Humans can live pretty much anywhere if you give them food and water, and a pod to keep in all the good stuff (like oxygen and air pressure, and keep out all the bad stuff, like radiation).
That risk and the need to mitigate it will always be there no matter when we go.
We don't risk human lives when we send only robots.
Okay. When will that day be?
I don't know.
Are there other reasons we might want to leave Earth, other than running out of space - like perhaps some sort of extinction-level-event - that cannot be foreseen that far in advanced? That day could be tomorrow (in which case we're fucked).
Giving one example (e.g.) is not meant to imply that it is the only example. Furthermore, if we find out the extinction event is tomorrow, even if we knew how to survive on Mars, there is no way we are going to be able to move 7 billion people to mars, so we are fucked anyway. We can't even move everyone in florida to other states in one day.
Machines alone cannot help us learn all the things humans need to know to survive on Mars. We cannot know when we will *need* to live on Mars. Chance favors the prepared.
Being prepared means knowing what you need to survive *before* you go to mars.
We know "we" can go to Mars. We can send whatever instruments we want to do whatever science we want. We can send whatever robots we want to operate those instruments. What do we get from sending a meat robot to mars, other than the sort of daredevil glory? We may as well load up the rocket with 1000 lbs of solid gold to raise the stakes even more and make it extra suspenseful.
I am all for NASA, and $150 Million is a drop on the bucket, but I just don't see the utility of sending human beings to mars. We won't learn anything new. We are just risking killing people and making the mission more expensive by trying to mitigate that risk.
One day it will be important for people to go to mars (e.g. like when we run out of space on earth). Until then, there is really no reason a machine can't do the job a human can do more safely and cheaper.
College degrees definitely don;t mean what they used to, but there is no way I'm hiring a structural engineer with no degree (i.e. because degrees are a joke).
gun fighting is dog fighting, but dog fighting isn't gun fighting. There have been plenty of dogfights that involved missiles and many occurred after Vietnam.
There is a pretty good chance the F35 can beat the F16 in the air before a dogfight ever occurs. There is more to air-to-air combat than dogfighting, just like there is more to infantry combat than hand-to-hand combat. Ideally you want to win the fight before you get close enough to punch someone.
Even if it were invisible to the human eye, that doesn't mean it is invisible to radar. Visibility in the visible light spectrum does not imply visibility in other light spectra.
It kind of sucks that this expensive new plane sucks at dogfighting, but honestly it's probably better to have all the other stuff except dogfighting. They've been saying it for years, but I think it's funally true. Dogfighting is obselete. Not to say that there will never be another dogfight in the future, I just don't think designing an aircraft around dogfighting makes sense anymore.
You don't need to dogfight if your plane can go faster, and has better radar systems to see enemies and and shoot them done well before a dogfight ever takes place.
That said, I've heard some disparaging comments about the true stealth profile of the F35, but that's another story.
All I am saying is that lack of dogfighting ability is probably not a dealbreaker, if it performs in all the other areas. But it's entirely possible the F35 is still sucks and is a waste of money.
What I am saying is that I'd rather live in a world without libel and slander laws (i.e. one with freedom of speech). I realize this comes with the added responsibility of determining what is true or false without help of the courts, but I am willing to accept that. I am also willing to accept that this also means others may lie about me or my products.
We should do this for every business. We should have a fast food service medallion that costs $250K, so that all the fast food workers that can afford it, will make more than minimum wage.
I don't think the blocking of shitware is a problem per se. It seems that the objection is to the labeling of the products of others as "shitware". There are apparently rules that forbid Coca cola from saying "You should drink coke instead of that diarrhea water called pepsi".
I understand the motivation for these sorts of laws, but they do lead to cases like this, where our ability to call a turd "a turd", is questioned.
I would much prefer a world where there was freedom of speech even in advertising, and I will be responsible for determining if pepsi is really "diarrhea water", or whether a browser toolbar is shitware rather than the government. Think of all the human effort and time wasted in legal battles that would be saved. Think of all the kids potentially becoming lawyers, because laws and litigation are how we solve our disputes. Think of all the people who must think "Well if I heard it on the TV or the internet it must be true, because liars lose their court cases", even implicitly.
Google is not the gatekeeper of information. They are merely the most popular gate currently. They understand this, and it is why google search is still really good. Google knows that if they completely sell out and offer top search spots to the highest bidders (rather than what people are probably looking for), their customer base will disappear about as quickly as it came.
The "power" google holds in search is tied to the quality of the search. If that diminishes, so does their power.
I wonder sometimes if it could be necessary to offer the consumer a blended search capability, where searches are parsed from multiple sources and blended in an agnostic fashion without concern for any provider's business interest.
They used to have these back in the day (when search engines were terrible). You could search lycos, and alta vista, yahoo, hotbot, excite, etc, all at the same time. Maybe one of them would find what you were looking for. Then google came out, and everyone quickly realized that it always provided the best results, and we didn;t need these search aggregator anymore.
