We've already found some tantalizing prospects. Perhaps the best is Gliese 581d, which is a super-Earth (anywhere from 8-13 Me) that's within its star's habitable zone. We've even started broadcasting to it, just in case.
COROT 7b is interesting because it's only 5 Me, and because we were able to calculate its density and prove that it's a rocky planet. There will be other prospects. We're getting pretty good at this planet hunting game.
The writeup reads like ad copy. I've been reading about CO -- I haven't played it, mostly because of what I've been reading -- and from all reports it's nowhere near as appealing as Soulskill makes it sound.
The UI is generally described as 'horrible' and 'clunky'. The launch was moderately poor, with a variety of huge early nerfs that caused a minor player revolt. The central mechanism of combat -- attacks that build endurance, so that you can power up to larger attacks -- appears to have basic flaws, in that combats are repetitive clickfests with little strategy. (Yes, even since the end building 'attacks' were changed into toggles to make it feel less tedious.) Ranged characters have overwhelming advantages compared to melee. And worst of all, the open world missions are an invitation to griefing -- your hero might have to queue up in a line to defeat an enemy and finish your mission, or you might get your enemy down to a sliver of health only to have the kill -- and the mission -- stolen from you by another player.
A side issue is Cryptic's attitude in and out of the game. Deceptive recruiting on the City of Hero forums, astroturfing fan sites, and a character in CO that shouts, "You are as boring as competing MMO!". Unethical companies like that are not ones to whom I want to give money.
I'm glad people enjoy CO, but let's be honest about its status in the MMO world. Its poor launch and failed, regressive mechanics mark it as a new second-tier MMO. If it is meant to be WoW in tights, it might be barely suitable to those who crave that sort of thing. If it is meant to be a followup to CoH then it fails, as the original superhero MMO is a more evolved, superior game.
We have a perfectly good model for the purpose behind sex -- it's for reproduction. All the emotional and pleasurable parts are our brain tricking us into liking it so we procreate.
So give robots an inescapable urge to reproduce themselves. Have them borrow each others' blueprints, to exchange design ideas (in this context, that's an exchange of DNA). Let them design new robots by iterative changes of the old designs. You don't have to give them a reason -- hardcode the need to spend some percentage of clock cycles on reproduction, and eventually they'll make it pleasurable by themselves.
Publishers have run out of ideas.
on
The Magicians
·
· Score: 1
What I find distressing is not the book itself (I haven't read it), but the hype emerging from the publishing industry about it. After the stunning and unexpected success of Harry Potter, the publishers had two choices -- either keep a look out for books that might have the same appeal, or only look for books that revolve around the exact same formula of young people in a boarding school with fantasy trappings. It seems that they've chosen the latter. Harry Potter may spawn a raft of imitators, and although each may put their own spin on the formula (like The Magicians has), they're still going to be different cookies from the same cutter.
I wonder if 'fantasy boarding school fiction' will soon become a genre of its own?
When I was around their age, my friends and I would explore everything, including storm drains. We never went in far enough to get lost, though. Which was good, because it was way before cell phones. Our best chance for getting help might have been to climb up and wave our hands out of the sewer grate, and that might just have caused a zombie panic...except we didn't have those when I was a kid, either.
Similar arguments were thrown at the automobile. "Oh, it'll be viable when we have roads that don't bounce the carriage enough to daze the passengers," and "it'll be viable when it's not a danger to every horse and cow in the field", and "they go too fast -- 20 mph is too dangerous".
What happened is that we became less averse to the risks of the automobile, and more willing to build our infrastructure around it because of the benefit it offered.
Right now, our society is extremely risk-adverse and lawsuit-happy. We already have a transportation infrastructure, and a flying car both does not fit it nor would it give us much more than what we have.
There are only two chances for the flying car to become popular. It could be a bit hit in a country with no transportation infrastructure, like some African countries, where they can't move cars around but would be able to find discreet landing spots here and there. Or it could be useful after our infrastructure is destroyed in a war. Note that in both scenarios, people will be more willing to take risks...
The effects of radiation scale as one over the distance squared. It's one thing to have a cell phone antennae 2-3 cm from your ear, another 2-3 cm from brain tissue, and another 6-8 cm from your eye. It's another thing to have a transceiver in contact with the eye lens.
(Someone will say that it's a passive receiver. If true, forget detecting the position of the eyeball, so forget reality overlays. It'll have to transmit for all that to work.)
I agree that there are a lot of other challenges that need to be overcome. I just think the power problem is one that will prove to be unresolvable.
