Yeah it's true. Battery technology has a long way to go for flight. Non-production electric airplanes *could* be a curiosity in about 15 years, but we're probably closer to 30 years for truly viable electric aircraft... and that's assuming we ever get to the point where energy density of batteries are able to close in on the energy density of petroleum distillates.
Yes, I recall that quote. He was trying to make a big statement in front of the media and ended up leaving the company shortly after that. What I imagine he was trying to say is that signature-based AV is dead in terms of efficacy against quick moving threats. I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but even lowly Symantec has multiple layers of protection and I don't think they're all "dead" so to speak: https://www.symantec.com/page....
> I wouldn't pay for an anti-virus solution as anti-virus software is an outright fraud. The companies can't fix bugs in the code (on proprietary platforms) and at best there is a slight chance some malicious software might get picked up (the risk and costs vs reward though isn't worth it).
Do you think you might be overstating the case a bit?
It's not *that* bad. Believe it or not, most modern security technologies do indeed track behavior profiles and use reputation systems to catch lots of bad stuff that's never been seen before. If you take off your hate glasses for a moment, you might learn something.
> I don't use MS Windows or Mac OS X or any proprietary software
Newer Tesla Model S cars will be able to basically do the same thing this summer with its auto-pilot 'lane holding' firmware update.
It may not be obvious to those who aren't paying close attention to the advancement of self-driving technology, but driving hundreds of miles on a highway is actually fairly easy for today's AI and requires only a basic sensor stack (GPS, HD camera with IR for nighttime, 600 ft radar sensor up front, and a slew of sonar sensors for close up decisions). Lane holding and traffic-aware cruise control together basically can take you 99% of the way to any city from any other on the interstate -- and this is likely coming to a car near you (not just $100k luxury cars) in the next 5 years.
Beyond the highway though, is where the current technology falls apart... The difference between maintaining a lane on the highway and driving in a suburban neighborhood is orders of magnitude in complexity. Google's super-fancy Lidar-based "driverless" cars still have tons of trouble navigating in cities and suburban settings. I'm not even going to approach the topic of weather, but to illustrate some of the challenges, in a city you might run into:
* Roads with inadequate, faded or absent lanes markings. * Intersections with no stop/yield signs or broken/flashing traffic lights * Vast distances with no speed limit signs * Random and unpredictable people, animals and inanimate objects crossing or blowing across the road (e.g. a raccoon, kid on bike, plastic bag, paint bucket, police officer with hand up each may require a completely different reaction from the driver and the inappropriate reaction could put occupants or pedestrians in serious danger.)
All of these are relatively easy for people to navigate, but pose significant challenges for AI. I predict that all-weather, door-to-door, autonomous driving is closer to 10-20 years away -- perhaps 10 years for high-end vehicles and 20 years for your run-of-the-mill Toyota Corolla, etc... (Think of the rollout of GPS navigation or airbags.)
I was being facetious with that comment, but do you have any other viable choices in mind? Don't all cars come with non-free software in them? The only thing Tesla's done is enabled an OTA update mechanism for the firmware. Virtually all new cars sold today have update-able firmware and even if they didn't, there's still no way you can prove that the NSA hasn't got a back door in there from the factory. So, unless you want to go around driving a classic from the 70s or 80s, you're pretty much at the mercy of your car's manufacturer anyway.
Hi, Tesla Model S owner here... Technically you do get asked before firmware installs proceed (download happens automatically in the background). You're free to simply not apply the update. However, and more to your point, as with any binary update mechanism, there's really no viable way to determine what's actually getting installed in the process and you would lose out on potentially important bug fixes. Not all that different from Windows Update...
My personal assumption is that the firmware is a complete privacy-invading cesspool. I love the car overall, so I'll keep it until such time as I get the first mailed speeding ticket based upon my car's GPS location and internal speed telemetry.
OK, but are local police allowed to unilaterally enforce FAA regulations without say the FAA being involved (which I don't know, but assume is the case here)?
Is $7500 the difference between affordable and unaffordable to you? In your universe, are government incentives that might help us soon get off of polluting, non-renewable resources akin to acts of the devil or are you just one of those who has inexplicable contempt for anyone or anything successful?
You appear to have a very pedantic understanding of the English language. I don't fault you for it, as it can probably be attributed to a genetic anomaly. In any case, let me spell it out for you:
Using the terms 'selection' or 'useful' as it relates to evolution does not imply that one believes there is any conscious, intelligent/scheming/maniacal actor involved. It simply means that randomly generated traits are more likely to be passed down to future populations if they happen to interact with the environment in such a way that the organism containing those traits has a greater likelihood of surviving to reproduce or can otherwise reproduce faster or with more partners.
