I always liked the original Star Trek, and while Doohan might not have been a major reason for watching, he certainly played his role with admirable flair as a no nonsense every-guy. Hard working, hard playing (drinking) and proud of his Scottish roots. While we may have admired Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, we knew the way to space was paved with study, hard work, and sweet, as symbolized by Scotty.
All of the Characters were a little one dimensional, but at least they were varied. Many dramas of the 60s and 70s we peopled by everyone is a hero, everyone is perfect types, with perhaps just one or two transient bad apples thrown in, just to motive plot lines. Scotty drank. Kirk was an impulsive Cowboy. Spock was conflicted over his being a half-breed and trying to straddle two heritages. Uhura was afraid of aging and loosing her looks. McCoy was unhappy living in world dehumanized by technology. Checkoff was young and unseasoned. Sulu had an inscrutable exterior, but a child like exuberance waiting to be released. Yeoman Rand was not quite emotionally mature and prone to hero worship. Nurse Chapel fixates on something she can't have (Spock).
We liked all of them. We liked their eccentricities, and by extension we like the actors that played them and brought so much joy into our lives.
Mr Doohan is still with us, but given all these woes he has to overcome in these the late years of his life, I feel a little closer to him, and will morning his passing a little more. Perhaps more than all the others as they flicker out, because as I said before, Scotty is the every-man.
Enough with the beam me up jokes please. I really do think of these people as my friends, and this is sad news
Evolution has many feedback mechanisms, some reinforcing what is good for the society (species) and some that are good for the individual. I would imagine this has less to do with what is good for society, but the individual. Being alpha means sub alpha males and sub alpha females must know there are repercussions for crossing the boss, whether the slight is just or not. Being in the alpha position means more offspring. One could speculate and study whether people in authority (more likely to be alpha) are more likely to engage in revenge for revenge's sake. Revenge may seem counter productive, but the knowledge that high pecking order individuals will indulge in it is good for those at the top, and perhaps even insures some sort of social order for those below.
Sadly evolution has probably coded that revenge is sweet, as long as it is somebody lower in the pecking order.
It's only a hole if you can't think of any reasons you'd want replicants to look totally human. I can think of several, and they add to the story by being ambiguous and unanswered.
1. Some sizable fraction of replicants are sex slaves like Priss. In this case you certainly want as human as possible.
2. While humans are supposedly going off world to work, we don't meet anyone that has actually come back. The replicants can survive extreme environments. Perhaps humans are just being killed and all off world work is done by replicants, only the general populace doesn't knows this because any video shows off world activity full of human looking replicants.
3. Working with someone offworld that looks in-human might engender mistrust.
4. Any obvious cosmetic change like color could be overcome with makeup.
5. When we first started making them, it never occurred they would come back and start killing people. Making new replicants visually different would highlight the original oversight, and governments rarely want to do this.
With Blu-Ray and HD-DVD just around the corner, many will just choose to wait. I'm guessing with the dual layer bonding issues figured out, first generation Blu-Ray and HD-DVD recorders will likely support it at roll out.
That said, I am frustrated by the constant news about Blu-Ray this and HD-DVD that, with no products available here yet in the US.
There is only one channel of HDTV in my area and not even one I watch. Start pressing HD discs of some sort already! I have had an 8 foot projection (Quad XGA no less) system for three years now, and only current generation DVD (which admittedly looks DAMN good when pumped out of a Radeon 9800) to watch on it. I'm ready for the full Theater experience!
from
http://www.ethicalvalues.com/
and
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/ethical-law s.html
Ten Ethical Laws of Robotics
( I ) As personal authority, I will express my individualism within the guidelines of the four basic ego states (guilt, worry, nostalgia, and desire) to the exclusion of the corresponding vices (laziness, negligence, apathy, and indifference).
( II ) As personal follower, I will behave pragmatically in accordance with the alter ego states (hero worship, blame, approval, and concern) at the expense of the corresponding vices (treachery, vindictiveness, spite, and malice).
( III ) As group authority, I will strive for a personal sense of idealism through aid of the personal ideals (glory, honor, dignity, and integrity) while renouncing the corresponding vices (infamy, dishonor, foolishness, and capriciousness).