RF also being 'shooting radio waves directly into your eyeball'.
The eyes are more sensitive to radiation than any part of the body. The prospect of this power source causing cataracts and other eye damage is higher than in other body parts -- even non-ionizing radiation can harm the delicate lens, which has no thermal control. There are also possible problems caused by element heating.
I'm skeptical that this technology will ever pan out. At least, not until we redesign and replace the eye.
The EPA's goal is to keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below a certain level (probably 550 ppm). It's exactly analogous to their other regulatory activity, where they limit the levels of mercury in water or arsenic in playground soil.
Will it hamper American business? Sure. The same way the other regulations have hampered American business -- business would love to sell arsenic-laden playground soil, or pump mercury into rivers, if by doing either of those things they could increase their profits. We hamper business to prevent them from valuing money over people's lives, or over the health of the environment. It's sadly necessary to do so.
And yes, plenty of non-US businesses are spewing CO2 and pumping out mercury and feeding their children sweet, tasty arsenic. I'm sure the EPA would love to stop them but can't. They can only make sure the US is safe. When dealing with pollutants that cross borders -- like CO2 -- they're going to need help from international treaties. But that doesn't absolve them of trying to keep our own house in order in the meantime.
That's not true. We are continually creating new code to crash modern electronics ever more quickly. In just a few months Windows 7 will be out -- I guarantee the robot couldn't survive that.
Fiction has to be believable, to draw the reader/viewer into the story. It's called suspension of disbelief. You may suspend your disbelief easily; good for you. Some people need more realistic details in order to be convinced, though.
At a minimum we can say, 'Boy, that fictional character who designed that is dumb', which then affects our understanding of the characters, when then affects how we view the story. Just realizing that Annikin designed C3PO to translate millions of languages but left him unable to handle sign language tells me that Annikin isn't as good a droid builder as he thought he was. (Or that there's no sign language in the Star Wars universe, which seems odd but is another interesting datum if true.)
Yes, Kepler is in an unusual orbit. It's not orbiting Earth, it's orbiting the Sun, although it's designed to stay close to the Earth over its mission lifetime. But it is only receiving partial protection by the Earth's magnetosphere. It's possible that it will be more vulnerable to single event upsets (SEUs) as time goes on.
Go one step further. If it's a metabolic process, in theory it is possible to overclock it. Next step: Recreational pharmaceuticals that send the light-generation process into overdrive, causing people to glow.
At last, we can get rid of those stupid glow sticks at raves.
That's more or less typical for a research assistant in some PhD programs. Grad students are worked to the bone. The upshot for these students, at least, is they'll be able to write their own ticket once they get out of school.
Yeah. The nude MMS is worth 10 years in prison in some jurisdictions, while the 140 characters of emo whining will at worst just get you an ass-whupping by the cool kids in school.
Giving kids their own computer is not a solution. You have to instruct them what is, and what it not, acceptable online.
I'll give you an example. I visited my nephew was he around ten, and he showed me some of the online games he liked to play. A window popped up advertising some kind of contest, and asking for information. I warned him to avoid it, but he said, "Oh, I enter these things all the time. It's okay, I use my dad's email address and social security number."
I had a talk with his father, and from then on I believe his internet use was heavily monitored. As it should be.
At some point, we (the human race in general, although Slashdotters more specifically) will be giving our kids robotic pets. What happens when they get hacked?
I want to second this. City of Heroes gives players jetpacks by level 5 -- 20 minutes into the game -- and full flight, teleportation, or superspeed by level 14. On top of that there are metro stations, teleporters, and even a veteran reward that zaps you directly to your selected mission, where ever it is.
MMOGs do not have to use travel time as a huge timesink. It amazes me that the current crop of games still cheats the users of their time like that.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the very first Easter egg; the hidden room in Atari's 'Adventure', with the text 'Made by Warren Robinett' superimposed in it. That was a fun place to get into, and wickedly difficult if you didn't know about that invisible dot.
When I was an undergrad, the CS requirement forced all students to take classes in Pascal.
I think the reasoning was that a student should learn a language with extreme, formal structure, and then later they can learn ones that aren't quite as strict. Maybe that the same reasoning behind teaching students Fortran? At least it's a little more useful than Pascal.
Slashdot Mirror
We've already found some tantalizing prospects. Perhaps the best is Gliese 581d, which is a super-Earth (anywhere from 8-13 Me) that's within its star's habitable zone. We've even started broadcasting to it, just in case.
