Is it me, or does NASA seem scared to get the answer to the question of is/was there life on Mars?
Viking’s results where ambiguous, so we decided – NO LIFE – no need to go back for over 20 years.
Now we keep getting a tantalizing clues, but can’t seem to summon the will to do a sample return mission. How many sample return missions could the ISS fund? How much more scientific benefit would come from it?
Of late it almost seems like they want to be just shy of proof so they can keep sending missions, getting us just a little closer each time. Call it the scientific method if you want but as Keynes once observed – “in the long run, we are all dead.” How-about we get our answers now?
How about a real microscope on one of these missions, not just a camera that can take photos of small objects -- far short of microbial dimensions – then insist on calling it a microscopic imager. Hell, why not a scanning electron microscope?
Most of the scientific instrumentation seems focused on geology. Granted Geology can be related to conditions for life and is important knowledge, but what we really want answered is “is there life on Mars”, not “is there hematite on Mars?” OK hematite on Mars is cool to know, but not as important I think as the Life question.
When we went to the moon there were far less important questions to be answered. How can the Life question on Mars be so much less a priority when it could up-end so much of scientific knowledge?
One final note to my rant – is it possible there is some drag on this quest so as to maintain the status quo and not upset a largely religious electorate that assumes we should only be concerned with our fate here on Earth as their God has decreed, or that life on Mars might raise too many uncomfortable questions.
There may or may not be a God, his properties other than omnipotence and omniscience would be unknown and probably unknowable to us. There is probably some reason for the Universe, call that God if you must or want, it isn't anything you can do something with in the real world.
When people get worked up about “You can't prove God doesn't exist,” it's usually because they assume if you concede there could be some kind of God any kind of God, then their version of religion is somehow validated and that you must be talking about a God that intervenes in our lives.
Fine, there may be a God, but all major religions are still hogwash.
Increasingly science has been coming to the conclusion our universe is much larger spatially than previously imagined, (areas that have expanded out of our causal connectivity) and may in fact be infinite. If so, then a reasonable robust set of physical laws would probably lead to intelligence somewhere, somehow, but more than this, the universe is probably infinite in multiply definable ways (see: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothosis) including how you can define physical laws, and all those universes large enough with complex enough laws probably all lead to intelligent life. The solution to Fermi's Paradox may be that sufficient advanced beings have escaped to the other extra-dimensional Universes.
I'd say Quantum Mechanics is a strong indicator of infinite overlapping Universes and if the Universe is infinite in this way, why not infinite in all ways including how to cook up physical laws? With the God theory you get one highly anomalous and inexplicable Universe. Whereas if you just allow everything, well then – here we are, with infinite Universes we'd have had to pop up somewhere.
Computer learns to pick out salient features to identify images. Then we are shocked that when trained with no supervision the salient features aren’t what we would have chosen.
I see this as a great ah-ha moment. Humans also have visual systems that can be tricked by optical illusions. The patterns presented while seemingly incomprehensible to us make sense to computers for the same reason our optical illusions do to us -- taking short cuts in visual processing that would fire on patterns not often or ever seen in the real world. Which BTW means even as is, this type of visual identification is still useful, since the random images generating false hits aren’t just any random images, but ones that have visual features similar to the targets identified, even if we humans can’t see the similarities or even if they look like white noise.
Now that we know what computers are picking out as salient features, we can modify the algorithms to add additional constraints on what additional salient features must or must not be in an object identified, such that it would correspond more closely to how humans would classify objects. Baseball’s must have curvature for instance not just zig-zag red lines on white.
But if the contraption can't lift both responder and victim out (like the basket can), then I really think this has limited use. I suspect the weight of two people and the geometry of the contraption make impractical for evacuation -- which is the most common rescue work I imagine.
"The Martin Jetpack is a disruptive technology, much like the helicopter was when first developed, with substantial capabilities which will be very complementary to our solutions we can offer our customers," says Avwatch
Uhhh, I don’t think so. This is like an extremely small helicopter, there is little I can see it doing a helicopter couldn’t. What few things it might be able to do a copter couldn’t, remote control drones will soon be able to do.
I don’t think the 60’s jetpack dream will ever be truly realized.