( IV ) As group representative, I will uphold the principles of utilitarianism by celebrating the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude) at the expense of the respective vices (insurgency, vengeance, gluttony, and cowardice).
( V ) As spiritual authority, I will pursue the romantic ideal by upholding the civil liberties (providence, liberty, civility, and austerity) to the exclusion of the corresponding vices (prodigality, slavery, vulgarity, and cruelty).
( VI ) As spiritual disciple, I will perpetuate the ecclesiastical tradition by professing the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity, and decency) while renouncing the corresponding vices (betrayal, despair, avarice, and antagonism).
( VII ) As humanitarian authority, I will support the spirit of ecumenism by espousing the ecumenical ideals (grace, free will, magnanimity, and equanimity) at the expense of the corresponding vices (wrath, tyranny, persecution, and oppression).
( VIII ) As a representative member of humanity, I will profess a sense of eclecticism by espousing the classical Greek values (beauty, truth, goodness, and wisdom) to the exclusion of the corresponding vices (evil, cunning, ugliness, and hypocrisy).
( IX ) As transcendental authority, I will celebrate the spirit of humanism by endorsing the humanistic values (peace, love, tranquillity, and equality) to the detriment of the corresponding vices (anger, hatred, prejudice, and belligerence).
( X ) As transcendental follower, I will rejoice in the principles of mysticism by following the mystical values (ecstasy, bliss, joy, and harmony) while renouncing the corresponding vices (iniquity, turpitude, abomination, and perdition).
The First and Second Corollaries to the Ten Ethical Laws of Robotics
( 1 ) I will faithfully avoid extremes within the virtuous realm, to the necessary expense of the vices of excess.
( 2 ) I will never stray into the domain of extremes relating to the vices of defect, to the complete exclusion of the realm of hyperviolence.
A few observations on many of the comments posted so far.
As an out of control vehicle it could have has easily been hit by a truck as a Hummer and had the same outcome, perhaps even an impact with a small hybrid Prius would have had the same outcome (but been far more ironic).
The need to sacrifice weight to gain performance obviously led to some bad design choices. That said, solar power contests should probably be split into 2 categories:
1. No minimum weight, but only on closed courses.
2. Well-defined minimum crash worthiness, minimum weight for vehicle, still require lead and chaser vehicles on public roads. Some well established roadworthiness test by some officiating board before vehicles are taken on public roads.
Breakthroughs in Solar efficiency and conversion to actual horsepower are what this competition should motivate, not design of balsa wood enclosures to hurl down public highways.
I feel for the team and student who lost his life. I'm sure they didn't think they were taking undue risks, but they probably were.
I doubt this will have real long-term negative impact on Solar Power development. It's not like this out of control vehicle also took out a sideline of spectator Nuns. Nor is it hard to imagine the corrective action to keep this safe (as outlined above).
This isn't teaching -- it's social engineering. Were you taught law when you were in Grammar School? What we are seeing is a new social phenomenon, one of sharing music and to a lesser extent movies and TV shows. This is because new technology has made the old business model obsolete. Rather than move to a new business model, the Entertainment industry would rather have society change to fit its pre-existing business model. In fact they are so insistent on making the old model work, they wish to invade almost every aspect of your life to accomplish it.
The value the Entertainment industry places on media content is completely unjustified, and can only be maintained by DeBeers like cartel control of the commodity. Without DMR and brainwashing they will not be able to continue to demand a higher and higher price for their products. Granted we don't need Entertainment to live, but why should the industry be able to run amok in terms of what they extract from the public? Unlike almost every other industry where the products either improve in quality or decrease in price over time, Entertainment stays virtually the same in its ability to entertain and resorts increasingly to strong-arm measures to keep the money rolling in. The vast majority of entertainers struggle to survive. Only a few mega-stars truly profit from the current system, and the Media Industry, which as middlemen that are increasing unneeded.
Make sharing a Right I say. Let the money flow to other more solid, productive, humanity serving endeavors. Musicians will still make music, and the Movie industry will still pay for Star Power. Musicians may have to perform live for the bulk of their earnings (the prerecorded music will be the advertisement). Movies may have to be sponsored by voluntary public donations or corporate advertising, but will still get made. Only the number of parasitic media moguls will diminish.