COROT 7b is interesting because it's only 5 Me, and because we were able to calculate its density and prove that it's a rocky planet. There will be other prospects. We're getting pretty good at this planet hunting game.
The writeup reads like ad copy. I've been reading about CO -- I haven't played it, mostly because of what I've been reading -- and from all reports it's nowhere near as appealing as Soulskill makes it sound.
The UI is generally described as 'horrible' and 'clunky'. The launch was moderately poor, with a variety of huge early nerfs that caused a minor player revolt. The central mechanism of combat -- attacks that build endurance, so that you can power up to larger attacks -- appears to have basic flaws, in that combats are repetitive clickfests with little strategy. (Yes, even since the end building 'attacks' were changed into toggles to make it feel less tedious.) Ranged characters have overwhelming advantages compared to melee. And worst of all, the open world missions are an invitation to griefing -- your hero might have to queue up in a line to defeat an enemy and finish your mission, or you might get your enemy down to a sliver of health only to have the kill -- and the mission -- stolen from you by another player.
A side issue is Cryptic's attitude in and out of the game. Deceptive recruiting on the City of Hero forums, astroturfing fan sites, and a character in CO that shouts, "You are as boring as competing MMO!". Unethical companies like that are not ones to whom I want to give money.
I'm glad people enjoy CO, but let's be honest about its status in the MMO world. Its poor launch and failed, regressive mechanics mark it as a new second-tier MMO. If it is meant to be WoW in tights, it might be barely suitable to those who crave that sort of thing. If it is meant to be a followup to CoH then it fails, as the original superhero MMO is a more evolved, superior game.
We have a perfectly good model for the purpose behind sex -- it's for reproduction. All the emotional and pleasurable parts are our brain tricking us into liking it so we procreate.
So give robots an inescapable urge to reproduce themselves. Have them borrow each others' blueprints, to exchange design ideas (in this context, that's an exchange of DNA). Let them design new robots by iterative changes of the old designs. You don't have to give them a reason -- hardcode the need to spend some percentage of clock cycles on reproduction, and eventually they'll make it pleasurable by themselves.
What I find distressing is not the book itself (I haven't read it), but the hype emerging from the publishing industry about it. After the stunning and unexpected success of Harry Potter, the publishers had two choices -- either keep a look out for books that might have the same appeal, or only look for books that revolve around the exact same formula of young people in a boarding school with fantasy trappings. It seems that they've chosen the latter. Harry Potter may spawn a raft of imitators, and although each may put their own spin on the formula (like The Magicians has), they're still going to be different cookies from the same cutter.
I wonder if 'fantasy boarding school fiction' will soon become a genre of its own?
When I was around their age, my friends and I would explore everything, including storm drains. We never went in far enough to get lost, though. Which was good, because it was way before cell phones. Our best chance for getting help might have been to climb up and wave our hands out of the sewer grate, and that might just have caused a zombie panic...except we didn't have those when I was a kid, either.
Similar arguments were thrown at the automobile. "Oh, it'll be viable when we have roads that don't bounce the carriage enough to daze the passengers," and "it'll be viable when it's not a danger to every horse and cow in the field", and "they go too fast -- 20 mph is too dangerous".
What happened is that we became less averse to the risks of the automobile, and more willing to build our infrastructure around it because of the benefit it offered.
Right now, our society is extremely risk-adverse and lawsuit-happy. We already have a transportation infrastructure, and a flying car both does not fit it nor would it give us much more than what we have.
There are only two chances for the flying car to become popular. It could be a bit hit in a country with no transportation infrastructure, like some African countries, where they can't move cars around but would be able to find discreet landing spots here and there. Or it could be useful after our infrastructure is destroyed in a war. Note that in both scenarios, people will be more willing to take risks...
Key words: 'In the vicinity'.
The effects of radiation scale as one over the distance squared. It's one thing to have a cell phone antennae 2-3 cm from your ear, another 2-3 cm from brain tissue, and another 6-8 cm from your eye. It's another thing to have a transceiver in contact with the eye lens.
(Someone will say that it's a passive receiver. If true, forget detecting the position of the eyeball, so forget reality overlays. It'll have to transmit for all that to work.)
I agree that there are a lot of other challenges that need to be overcome. I just think the power problem is one that will prove to be unresolvable.
RF also being 'shooting radio waves directly into your eyeball'.
The eyes are more sensitive to radiation than any part of the body. The prospect of this power source causing cataracts and other eye damage is higher than in other body parts -- even non-ionizing radiation can harm the delicate lens, which has no thermal control. There are also possible problems caused by element heating.