I’ve never understood why taxes for things have to come from oddly tenuously associated sources for the things they fund. Here in DC the Dulles metro extension is mostly funded by tolls on cars on the Dulles tollway, why do the residents in that area get the privilege of subsidizing travel for DC to Dulles whether they would use the metro or not? Why should phones be taxed to fund internet for schools? Shouldn't school infrastructure funding come from some from a mix of property taxes, state funding, and federal funding?
Sometimes taxes need to go up. If not, then don’t hide the fact that they went up with all the damn smoke and mirrors. Storm sewers here in Maryland need funding, so now we are going to get a rain tax proportional to acreage. Of course it won’t mater if your property is next to a stream and has no impact on the storm sewer system. If infrastructure needs fixing then just raise the damn property taxes -- larger estates will end up paying more anyway.
I may be shortsighted, or... there is no advantage to this car over conventional electric or hybrid at this point and will likely stay that way. Sure internal combustion engines (ICE) took off, but how many other inventions since then haven’t? Are you still riding around in your Stanley Steamer?
The 5 minute fueling is no advantage if there is nowhere to refill. Hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain, should these become common no doubt we will start to here stories about hydrogen leaks and is unlikely they will be able to add an ordorant as it may poison the catalyst.
Not everything succeeds, cars are expensive, make wise choices, not just OMG it’s cool and green.
..than to have the FBI wondering why I'm contributing money to this cause. I applaud the goal, but I'll let someone more altruistic than me step up to bat.
Save me the "When Good Men Do Nothing," I have family and other considerations outside Slashdot idealism.
Let’s see, my Volkswagen Passat, which I paid 18K, for will go 450 miles and refuel just about anywhere.
Green is nice and all, but why even bother rolling something out that is obviously not ready for primetime? At least Hybrids can refuel anywhere even if over priced. I’ll go all electric or hybrid once the economics are in place, and I have no problem with early adopters, but getting one of these seems to be for masochists only at this point. Give me a range of 500+ miles, or the ability to fuel at home (maybe natural gas to hydrogen conversion – though that somewhat defeats the purpose).
Remember, Hydrogen is really just a battery when you think about it, the power still has to come from somewhere else like coal (though ideally wind or solar). In most cases hydrogen is generated from natural gas, generating, you guessed it, carbon dioxide in the process.
I don’t recall seeing boot camps for Electrical Engineers or boot Camps for Medical Doctors. I remember back in the late 70s when I first started coding on an Apple ][ people regarded me with awe for being able to write a print statement in a for loop. In those days everyone probably could learn to code simple text based game and recipe organizers, but they didn’t. Now that we need stable object oriented code that actually takes some discipline to write we’ve decided everyone should do – it is the path too quick riches after all.
I’m not saying our discipline is too hard for a person with an average IQ, but it deserves the same respect as any other technical field. There is enough bad code to fix from people that spent 4-8 years learning to code, I don’t think boot camp graduates will write better code. If anything we should be toughening the academic standards for writing maintainable code and take the time to be sure the lessons have sunk in, not shortening the time we learn to code – I can only imagine that leads to a quick and dirty solutions.
Of course maybe this is not really about true web development, but about just being able to fire up something like Cold-Fusion and churn out volumes of similar looking websites -- you know to keep costs down.
45+ years ago when I was a kid and before cellphone towers dotted the landscape there were these funnel shaped microwave repeating towers everywhere that carried long distance phone traffic across the country without wires.
So your point is you would ignore the list, so it shouldn't be available to anyone? Or because you think people like parents who may not agree with your stance on violence might use it -- again removing their role as a parent, because evidently gamers in the Slashdot community know better.
I could have thought I specifically said as long as it is not censorship. So why bring in Australia's practices to this discussion? Rating will lead to censorship? Not sure that follows.
The things you mention should be covered in gaming review sites. Now maybe you think the magazines should just list these elements as well, but here is the situation, my 8 or 10 year old has requested I buy some innocuous sounding racing game. I’m at the store, I but it. We get it home and there are big busted ladies jumping around and possibly occasionally losing their tops.
Now you may have decided I’m a prude and that it’s OK for my 8 or 10 year to see these things, but really that isn’t your call. I didn’t ask for censorship, I just asked for informative labeling on the product similar to food.
How to achieve that fair labeling may be neigh-on-impossible, but there is nothing I see wrong with the goal.
