection rate by 68%, they increased it to 68%. And 5% false positive is pretty good: 95% confidence interval is standard in scientific research (outside things like physics which is able to achieve much much higher confidence by means of vastly larger data sets), which means a 5% false positive is exactly what you'd expect with proper scientific methodology ( based on a quick scan that seems to be exactly what they were aiming for). And of course higher false positive is actually better in the case of fraud detection than lower detection rate (since little is harmed by a false positive, while false negatives can directly result in people losing money).
Seems to me if you're building body armor, you'd want to target a technology that can pump out a bit more than one piece a week, no? And let me guess, "if" means "totally already exists and we're colonizing the universe now"?
Because body armor is meant to be worn by a human, and every human has a different body shape (sometimes significantly different) from everyone else. Since poorly-fitted body armor can severely impair maneuverability (which is often extremely important in situations where you'd want to wear body armor in the first place), being able to easily create a suit of armor that exactly matches a given body shape is incredibly useful.
What a waste of money.
No, it was assumed. In science, there is a massive gap between assumption and knowledge. The point of science is to bridge that gap.
Did we learn nothing from the USSR and the Iron Curtain?
Yes. We learned how to do it better.
Most people, when they say "capable of playing", mean that it can actually be played on those settings, i.e. that the frame rate is high enough for the game to be considered playable. Generally, this means an average frame rate of ~30 and minimums of 20 or more (although that depends a bit on the reviewer, some people consider a frame rate of 30 totally unplayable, personally anything above 20 can still be played).
That approach is in fact one of the proposals for a replacement to the kilogram. The problem is counting 10^23 atoms of a material (and getting pure material to work with).
You would have done better with the technologies at hand at the time how?
You would have practiced science using methodologies nearly a century out of date when? See that's the thing about science -- it's supposed to change in response to new data. And it usually does, except for some of our basic units of measurement, which remain stubbornly stuck in the past. That's why it's an embarassment. The whooshing sound you heard is the point sailing over your head.
You have a better idea for a mass unit? The scientific community would absolutely love to hear about it, because every other idea either doesn't work at all, or isn't practically measurable (sure, you could define it as x number of atoms of y substance, but good luck counting out a few trillion atoms with precision every time you want to make an accurate measurement).
Most of the basic units of measurement in science have in fact been redefined when someone came up with a better system. Mass, however, it turns out, is really bloody hard to do better. I wouldn't call it "embarrassing" when the laws of physics prevent you from doing any better.
Except now all you have is a ratio of two masses, rather than an absolute quantity. What exactly would you balance the kilogram reference against?
Unless one of those masses is the reference that you define as the kilogram, in which case you have the "absolute" mass. All masses are defined in terms of some ratio to a fixed reference mass. It's not a terribly good system, but if you have a better one that actually works, the scientists would love to hear about it.