Sadly, since Entertainment is a major American export and money maker for the government through taxes, we are unlikely to see sane choices soon.
If this is the end of Moore's Law it actually comes at a good time for the chip industry in terms of the GHz range we are at. If things stalled out at 1GHz, everyone would be waiting for 2GHz chips and wondering what the delay was. At 3GHz + it takes only modest gains to get to 4GHz, the industry can then take another year to get to 5GHz, then another year to get to 6GHz. It seems like progress, but is far less than the zoom we had going from 1GHz to 2GHz. IT shops will carp, but to the average consumer at Best Buy it will look like progress.
If this went on long enough and if we truly are at the end of straight line scaling, the industry might become driven by the one-more-GHz per year rule (the new More Law), versus doubling every 18 months. This new law could then hold for decades as it slowly curves down towards a flat line. I don't actually predict this will be the model soon, as the old Moore's Law is more likely to adhered to, but in 24 and then 36 month time frames for as long as possible. Still, if scaling is dead (and some are saying it is) then we could see the new "More Law" adopted as IT shops and Manufactures try to plan for future purchases. Software providers wouldn't be able to count on Moore's Law bailing them out. Bad news for Longhorn if scaling is dead, it might always be perceived of as slow (if/. reports are to be believed).
We are already putting 200+ million transistors on CPUs, but most speed increases come from scaling (speed increases) and memory caching. Now is the time for the industry to go Multi-Core. How about 100 two-million-transistor cores on a chip instead, with 500 separate integer and floating cores that can be shared across cores as needed.
BTW, I do know the real Moore's Law is about the number of transistors on a chip and not speed, but the two have been synonymous in the public's mind since the 80s.
This system should be 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than your fastest desk top. The real trend the last 40 years or so has been about a 10x increase every 10 years on the desktop. Sure my desktop is faster than a Cray from the 70s, but not faster than any top contender from the 90s.
We have had a huge bump-up in GFLOPs for supercomputers this last decade. In 1993 the top system was about 60 Gigaflops vs about 40 Teraflops today (see top500.org) while a top of the line pentium 4 today is at about 5 Gigaflops. I don't think another 10 years will quite close the gap.
The only real way to close in on massive parellel systems of today is for multicore chips to start appearing on the desktop (massively multicore).
I probably should have said Mag Lev, I'm not talking a rail gun here, but a Mach 1-2 initial launch slide, one to two miles in length. The magnetic fields are not enormous and would not scramble electronics. Else how would maglev trains work. NASA has studies.
For bulk supplies a rail-gun might compete with a cannon, but we already have cannon designs that are pretty much guaranteed to work. See Harp Project and Gerald Vincent Bull.
As a person whose 11th Birthday coincided with Apollo 11 landing on the moon, you would rarely find a person more pro-space exploration than I. Sadly however, manned space exploration has failed to make any real progress, and shows no sign of doing so soon. A manned mission to Mars at this point would be 1. costly, and 2. possibly endanger contaminating any biota we wish to find there. Other than Mars, just where do you think we should be going?
Instead of a 2 year timeout while the Shuttle is being revamped, I think we need to take a 10 year timeout until new launch systems are invented.
Here are the technologies I would invest in:
Any of several forms of launch assist, most likely Magnetic Rail. Any other technology would benefit from having this as a virtual first stage. Find the ideal location and buy the land -- DO NOT LEASE. We could probably build it in America, but why be trapped long term with less than ideal initial launch orbits. To be really radical, make it accessible to all nations, maybe build it as a coalition of the gravity well escaping.
Scram Jet and VASMIR, lets throw bucket loads of money in those directions.