I'm skeptical that this technology will ever pan out. At least, not until we redesign and replace the eye.
The EPA's goal is to keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below a certain level (probably 550 ppm). It's exactly analogous to their other regulatory activity, where they limit the levels of mercury in water or arsenic in playground soil.
Will it hamper American business? Sure. The same way the other regulations have hampered American business -- business would love to sell arsenic-laden playground soil, or pump mercury into rivers, if by doing either of those things they could increase their profits. We hamper business to prevent them from valuing money over people's lives, or over the health of the environment. It's sadly necessary to do so.
And yes, plenty of non-US businesses are spewing CO2 and pumping out mercury and feeding their children sweet, tasty arsenic. I'm sure the EPA would love to stop them but can't. They can only make sure the US is safe. When dealing with pollutants that cross borders -- like CO2 -- they're going to need help from international treaties. But that doesn't absolve them of trying to keep our own house in order in the meantime.
Yet our basic anti-robot technologies appear stagnant.
That's not true. We are continually creating new code to crash modern electronics ever more quickly. In just a few months Windows 7 will be out -- I guarantee the robot couldn't survive that.
Fiction has to be believable, to draw the reader/viewer into the story. It's called suspension of disbelief. You may suspend your disbelief easily; good for you. Some people need more realistic details in order to be convinced, though.
At a minimum we can say, 'Boy, that fictional character who designed that is dumb', which then affects our understanding of the characters, when then affects how we view the story. Just realizing that Annikin designed C3PO to translate millions of languages but left him unable to handle sign language tells me that Annikin isn't as good a droid builder as he thought he was. (Or that there's no sign language in the Star Wars universe, which seems odd but is another interesting datum if true.)
As someone who does not work in IT, count me as surprised that not all OSes are tested this rigorously.
Yes, Kepler is in an unusual orbit. It's not orbiting Earth, it's orbiting the Sun, although it's designed to stay close to the Earth over its mission lifetime. But it is only receiving partial protection by the Earth's magnetosphere. It's possible that it will be more vulnerable to single event upsets (SEUs) as time goes on.
How many of those human brains can you legally threaten to turn off unless they do what you tell them to?
Go one step further. If it's a metabolic process, in theory it is possible to overclock it. Next step: Recreational pharmaceuticals that send the light-generation process into overdrive, causing people to glow.
At last, we can get rid of those stupid glow sticks at raves.
2010 model cars are on the showroom floor in fall, 2009. That's how the car business works. My bet is that they'll time it with the T2 DVD release.
That's more or less typical for a research assistant in some PhD programs. Grad students are worked to the bone. The upshot for these students, at least, is they'll be able to write their own ticket once they get out of school.
Yeah. The nude MMS is worth 10 years in prison in some jurisdictions, while the 140 characters of emo whining will at worst just get you an ass-whupping by the cool kids in school.
Giving kids their own computer is not a solution. You have to instruct them what is, and what it not, acceptable online.
I'll give you an example. I visited my nephew was he around ten, and he showed me some of the online games he liked to play. A window popped up advertising some kind of contest, and asking for information. I warned him to avoid it, but he said, "Oh, I enter these things all the time. It's okay, I use my dad's email address and social security number."
I had a talk with his father, and from then on I believe his internet use was heavily monitored. As it should be.
This brings up an interesting side issue...
At some point, we (the human race in general, although Slashdotters more specifically) will be giving our kids robotic pets. What happens when they get hacked?
I want to second this. City of Heroes gives players jetpacks by level 5 -- 20 minutes into the game -- and full flight, teleportation, or superspeed by level 14. On top of that there are metro stations, teleporters, and even a veteran reward that zaps you directly to your selected mission, where ever it is.
MMOGs do not have to use travel time as a huge timesink. It amazes me that the current crop of games still cheats the users of their time like that.
Also known as:
1. Moe,
2. Larry, and
3. Curly.
The question is, are any images like the ones in your brain available on Bing right now?
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the very first Easter egg; the hidden room in Atari's 'Adventure', with the text 'Made by Warren Robinett' superimposed in it. That was a fun place to get into, and wickedly difficult if you didn't know about that invisible dot.
When I was an undergrad, the CS requirement forced all students to take classes in Pascal.
I think the reasoning was that a student should learn a language with extreme, formal structure, and then later they can learn ones that aren't quite as strict. Maybe that the same reasoning behind teaching students Fortran? At least it's a little more useful than Pascal.