But that doesn't mean they won't/can't/shouldn't come back. Google's public API makes it pretty easy to include in such a search aggregator. I'm sure they wouldn't mind having their results compared with Bing, etc.
Any 1st year CS student could probably easily make one. If it is useful (i.e. showing the true results, rather than just the results from Google's sponsors), people will probably even use it.
Taxi medallions create an artificially low supply of drivers. The price of these medallions is often hundreds of thousands of dollars. This lower supply of drivers also means higher prices for consumers.
The high barrier to entry is good for the people who already own the medallions, but it is bad for everyone else. It is especially bad for people who spent a lot of their own money to get a medallion right as the ridesharing trend took off. They must rightly feel cheated.
There is no reason to try to artificially lower the supply of drivers. Cities should purchase medallions back from drivers to help them recoup the costs they've incurred, and new drivers would be able to avoid a large cost.
No the public wants the extra insurance of traditional taxis to cover the cost of all the medical bills they *will* have from dealing with traditional taxi services.
It's like the bullies make an agreement with the nerds that the bullies will only be entitled to the nerds' lunch money on Mondays. Uber comes in and says "Don't pay the bullies anything", and proceeds to beat the shit out of them.
Yes, Uber is flouting "agreed upon" rules. Yes maybe Uber is a bully too. But the real problem is that the "agreed upon" rules are terrible in most cities.
In addition to the "illegal" things uber is doing, it is also forcing the problem of existing taxi regulations to be addressed. Other ride sharing companies that are not doing illegal things (probably some that don't even exist yet) also benefit from this.
Even if Uber goes out of business due to a failed strategy of aggression, we still need to fix all these horrible taxi regulations.
The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.
The ideal situation is for all the content creators, to still make their content, but sell it to the public over the internet, bypassing the cable companies. It is the cable companies that need to die (or just be relegated to being ISPs). They just aren't up to the task of delivering media in the 21st century. They have stopped being a distribution channel and more of a gatekeeper for old people who can't use the internet.
Our taxes shouldn't be paying for a search that isn't fairly displaying results. Oh wait, they are providing this service for free, and we are free to use whatever search we want. What's the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
We'll learn how to live on Mars.
Humans can live pretty much anywhere if you give them food and water, and a pod to keep in all the good stuff (like oxygen and air pressure, and keep out all the bad stuff, like radiation).
That risk and the need to mitigate it will always be there no matter when we go.
We don't risk human lives when we send only robots.
Okay. When will that day be?
I don't know.
Are there other reasons we might want to leave Earth, other than running out of space - like perhaps some sort of extinction-level-event - that cannot be foreseen that far in advanced? That day could be tomorrow (in which case we're fucked).
Giving one example (e.g.) is not meant to imply that it is the only example. Furthermore, if we find out the extinction event is tomorrow, even if we knew how to survive on Mars, there is no way we are going to be able to move 7 billion people to mars, so we are fucked anyway. We can't even move everyone in florida to other states in one day.
Machines alone cannot help us learn all the things humans need to know to survive on Mars. We cannot know when we will *need* to live on Mars. Chance favors the prepared.
Being prepared means knowing what you need to survive *before* you go to mars.
We know "we" can go to Mars. We can send whatever instruments we want to do whatever science we want. We can send whatever robots we want to operate those instruments. What do we get from sending a meat robot to mars, other than the sort of daredevil glory? We may as well load up the rocket with 1000 lbs of solid gold to raise the stakes even more and make it extra suspenseful.
I am all for NASA, and $150 Million is a drop on the bucket, but I just don't see the utility of sending human beings to mars. We won't learn anything new. We are just risking killing people and making the mission more expensive by trying to mitigate that risk.
One day it will be important for people to go to mars (e.g. like when we run out of space on earth). Until then, there is really no reason a machine can't do the job a human can do more safely and cheaper.
College degrees definitely don;t mean what they used to, but there is no way I'm hiring a structural engineer with no degree (i.e. because degrees are a joke).
I know a place where they can get one.
gun fighting is dog fighting, but dog fighting isn't gun fighting. There have been plenty of dogfights that involved missiles and many occurred after Vietnam.
not if it was directional...
There is a pretty good chance the F35 can beat the F16 in the air before a dogfight ever occurs. There is more to air-to-air combat than dogfighting, just like there is more to infantry combat than hand-to-hand combat. Ideally you want to win the fight before you get close enough to punch someone.
Are you going to be in a death race where the extra 10hp might be the difference between living and dying?
Even if it were invisible to the human eye, that doesn't mean it is invisible to radar. Visibility in the visible light spectrum does not imply visibility in other light spectra.
It kind of sucks that this expensive new plane sucks at dogfighting, but honestly it's probably better to have all the other stuff except dogfighting. They've been saying it for years, but I think it's funally true. Dogfighting is obselete. Not to say that there will never be another dogfight in the future, I just don't think designing an aircraft around dogfighting makes sense anymore.