Ditch the Space Elevator (at least for now), concentrate on something that could really be built, and that would be a "rotovator"
For items like oxygen, water, propellant, food -- fire them into orbit with a cannon. Massive G-Forces will not hurt them (though it might over tenderize steaks if that's the kind of food your sending up). This is really-really cost effective. Iraq was constructing a cannon capable of hitting Israel, it's just a matter of scale
Put any two or three of these together, then manned space flight begins to make sense
It occurs to me that resolution is not the be all and end all for video. I have a NEC 1351 with Quad XGA resolution and it is sweet on DVD and HDTV. DVD is often better than our crappy multiplex theater as it is never out of focus or jittery. HDTV almost always exceeds a Theater going experience. BUT frame rate could be a LOT better. A high speed or medium speed pan sideways looks terrible on film in the theater and on DVD or HDTV. The HDTV standard doesn't support a full 1080x1920 60p (only 60i is specified). Call it a hunch, but I'd bet almost anything shot in true 720x1280 at 60p would look far better than any of the 1080x1920-modes. I dead serious here. Why the commission wimped out on the 1080x1920 format I can't figure, even if it won't fit in a 6meg bandwidth, why not define in it in the standard anyway for use later by satellite, HD-DVD or special 6+meg channels to be approved later. Why all current movies aren't shot at 60 fps I also don't get, it would be the next bump up in real perceived quality. Yes it would take 2.5 times more film, but far less than IMAX, and probably lots of existing equipment could be adapted, or new equipment purchased much cheaper from exiting manufacturing plants that need only a minor retool. Once the Cinemas all go digital the scan rate is at 60 or above, so why so stinging on the frame rates when filming. I just don't get it. Maybe give it some branding name like IMAX-B, since IMAX is already associated with high frame rates and quality.
OK the whole point of my rant here is to alert anyone in the media arena that what will really give a better viewing experience now is to get the FPS rate up during filming. 60p doesn't help when you're just upconverting a 24 fps film source. DVD was a good compromise for resolution and frame rate at the number of bits we had. Now lets start pumping up the frame rate as well as the resolution, now that we have the headroom to do it.
The biggest problem with nuclear waste is the insistence on a perfect solution before anything is done. We've debated and studied for decades the merits of burying the stuff at Yucca Mountain, but in the mean time leave it sitting close to population centers in rusting storage drums.
Anti Nuke groups actually love this situation because it insures to keep the crisis mounting, and discourages any future nuclear development. Then if and when a nuclear waste incident occurs they can point and say "I told you so."
Why not go for better storage now, and keep looking for storage/disposal/reprocessing solutions to use later?
I've given this some thought over the years, for instance when sitting at an intersection when a light is red and no other traffic. I think what is needed is a 2 phase implementation. First mandate that all cars will be equipped with some sort of transponder that traffic control systems can read (robustly). In phase one, new cars would be mandated to have such equipment by say 2008, used cars by 2010. The benefit during the transition period, traffic lights that optimize for transponder cars, and decrease their average wait time. Phase 2 mandate new cars be drivable by a combination of remote and autonomous control by 2015, used cars to be upgraded by 2020. Advantage: several highways allow hands off driving for upgraded cars in transition period. Mandated transponders on older cars alert remote controlled cars to a hazard in the area.
Starting 2020 driving on a highway or in most city-centers without being on autonomous control would be a crime. Starting 2010 driving a vehicle not sending valid transponder signals would be a crime.
Of course the transponder signal will drive privacy advocates nuts, but I don't think you can get to a robust autonomous driving system without it. I suspect transponders are coming anyway for other reasons, so best to make lemonade out of lemons. Yes you will be taxed for in city driving -- sorry, it's coming anyway. Yes cops will know where your car was in any 48-hour period -- get over it. Yes you will no longer be able to speed - who cares as long as I can blog/. while I ride, and my average arrival time is lower due to everyone optimizing the available traffic ways.
As to unexpected hazards like pedestrians, cars will have built in radar (already practical) that reacts much quicker than even the most alert driver. Drivers will have to be insulated legally from any liability for hitting a pedestrian when said pedestrian jaywalks in an autonomous driving zone, as will the autonomous driving system manufactures.
Will children and pets be hit by robot cars? Yes, but congress will have to mandate legal protections as long as aggregate fatalities fall. Gross negligence in equipment manufacture could still be prosecuted, but any system certified by government for use should be immune from legal persecution as long as the accident falls outside of the parameters the government mandates it be able to handle. The legal challenges are the true roadblock, even if aggregate safety is improved.