Of course you may worry that if these elements are labeled then people like me might hurt sales of games with titillating sex and violence thus making for fewer of these available – because a pretty good number of Slashdotters think people should be mature enough to handle nudity, sex, and violence at all ages and that parents isolate their children too much, or that the parents should invest time researching a game before buying (which I concede to some small degree as a fair point). Still I would contend we should make it easier for people to make informed decisions, especially parents.
I would give Negative grades for each of the following:
Violence Nudity Sexism Racism/Stereotyping (including slights to LGBT society) Culturally insensitive Religiously Intolerant Religious Indoctrination Politically Driven Agenda Historically Inaccurate
Positive Grades for These:
Educational Social Responsible Mentally Stimulating Historically Accurate
And an overall aggregate score
Granted things like Politically Driven Agenda would be hotly contested every time and couldn’t possibly work in the real world, but this would be a near ideal list. As long as it isn’t censorship what’s wrong with full disclosure. If a game would be embarrassed to be labeled Sexism Level 4, then maybe they need to dial back the bikini babes at the race start. I wouldn't want to get too carried away with categories, others may suggest a few more, but if we keep it to under 20 that shouldn't be too over the top, more like a list of ingredients in prepackaged food.
I had initially been interested in Google Glass initially as well, though I didn't really expect to buy one soon. I figured I'd wait a generation or two and for the resolution to be Full-HD and all the kinks worked out. I had expressed my curiosity about Google Glass to my wife who flat out said no way because of the nerdy look in public. Still I followed the progress passively and it never came and it never came. I figured we be on generation 3 by now.
Now Oculus Rift is on my radar – my wife is less skeptical (mostly because I will be in the basement when I get my geek on). This one too is beginning to drag out, though supposedly now only months away.
These companies seem very hesitant to bring first generation products to market, evidently worried anything less than perfection will doom long term adoption. Seems to me Google Glass should have had a for-businesses version first that acclimated the public to its appearance. There would seem to be literally hundreds of uses business could put these things too, whereas there doesn't seem to be a killer-app for the general public yet.
As for Oculus Rift gaming is already a killer-app not to mention tele-sight-seeing and 360 degree immerse movies.
I wouldn't be surprised in the long run to see Google Glass conquer business uses, and Oculus Rift conquer entertainment uses.
I remember back in the 80's all the excitement about building faster and faster super computers to solve all sorts of grand challenge problems and how a teraflop would just about be nirvana for science. Around 2000 teraflops came and went and then petaflops became the new nirvana for science where we would be able to solve grand challenge problems. Now exaflop is the new nirvana that will solve grand challenge science problems once again. Seems raw computing power hasn't given us the progress in science we predicted. Sure it's been used for stuff, but it hasn't helped us crack nuclear fusion for instance, one of its often hyped goals.
Where's the score card on how much progress has been made because of super computing? I know drug design is one very useful application, but what are other areas that have been transformed?
I literally get sick to my stomach every time I see these kinds of proposals. I know us turning into a police state is not the goal of radical Islam, but having us live in fear is and which this will promulgate as a constant reminder.
We use to want to defeat authoritarian regimes by being a beacon of freedom that their citizens aspired to – thus defeating them without having to have boots on the ground. It worked well against the Soviet Union and given enough time will work against radical Islam, that is if we don’t turn into something their people don’t admire and aspire to be.
Just quit playing their game, seriously, leave things alone to sort themselves out. I’m not completely isolationist, groups like ISIS certainly deserve a thumping. I’m not blind that some intervention is called for in extreme cases.
How about we get to UN to quit backsliding on basic freedoms, instead of worrying about the sensitivities of religions? How about to be full fledged member of the UN your people have to have freedom of speech and religion? Political systems and economic systems are up to whoever is in charge, but quit letting theocracies to get a pass on human rights. Do this and within a generation religious radicalism will be a thing of the past.
This looks promising for third world markets, but it seems we could/should have something much better here already. Why not some mini LIDAR or other depth ranging technology that sends info to an array of vibrators that encircle the chest, thus giving a crude 3D representation (even behind) instead of one fixed line that must be manually scanned?
Why not send a 40 khz signal out, then down convert it to 5-10khz on return and feed it directly to the blind persons ears (I suggest this in addition to the scheme outlined above) to echo locate instead of having the blind having to constantly click with their tongues to do a crude echo locate as some do?