You don't need to dogfight if your plane can go faster, and has better radar systems to see enemies and and shoot them done well before a dogfight ever takes place.
That said, I've heard some disparaging comments about the true stealth profile of the F35, but that's another story.
All I am saying is that lack of dogfighting ability is probably not a dealbreaker, if it performs in all the other areas. But it's entirely possible the F35 is still sucks and is a waste of money.
Also you should be able to say "Pepsi *tastes* like diarrhea water", because that is no longer an objective claim. Taste is subjective.
What I am saying is that I'd rather live in a world without libel and slander laws (i.e. one with freedom of speech). I realize this comes with the added responsibility of determining what is true or false without help of the courts, but I am willing to accept that. I am also willing to accept that this also means others may lie about me or my products.
We should do this for every business. We should have a fast food service medallion that costs $250K, so that all the fast food workers that can afford it, will make more than minimum wage.
What were the odds that the owner of "freemium.com" is some low-life shitware-peddling scumbag?
I don't think the blocking of shitware is a problem per se. It seems that the objection is to the labeling of the products of others as "shitware". There are apparently rules that forbid Coca cola from saying "You should drink coke instead of that diarrhea water called pepsi".
I understand the motivation for these sorts of laws, but they do lead to cases like this, where our ability to call a turd "a turd", is questioned.
I would much prefer a world where there was freedom of speech even in advertising, and I will be responsible for determining if pepsi is really "diarrhea water", or whether a browser toolbar is shitware rather than the government. Think of all the human effort and time wasted in legal battles that would be saved. Think of all the kids potentially becoming lawyers, because laws and litigation are how we solve our disputes. Think of all the people who must think "Well if I heard it on the TV or the internet it must be true, because liars lose their court cases", even implicitly.
Google is not the gatekeeper of information. They are merely the most popular gate currently. They understand this, and it is why google search is still really good. Google knows that if they completely sell out and offer top search spots to the highest bidders (rather than what people are probably looking for), their customer base will disappear about as quickly as it came.
The "power" google holds in search is tied to the quality of the search. If that diminishes, so does their power.
I wonder sometimes if it could be necessary to offer the consumer a blended search capability, where searches are parsed from multiple sources and blended in an agnostic fashion without concern for any provider's business interest.
They used to have these back in the day (when search engines were terrible). You could search lycos, and alta vista, yahoo, hotbot, excite, etc, all at the same time. Maybe one of them would find what you were looking for. Then google came out, and everyone quickly realized that it always provided the best results, and we didn;t need these search aggregator anymore.
But that doesn't mean they won't/can't/shouldn't come back. Google's public API makes it pretty easy to include in such a search aggregator. I'm sure they wouldn't mind having their results compared with Bing, etc.
Any 1st year CS student could probably easily make one. If it is useful (i.e. showing the true results, rather than just the results from Google's sponsors), people will probably even use it.
Here is one example:
Taxi medallions create an artificially low supply of drivers. The price of these medallions is often hundreds of thousands of dollars. This lower supply of drivers also means higher prices for consumers.
The high barrier to entry is good for the people who already own the medallions, but it is bad for everyone else. It is especially bad for people who spent a lot of their own money to get a medallion right as the ridesharing trend took off. They must rightly feel cheated.
There is no reason to try to artificially lower the supply of drivers. Cities should purchase medallions back from drivers to help them recoup the costs they've incurred, and new drivers would be able to avoid a large cost.
So basically the exact same solution uber has. Look at a picture and verify that it matches your driver and don't get in the car if it doesn't.
No the public wants the extra insurance of traditional taxis to cover the cost of all the medical bills they *will* have from dealing with traditional taxi services.
supply and demand
It's like the bullies make an agreement with the nerds that the bullies will only be entitled to the nerds' lunch money on Mondays. Uber comes in and says "Don't pay the bullies anything", and proceeds to beat the shit out of them.
Yes, Uber is flouting "agreed upon" rules. Yes maybe Uber is a bully too. But the real problem is that the "agreed upon" rules are terrible in most cities.
In addition to the "illegal" things uber is doing, it is also forcing the problem of existing taxi regulations to be addressed. Other ride sharing companies that are not doing illegal things (probably some that don't even exist yet) also benefit from this.
Even if Uber goes out of business due to a failed strategy of aggression, we still need to fix all these horrible taxi regulations.
How do real taxis solve the problem of imposter drivers? Is there a regulation against imposter drivers?
The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.
The ideal situation is for all the content creators, to still make their content, but sell it to the public over the internet, bypassing the cable companies. It is the cable companies that need to die (or just be relegated to being ISPs). They just aren't up to the task of delivering media in the 21st century. They have stopped being a distribution channel and more of a gatekeeper for old people who can't use the internet.
Our taxes shouldn't be paying for a search that isn't fairly displaying results. Oh wait, they are providing this service for free, and we are free to use whatever search we want. What's the problem?
I use IE too, but mainly because I test web code on all major browsers. It seems to actually be faster than firefox lately, which is kind of sad.