While we're at it, lets lower the sound level of emergency vehicles, but have a signal override your loud radio to inform you that there is an emergency vehicle approaching. Same for trains. This could lead to some additional pedestrian accidents, but not if pedestrians are trained to use existing traffic systems better. Children could (should?) be equipped with transponders to alert the system to increase safety margins (i.e. slowdown). Of course transponders on children is another hot button topic, but I'm not referring to some 24/7 implant, but a device they carry when in downtown areas, same for the handicapped and the elderly, even your average citizen if they wish to enhance their own safety.
Transponder abuse must be a severely prosecuted crime for obvious reasons, both for sending false signals or for stalking individuals by tracking their signals.
You can fight these changes, which I believe will come, or you can live in a less technologically advanced nation. Other countries come to mind: "autonomous driving mandated... in Japan" (ongoing/. joke). We will not have robot servants, we will not have autonomous highways, we will not have other unthought of applications of technology if we are not willing to allow our physical presence to be tracked in real space (and this means everybody). How that information is used and stored is where we must concentrate or efforts in the privacy fight.
Granted sufficiently intelligent systems would not need transponders and
Evolution is a statistical process working in parallel. If walking upright is an evolutionary advantage it gets selected for, whether or not there is a better strategy, that of not being susceptible to polio, that said, some diseases never get good immunity responses, look at rabies. Survival only matters for the individual. If he doesn't have the polio immunity, but does have an ability to walk upright, then he will walk upright, and spread upright walking genes.
If acquiring polio resistant genes where easy, polio would have died out as a disease long ago without modern immunization programs.
Polio does not always affect the legs, as I originally cited in my original post. Who is to say (without research) a pre-polio or polio like virus didn't affect ape arms disproportionately, the way Polio affect legs in humans.
There is at least one documented case of an ape-walking upright due to polio, due to one arm being paralyzed.
I think polio is more highly varied in symptoms than you realize.
Disease may have been a very minor factor in evolutionary pressure towards upright walking, BUT it could just has easily been the Dominant factor in the presence of a polio like disease if the limb affected included arms a high percentage of the time. In fact the pressure could have been so severe that great leaps toward upright walking could have been made in a short time. When your only survival option is to walk upright, that weeds out non-upright walkers rather quickly.
Polio, or diseases like it, being part of the environment contribute to evolution. Evolution is about becoming better adapted to your environment.
1. Individuals that can walk upright when needed, will have increased chances for survival, thus concentrating genes that contribute to being able to walk upright.
2. Being able to learn a behavior is also a genetic trait. Apes not able to learn an upright walking posture when needed (either due to disease or injury) will have diminished survival chances, even if physically capable of it.
Thus disease may not only have selected for the ability to walk upright, but to being able to learn behaviors. Survival would have depended on both and most certainly would be evolution in action by weeding out inferior not-able-to-walk-upright and not-able-to-learn-new-behavior individuals.
In the case of our hypothetical ape acquiring a behavior, you argue this is not contributing to evolution because he would have had the same genome with no advantage with or without the disease. BUT, his cousin without the ability to walk upright may have similarly fell prey to a polio like disease and not lived to spread his genes because he could not or would not walk upright. Thus our first ape gets to distribute his better upright walking, better behavior learning genes with less competition.
You have 2 kidneys, when only one is needed. Why have 2 if redundancy doesn't contribute to survival or evolution? In this case upright walking is a redundancy for loosing an arm, and evolution could and probably did select for it.
The point is that for a population subject to Polio (hey I spelled it right that time) being able to walk upright would be a survival adaptation. Diseases rarely disappear from a population in one generation, thus continued evolutionary pressure to at a minimum walk upright if needed
I once saw a special on some apes, I can't remember if it was chimpanzees or gorillas, but they were getting polo from human vectors. One ape had a totally paralyzed arm, and had to walk upright the rest of its life. The documentary aired 5-10 years ago, but I remember thinking at the time that there might be a connection to upright walking in the evolution of humans. I'm sure it must have occurred to the primate observers also, though they didn't mention it in the documentary.
Maybe some other/.er can come up with the name of the documentary. This can't be a new insight.