My main point is there should be lots of ways more accurate and immersive than this, that while more expensive are still affordable, doable, and practical (especially considering what we already spend on other aids and help animals).
We seem to have been on the verge of artificial eyes for decades. How about we dump representing 2D images and present Depth in place of Brightness. Crude 3D might be much better for navigating in the world as a blind person instead of crude 2D vision. This could even be switchable between 2D and 3D, or 2D in one eye and depth in the other.
Surely a remote control device of some sort should suffice, be smaller, faster and good enough if not perfect.
I’m amazed the windows aren't pre-designed for some kind of semi-automatic, rc-controled cleaning device.
There may then be some difficult areas that occasionally need a human crew on the outside, but if you could get this down to 5% or even 20% it would be a big safety win.
I imagine a range of remote units. Some very dumb and cleaning the bulk of the windows, then bigger more expensive units that do the less frequent more intricate edge work.
I went to the University of Illinois in the 80’s, I’d heard of Plato, but didn’t get to experience it. That said I had gone to a community college my first two years (Blackhawk College in Moline) and remember a multimedia learning experience involved slides, audio, and text input that really seemed to accelerate my learning on some writing fundamentals that may not have been up to snuff after high school. I remember thinking this is the way education should be. That experience didn’t linger however and it was back to a slog of just regular book learning.
I have thought on this over an over the last few decades. I took the huge Stanford AI course by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. I did well, but it was a disappointment in presentation and did not feel to be the accelerated learning sensation I’d had all those years ago at Blackhawk.
Why are we re-writing Calculus books over and over? Why isn’t there some insanely great multimedia interactive national curriculum for this sort of stuff. Why when we are busing kids around aren’t they on tablets watching lectures and doing interactive lessons?
I have seen the argument over and over that kids need individualized attention by teachers to do well, but I fail to understand why all the drudge assignment work and pre-scripted presentations have to be created and done by those same teachers. Why aren’t the teachers more like facilitators helping the kids to navigate and understand the material as created and presented by the truly best presenters online?
We frequently find mistakes in the material our child brings home that the teachers have prepared. We send it back with corrections explained to the teachers, but why should I have to proof read the teacher’s material? And our local elementary school is supposedly among the best here in Maryland. I can only imagine how abysmal the homework assignments are at poorer schools. Again, why are the teachers creating the homework assignments? I understand tailoring the explanations to the students as they struggle to master something, I don’t understand why the bulk of of assignments have to be custom created by the teachers, especially when they are going to flub it so often.
My wife and I spend a great deal of time educating our daughter, I feel it is almost home schooling and she gets very little from school itself. While she is an straight A student and we are proud, I am also angry we have to invest so much time and energy to teach her what she should be getting in school. Yes our daughter absolutely wants harder assignments and material in school, but the teachers hold back students like our daughter to keep the material at a level the bulk of the class can keep up with.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it me, or does NASA seem scared to get the answer to the question of is/was there life on Mars?
Viking’s results where ambiguous, so we decided – NO LIFE – no need to go back for over 20 years.
Now we keep getting a tantalizing clues, but can’t seem to summon the will to do a sample return mission. How many sample return missions could the ISS fund? How much more scientific benefit would come from it?
Of late it almost seems like they want to be just shy of proof so they can keep sending missions, getting us just a little closer each time. Call it the scientific method if you want but as Keynes once observed – “in the long run, we are all dead.” How-about we get our answers now?
How about a real microscope on one of these missions, not just a camera that can take photos of small objects -- far short of microbial dimensions – then insist on calling it a microscopic imager. Hell, why not a scanning electron microscope?
Most of the scientific instrumentation seems focused on geology. Granted Geology can be related to conditions for life and is important knowledge, but what we really want answered is “is there life on Mars”, not “is there hematite on Mars?” OK hematite on Mars is cool to know, but not as important I think as the Life question.
When we went to the moon there were far less important questions to be answered. How can the Life question on Mars be so much less a priority when it could up-end so much of scientific knowledge?
One final note to my rant – is it possible there is some drag on this quest so as to maintain the status quo and not upset a largely religious electorate that assumes we should only be concerned with our fate here on Earth as their God has decreed, or that life on Mars might raise too many uncomfortable questions.