> Yes, except that is exactly how evolution doesn't work.
Not sure I understand why all the snark and ad hominems other than you feel emboldened by hiding behind AC (as if Slashdot karma is some kind of valuable resource?) Anyway, I don't think the parent's comments are all that out of line. A gene pool is going to change from generation to generation due to random chance occurrences like DNA transcription errors and such, and the changes that sustain are more often than not going to be ones that enable that organism to survive and reproduce better in that environment, yes? If selection pressures in the environment they live in stabilize over time, one would expect that the magnitude of evolutionary changes for that organism will gradually diminish because as time progresses, there are fewer useful adaptations that haven't been incorporated, so-to-speak. All bets are off if the environment destabilizes, but eventually, if stable over a long period of time you might get to a stable organism as described in TFA.
Oh come on. What's the harm in putting say inside sales reps next to Engineers? The proximity of sales reps will motivate the developers to code harder because they can hear all the lies they tell first-hand! It's practically a direct feed to customer feedback, and cuts out the need for a Product Manager!
I know it's a feel good story and all to bash Capitalist car manufacturers and all, and there are probably some examples where what you're saying is true, but GM seatbelts are pretty standard across all models and get small updates about once a decade. Defects are very rare in this area. Notice that when stuff gets recalled, it's usually recalled against many models over a number of years... That's not the hallmark of things getting updated just for the sake of it. It's also inevitably expensive for the manufacturer to create new parts where none is needed and existing parts are already in the parts bin.
Important stuff generally gets updated when new functionality is needed (like ignition disabling circuitry to make cars harder to steal). It's not like there's a group of Engineers sitting around thinking of ways to redesign basic things that work. They won't win new customers by redesigning seat-belts and ignition switches.
On a slight tangent, I've been wondering about this "things are getting worse" meme as it relates to just about anything related to humanity that can be tracked over time. You read so much today about worldwide atrocities, NSA snooping, domestic crime, political skullduggery, and one starts to develop the impression that things truly are getting worse. I think it would be interesting to see if that's actually the case or whether it's a mirage perpetuated by the changing nature of how we're interconnected via the Internet, or perhaps because world events went through a sort of unusually calm period in the 80s and 90s, or perhaps it's as simple as the notion that we were mostly sheltered by our parents as children to some extent and didn't truly open our eyes to the reality of the world until we got older...
I'm just not sure how much I hold them responsible for lack of diversity in their ranks. Show me the diversity in the set of resumes they receive and interviews they conduct and I'll get on your bandwagon, but until then my experience says that the reasons for lack of diversity begin much earlier in the funnel.
isn't it on this list largely due to its proximity to Silicon Valley? You'd think that the number of applications to work at tech companies in the valley coming from SJ State would be off the charts to begin with due to it being in the middle of the valley... I'm sure Georgia State has a reasonable CS program too, but few if any applications from there would be going to companies in Silicon Valley. Does that make SJ State a meaningful CS job target or just a beneficiary of location?
Though not a perfect measure by any means, I think it would be more interesting to see the CS job acceptance rates coming out these schools and the average starting salary for each.
> Dr. Ramsey's condition has been fulfilled hundreds of times over the last quarter century and there has been absolutely no acknowledgement by the APS of its crime.
Where's the proof that it happened even once? Similar assertions have been made by proponents of perpetual motion machines.
Is Apple so embarrassed by their lack of meaningful CPU performance improvements that they feel the need to compare the latest iPad to a 5 year old obsolete brick to impress me? I think that they think I'm stupid.
I see where you're coming from, but why did 'corporate-inspired' awful junk work through the 70s and 80s then? We watched tons of it and I can say, in retrospect, that it was mostly thrown together tripe with few redeeming qualities (though some of it elicits nostalgic feelings for me). About the best of it were the Japanese conversions, though cheaply dubbed and often spliced to the point of near incomprehensibility, they tended to go a bit deeper with character development.
Here are some cartoons I recall watching either Saturday mornings or some other time during the week (albeit from Canada): Scooby Doo Saturday Supercade (?) -- shows based on early arcade characters like Pacman. FatAlbert Voltron Strawberry Shortcake Transformers The Real Ghostbusters Dungeons and Dragons (the one where they were stuck in some D&D world). Battle of the Planets (G-Force?) GummiBears Smurfs DuckTales Robotech ThunderCats
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah it's true. Battery technology has a long way to go for flight. Non-production electric airplanes *could* be a curiosity in about 15 years, but we're probably closer to 30 years for truly viable electric aircraft... and that's assuming we ever get to the point where energy density of batteries are able to close in on the energy density of petroleum distillates.