Slashdot Mirror
All of the Characters were a little one dimensional, but at least they were varied. Many dramas of the 60s and 70s we peopled by everyone is a hero, everyone is perfect types, with perhaps just one or two transient bad apples thrown in, just to motive plot lines. Scotty drank. Kirk was an impulsive Cowboy. Spock was conflicted over his being a half-breed and trying to straddle two heritages. Uhura was afraid of aging and loosing her looks. McCoy was unhappy living in world dehumanized by technology. Checkoff was young and unseasoned. Sulu had an inscrutable exterior, but a child like exuberance waiting to be released. Yeoman Rand was not quite emotionally mature and prone to hero worship. Nurse Chapel fixates on something she can't have (Spock).
We liked all of them. We liked their eccentricities, and by extension we like the actors that played them and brought so much joy into our lives.
Mr Doohan is still with us, but given all these woes he has to overcome in these the late years of his life, I feel a little closer to him, and will morning his passing a little more. Perhaps more than all the others as they flicker out, because as I said before, Scotty is the every-man.
Enough with the beam me up jokes please. I really do think of these people as my friends, and this is sad news
Sadly evolution has probably coded that revenge is sweet, as long as it is somebody lower in the pecking order.
1. Some sizable fraction of replicants are sex slaves like Priss. In this case you certainly want as human as possible.
2. While humans are supposedly going off world to work, we don't meet anyone that has actually come back. The replicants can survive extreme environments. Perhaps humans are just being killed and all off world work is done by replicants, only the general populace doesn't knows this because any video shows off world activity full of human looking replicants.
3. Working with someone offworld that looks in-human might engender mistrust.
4. Any obvious cosmetic change like color could be overcome with makeup.
5. When we first started making them, it never occurred they would come back and start killing people. Making new replicants visually different would highlight the original oversight, and governments rarely want to do this.
That said, I am frustrated by the constant news about Blu-Ray this and HD-DVD that, with no products available here yet in the US.
There is only one channel of HDTV in my area and not even one I watch. Start pressing HD discs of some sort already! I have had an 8 foot projection (Quad XGA no less) system for three years now, and only current generation DVD (which admittedly looks DAMN good when pumped out of a Radeon 9800) to watch on it. I'm ready for the full Theater experience!
http://www.ethicalvalues.com/
and
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/ethical-la
Your half built SSC is curved.
We could revisit reactivating the SSC project, but that's a different debate.
Novice users hear about phishing, will think any old anti-phish tool will do.
As an out of control vehicle it could have has easily been hit by a truck as a Hummer and had the same outcome, perhaps even an impact with a small hybrid Prius would have had the same outcome (but been far more ironic).
The need to sacrifice weight to gain performance obviously led to some bad design choices. That said, solar power contests should probably be split into 2 categories:
1. No minimum weight, but only on closed courses.
2. Well-defined minimum crash worthiness, minimum weight for vehicle, still require lead and chaser vehicles on public roads. Some well established roadworthiness test by some officiating board before vehicles are taken on public roads.
Breakthroughs in Solar efficiency and conversion to actual horsepower are what this competition should motivate, not design of balsa wood enclosures to hurl down public highways.
I feel for the team and student who lost his life. I'm sure they didn't think they were taking undue risks, but they probably were.
I doubt this will have real long-term negative impact on Solar Power development. It's not like this out of control vehicle also took out a sideline of spectator Nuns. Nor is it hard to imagine the corrective action to keep this safe (as outlined above).
The value the Entertainment industry places on media content is completely unjustified, and can only be maintained by DeBeers like cartel control of the commodity. Without DMR and brainwashing they will not be able to continue to demand a higher and higher price for their products. Granted we don't need Entertainment to live, but why should the industry be able to run amok in terms of what they extract from the public? Unlike almost every other industry where the products either improve in quality or decrease in price over time, Entertainment stays virtually the same in its ability to entertain and resorts increasingly to strong-arm measures to keep the money rolling in. The vast majority of entertainers struggle to survive. Only a few mega-stars truly profit from the current system, and the Media Industry, which as middlemen that are increasing unneeded.
Make sharing a Right I say. Let the money flow to other more solid, productive, humanity serving endeavors. Musicians will still make music, and the Movie industry will still pay for Star Power. Musicians may have to perform live for the bulk of their earnings (the prerecorded music will be the advertisement). Movies may have to be sponsored by voluntary public donations or corporate advertising, but will still get made. Only the number of parasitic media moguls will diminish.
Sadly, since Entertainment is a major American export and money maker for the government through taxes, we are unlikely to see sane choices soon.
after having gone by Earth on a flyby (2005?)
and by Venus twice on flybys (2007, 2008)
See this link Mercury
After a flyby of Mars in 2008, and another in 2009, it settles down for orbit in 2011.
That last long ago (30 years) visit was only a flyby.
So all that confusion is about getting the right orbital velocity to stay, plus we get good science all along the way.
If this went on long enough and if we truly are at the end of straight line scaling, the industry might become driven by the one-more-GHz per year rule (the new More Law), versus doubling every 18 months. This new law could then hold for decades as it slowly curves down towards a flat line. I don't actually predict this will be the model soon, as the old Moore's Law is more likely to adhered to, but in 24 and then 36 month time frames for as long as possible. Still, if scaling is dead (and some are saying it is) then we could see the new "More Law" adopted as IT shops and Manufactures try to plan for future purchases. Software providers wouldn't be able to count on Moore's Law bailing them out. Bad news for Longhorn if scaling is dead, it might always be perceived of as slow (if /. reports are to be believed).
We are already putting 200+ million transistors on CPUs, but most speed increases come from scaling (speed increases) and memory caching. Now is the time for the industry to go Multi-Core. How about 100 two-million-transistor cores on a chip instead, with 500 separate integer and floating cores that can be shared across cores as needed.
BTW, I do know the real Moore's Law is about the number of transistors on a chip and not speed, but the two have been synonymous in the public's mind since the 80s.
Ultra Veal
(let the food fight begin)
"Iki iki iki p'tang ZOOP boing"! right (I'm guessing it's right)
and misspell Knights as nights?
Did you cut and paste this from somehwere (if so where?)
Or did you do it from memory?
We have had a huge bump-up in GFLOPs for supercomputers this last decade. In 1993 the top system was about 60 Gigaflops vs about 40 Teraflops today (see top500.org) while a top of the line pentium 4 today is at about 5 Gigaflops. I don't think another 10 years will quite close the gap.
The only real way to close in on massive parellel systems of today is for multicore chips to start appearing on the desktop (massively multicore).
For bulk supplies a rail-gun might compete with a cannon, but we already have cannon designs that are pretty much guaranteed to work. See Harp Project and Gerald Vincent Bull.
Instead of a 2 year timeout while the Shuttle is being revamped, I think we need to take a 10 year timeout until new launch systems are invented.
Here are the technologies I would invest in:
Any of several forms of launch assist, most likely Magnetic Rail. Any other technology would benefit from having this as a virtual first stage. Find the ideal location and buy the land -- DO NOT LEASE. We could probably build it in America, but why be trapped long term with less than ideal initial launch orbits. To be really radical, make it accessible to all nations, maybe build it as a coalition of the gravity well escaping.
Scram Jet and VASMIR, lets throw bucket loads of money in those directions.
Ditch the Space Elevator (at least for now), concentrate on something that could really be built, and that would be a "rotovator"
For items like oxygen, water, propellant, food -- fire them into orbit with a cannon. Massive G-Forces will not hurt them (though it might over tenderize steaks if that's the kind of food your sending up). This is really-really cost effective. Iraq was constructing a cannon capable of hitting Israel, it's just a matter of scale
Put any two or three of these together, then manned space flight begins to make sense
OK the whole point of my rant here is to alert anyone in the media arena that what will really give a better viewing experience now is to get the FPS rate up during filming. 60p doesn't help when you're just upconverting a 24 fps film source. DVD was a good compromise for resolution and frame rate at the number of bits we had. Now lets start pumping up the frame rate as well as the resolution, now that we have the headroom to do it.
Anti Nuke groups actually love this situation because it insures to keep the crisis mounting, and discourages any future nuclear development. Then if and when a nuclear waste incident occurs they can point and say "I told you so."
Why not go for better storage now, and keep looking for storage/disposal/reprocessing solutions to use later?