Yes, I recall that quote. He was trying to make a big statement in front of the media and ended up leaving the company shortly after that. What I imagine he was trying to say is that signature-based AV is dead in terms of efficacy against quick moving threats. I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but even lowly Symantec has multiple layers of protection and I don't think they're all "dead" so to speak:
https://www.symantec.com/page....
> I wouldn't pay for an anti-virus solution as anti-virus software is an outright fraud. The companies can't fix bugs in the code (on proprietary platforms) and at best there is a slight chance some malicious software might get picked up (the risk and costs vs reward though isn't worth it).
Do you think you might be overstating the case a bit?
It's not *that* bad. Believe it or not, most modern security technologies do indeed track behavior profiles and use reputation systems to catch lots of bad stuff that's never been seen before. If you take off your hate glasses for a moment, you might learn something.
> I don't use MS Windows or Mac OS X or any proprietary software
RMS, is that you?
Twice.
Newer Tesla Model S cars will be able to basically do the same thing this summer with its auto-pilot 'lane holding' firmware update.
It may not be obvious to those who aren't paying close attention to the advancement of self-driving technology, but driving hundreds of miles on a highway is actually fairly easy for today's AI and requires only a basic sensor stack (GPS, HD camera with IR for nighttime, 600 ft radar sensor up front, and a slew of sonar sensors for close up decisions). Lane holding and traffic-aware cruise control together basically can take you 99% of the way to any city from any other on the interstate -- and this is likely coming to a car near you (not just $100k luxury cars) in the next 5 years.
Beyond the highway though, is where the current technology falls apart... The difference between maintaining a lane on the highway and driving in a suburban neighborhood is orders of magnitude in complexity. Google's super-fancy Lidar-based "driverless" cars still have tons of trouble navigating in cities and suburban settings. I'm not even going to approach the topic of weather, but to illustrate some of the challenges, in a city you might run into:
* Roads with inadequate, faded or absent lanes markings.
* Intersections with no stop/yield signs or broken/flashing traffic lights
* Vast distances with no speed limit signs
* Random and unpredictable people, animals and inanimate objects crossing or blowing across the road (e.g. a raccoon, kid on bike, plastic bag, paint bucket, police officer with hand up each may require a completely different reaction from the driver and the inappropriate reaction could put occupants or pedestrians in serious danger.)
All of these are relatively easy for people to navigate, but pose significant challenges for AI. I predict that all-weather, door-to-door, autonomous driving is closer to 10-20 years away -- perhaps 10 years for high-end vehicles and 20 years for your run-of-the-mill Toyota Corolla, etc... (Think of the rollout of GPS navigation or airbags.)
I was being facetious with that comment, but do you have any other viable choices in mind? Don't all cars come with non-free software in them? The only thing Tesla's done is enabled an OTA update mechanism for the firmware. Virtually all new cars sold today have update-able firmware and even if they didn't, there's still no way you can prove that the NSA hasn't got a back door in there from the factory. So, unless you want to go around driving a classic from the 70s or 80s, you're pretty much at the mercy of your car's manufacturer anyway.
Hi, Tesla Model S owner here... Technically you do get asked before firmware installs proceed (download happens automatically in the background). You're free to simply not apply the update. However, and more to your point, as with any binary update mechanism, there's really no viable way to determine what's actually getting installed in the process and you would lose out on potentially important bug fixes. Not all that different from Windows Update...
My personal assumption is that the firmware is a complete privacy-invading cesspool. I love the car overall, so I'll keep it until such time as I get the first mailed speeding ticket based upon my car's GPS location and internal speed telemetry.
Your retirement portfolio is only affected if it's on the wrong side of one of their trades. Index long-term my friend and fuggetaboutit.
OK, but are local police allowed to unilaterally enforce FAA regulations without say the FAA being involved (which I don't know, but assume is the case here)?
I do and I don't really care if you think the whole idea of trying to build an electric car company is a waste of time to you. Don't buy one.
Is $7500 the difference between affordable and unaffordable to you? In your universe, are government incentives that might help us soon get off of polluting, non-renewable resources akin to acts of the devil or are you just one of those who has inexplicable contempt for anyone or anything successful?
Leave it to the trolls of Slashdot to trash anyone successful... Even an Engineer with a vision of a better tomorrow.
You appear to have a very pedantic understanding of the English language. I don't fault you for it, as it can probably be attributed to a genetic anomaly. In any case, let me spell it out for you:
Using the terms 'selection' or 'useful' as it relates to evolution does not imply that one believes there is any conscious, intelligent/scheming/maniacal actor involved. It simply means that randomly generated traits are more likely to be passed down to future populations if they happen to interact with the environment in such a way that the organism containing those traits has a greater likelihood of surviving to reproduce or can otherwise reproduce faster or with more partners.