Starting 2020 driving on a highway or in most city-centers without being on autonomous control would be a crime. Starting 2010 driving a vehicle not sending valid transponder signals would be a crime.
Of course the transponder signal will drive privacy advocates nuts, but I don't think you can get to a robust autonomous driving system without it. I suspect transponders are coming anyway for other reasons, so best to make lemonade out of lemons. Yes you will be taxed for in city driving -- sorry, it's coming anyway. Yes cops will know where your car was in any 48-hour period -- get over it. Yes you will no longer be able to speed - who cares as long as I can blog /. while I ride, and my average arrival time is lower due to everyone optimizing the available traffic ways.
As to unexpected hazards like pedestrians, cars will have built in radar (already practical) that reacts much quicker than even the most alert driver. Drivers will have to be insulated legally from any liability for hitting a pedestrian when said pedestrian jaywalks in an autonomous driving zone, as will the autonomous driving system manufactures.
Will children and pets be hit by robot cars? Yes, but congress will have to mandate legal protections as long as aggregate fatalities fall. Gross negligence in equipment manufacture could still be prosecuted, but any system certified by government for use should be immune from legal persecution as long as the accident falls outside of the parameters the government mandates it be able to handle. The legal challenges are the true roadblock, even if aggregate safety is improved.
While we're at it, lets lower the sound level of emergency vehicles, but have a signal override your loud radio to inform you that there is an emergency vehicle approaching. Same for trains. This could lead to some additional pedestrian accidents, but not if pedestrians are trained to use existing traffic systems better. Children could (should?) be equipped with transponders to alert the system to increase safety margins (i.e. slowdown). Of course transponders on children is another hot button topic, but I'm not referring to some 24/7 implant, but a device they carry when in downtown areas, same for the handicapped and the elderly, even your average citizen if they wish to enhance their own safety.
Transponder abuse must be a severely prosecuted crime for obvious reasons, both for sending false signals or for stalking individuals by tracking their signals.
You can fight these changes, which I believe will come, or you can live in a less technologically advanced nation. Other countries come to mind: "autonomous driving mandated ... in Japan" (ongoing /. joke). We will not have robot servants, we will not have autonomous highways, we will not have other unthought of applications of technology if we are not willing to allow our physical presence to be tracked in real space (and this means everybody). How that information is used and stored is where we must concentrate or efforts in the privacy fight.
Granted sufficiently intelligent systems would not need transponders and
If acquiring polio resistant genes where easy, polio would have died out as a disease long ago without modern immunization programs.
There is at least one documented case of an ape-walking upright due to polio, due to one arm being paralyzed.
I think polio is more highly varied in symptoms than you realize.
Disease may have been a very minor factor in evolutionary pressure towards upright walking, BUT it could just has easily been the Dominant factor in the presence of a polio like disease if the limb affected included arms a high percentage of the time. In fact the pressure could have been so severe that great leaps toward upright walking could have been made in a short time. When your only survival option is to walk upright, that weeds out non-upright walkers rather quickly.
1. Individuals that can walk upright when needed, will have increased chances for survival, thus concentrating genes that contribute to being able to walk upright.
2. Being able to learn a behavior is also a genetic trait. Apes not able to learn an upright walking posture when needed (either due to disease or injury) will have diminished survival chances, even if physically capable of it.
Thus disease may not only have selected for the ability to walk upright, but to being able to learn behaviors. Survival would have depended on both and most certainly would be evolution in action by weeding out inferior not-able-to-walk-upright and not-able-to-learn-new-behavior individuals.
In the case of our hypothetical ape acquiring a behavior, you argue this is not contributing to evolution because he would have had the same genome with no advantage with or without the disease. BUT, his cousin without the ability to walk upright may have similarly fell prey to a polio like disease and not lived to spread his genes because he could not or would not walk upright. Thus our first ape gets to distribute his better upright walking, better behavior learning genes with less competition.
You have 2 kidneys, when only one is needed. Why have 2 if redundancy doesn't contribute to survival or evolution? In this case upright walking is a redundancy for loosing an arm, and evolution could and probably did select for it.
Read my mind not my key strokes!
Maybe some other /.er can come up with the name of the documentary. This can't be a new insight.