> Yes, except that is exactly how evolution doesn't work.
Not sure I understand why all the snark and ad hominems other than you feel emboldened by hiding behind AC (as if Slashdot karma is some kind of valuable resource?) Anyway, I don't think the parent's comments are all that out of line. A gene pool is going to change from generation to generation due to random chance occurrences like DNA transcription errors and such, and the changes that sustain are more often than not going to be ones that enable that organism to survive and reproduce better in that environment, yes? If selection pressures in the environment they live in stabilize over time, one would expect that the magnitude of evolutionary changes for that organism will gradually diminish because as time progresses, there are fewer useful adaptations that haven't been incorporated, so-to-speak. All bets are off if the environment destabilizes, but eventually, if stable over a long period of time you might get to a stable organism as described in TFA.
So... Does that make me religious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh come on. What's the harm in putting say inside sales reps next to Engineers? The proximity of sales reps will motivate the developers to code harder because they can hear all the lies they tell first-hand! It's practically a direct feed to customer feedback, and cuts out the need for a Product Manager!
I know it's a feel good story and all to bash Capitalist car manufacturers and all, and there are probably some examples where what you're saying is true, but GM seatbelts are pretty standard across all models and get small updates about once a decade. Defects are very rare in this area. Notice that when stuff gets recalled, it's usually recalled against many models over a number of years... That's not the hallmark of things getting updated just for the sake of it. It's also inevitably expensive for the manufacturer to create new parts where none is needed and existing parts are already in the parts bin.
Important stuff generally gets updated when new functionality is needed (like ignition disabling circuitry to make cars harder to steal). It's not like there's a group of Engineers sitting around thinking of ways to redesign basic things that work. They won't win new customers by redesigning seat-belts and ignition switches.
Well, it's great that you stick it to the man by not having a smartphone. It's less great that you and RMS are practically the only ones left.
On a slight tangent, I've been wondering about this "things are getting worse" meme as it relates to just about anything related to humanity that can be tracked over time. You read so much today about worldwide atrocities, NSA snooping, domestic crime, political skullduggery, and one starts to develop the impression that things truly are getting worse. I think it would be interesting to see if that's actually the case or whether it's a mirage perpetuated by the changing nature of how we're interconnected via the Internet, or perhaps because world events went through a sort of unusually calm period in the 80s and 90s, or perhaps it's as simple as the notion that we were mostly sheltered by our parents as children to some extent and didn't truly open our eyes to the reality of the world until we got older...
I'm just not sure how much I hold them responsible for lack of diversity in their ranks. Show me the diversity in the set of resumes they receive and interviews they conduct and I'll get on your bandwagon, but until then my experience says that the reasons for lack of diversity begin much earlier in the funnel.
isn't it on this list largely due to its proximity to Silicon Valley? You'd think that the number of applications to work at tech companies in the valley coming from SJ State would be off the charts to begin with due to it being in the middle of the valley... I'm sure Georgia State has a reasonable CS program too, but few if any applications from there would be going to companies in Silicon Valley. Does that make SJ State a meaningful CS job target or just a beneficiary of location?
Though not a perfect measure by any means, I think it would be more interesting to see the CS job acceptance rates coming out these schools and the average starting salary for each.
> Dr. Ramsey's condition has been fulfilled hundreds of times over the last quarter century and there has been absolutely no acknowledgement by the APS of its crime.
Where's the proof that it happened even once? Similar assertions have been made by proponents of perpetual motion machines.
Is Apple so embarrassed by their lack of meaningful CPU performance improvements that they feel the need to compare the latest iPad to a 5 year old obsolete brick to impress me? I think that they think I'm stupid.
Now I can fully enjoy 4k video from the totally comfortable distance of 5 feet in front of my 55" television.
http://s3.carltonbale.com/reso...
I see where you're coming from, but why did 'corporate-inspired' awful junk work through the 70s and 80s then? We watched tons of it and I can say, in retrospect, that it was mostly thrown together tripe with few redeeming qualities (though some of it elicits nostalgic feelings for me). About the best of it were the Japanese conversions, though cheaply dubbed and often spliced to the point of near incomprehensibility, they tended to go a bit deeper with character development.
Here are some cartoons I recall watching either Saturday mornings or some other time during the week (albeit from Canada):
Scooby Doo
Saturday Supercade (?) -- shows based on early arcade characters like Pacman.
FatAlbert
Voltron
Strawberry Shortcake
Transformers
The Real Ghostbusters
Dungeons and Dragons (the one where they were stuck in some D&D world).
Battle of the Planets (G-Force?)
GummiBears
Smurfs
DuckTales
Robotech
ThunderCats