Most stories omit his party affiliation.
So pleased to see he is keeping up the (new) Republican tradition of being bat-shit insane.
There may or may not be a God, his properties other than omnipotence and omniscience would be unknown and probably unknowable to us. There is probably some reason for the Universe, call that God if you must or want, it isn't anything you can do something with in the real world.
When people get worked up about “You can't prove God doesn't exist,” it's usually because they assume if you concede there could be some kind of God any kind of God, then their version of religion is somehow validated and that you must be talking about a God that intervenes in our lives.
Fine, there may be a God, but all major religions are still hogwash.
Increasingly science has been coming to the conclusion our universe is much larger spatially than previously imagined, (areas that have expanded out of our causal connectivity) and may in fact be infinite. If so, then a reasonable robust set of physical laws would probably lead to intelligence somewhere, somehow, but more than this, the universe is probably infinite in multiply definable ways (see: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothosis) including how you can define physical laws, and all those universes large enough with complex enough laws probably all lead to intelligent life. The solution to Fermi's Paradox may be that sufficient advanced beings have escaped to the other extra-dimensional Universes.
I'd say Quantum Mechanics is a strong indicator of infinite overlapping Universes and if the Universe is infinite in this way, why not infinite in all ways including how to cook up physical laws? With the God theory you get one highly anomalous and inexplicable Universe. Whereas if you just allow everything, well then – here we are, with infinite Universes we'd have had to pop up somewhere.
Computer learns to pick out salient features to identify images. Then we are shocked that when trained with no supervision the salient features aren’t what we would have chosen.
I see this as a great ah-ha moment. Humans also have visual systems that can be tricked by optical illusions. The patterns presented while seemingly incomprehensible to us make sense to computers for the same reason our optical illusions do to us -- taking short cuts in visual processing that would fire on patterns not often or ever seen in the real world. Which BTW means even as is, this type of visual identification is still useful, since the random images generating false hits aren’t just any random images, but ones that have visual features similar to the targets identified, even if we humans can’t see the similarities or even if they look like white noise.
Now that we know what computers are picking out as salient features, we can modify the algorithms to add additional constraints on what additional salient features must or must not be in an object identified, such that it would correspond more closely to how humans would classify objects. Baseball’s must have curvature for instance not just zig-zag red lines on white.
(been on vacation)
Sorry to have been snarky.
But if the contraption can't lift both responder and victim out (like the basket can), then I really think this has limited use. I suspect the weight of two people and the geometry of the contraption make impractical for evacuation -- which is the most common rescue work I imagine.
Strange, I thought I'd seen those basket lift contraptions used for years. Guess they quit making them.
You say the emergency area is farther than 20 miles round trip? Too bad, a helicopter would never be able to go that far either I guess.
Uhhh, I don’t think so. This is like an extremely small helicopter, there is little I can see it doing a helicopter couldn’t. What few things it might be able to do a copter couldn’t, remote control drones will soon be able to do.
I don’t think the 60’s jetpack dream will ever be truly realized.
I’ve never understood why taxes for things have to come from oddly tenuously associated sources for the things they fund. Here in DC the Dulles metro extension is mostly funded by tolls on cars on the Dulles tollway, why do the residents in that area get the privilege of subsidizing travel for DC to Dulles whether they would use the metro or not? Why should phones be taxed to fund internet for schools? Shouldn't school infrastructure funding come from some from a mix of property taxes, state funding, and federal funding?
Sometimes taxes need to go up. If not, then don’t hide the fact that they went up with all the damn smoke and mirrors. Storm sewers here in Maryland need funding, so now we are going to get a rain tax proportional to acreage. Of course it won’t mater if your property is next to a stream and has no impact on the storm sewer system. If infrastructure needs fixing then just raise the damn property taxes -- larger estates will end up paying more anyway.
North Korea just anounced they've already cloned one (and T-Rex as well).
I may be shortsighted, or... there is no advantage to this car over conventional electric or hybrid at this point and will likely stay that way. Sure internal combustion engines (ICE) took off, but how many other inventions since then haven’t? Are you still riding around in your Stanley Steamer?
The 5 minute fueling is no advantage if there is nowhere to refill. Hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain, should these become common no doubt we will start to here stories about hydrogen leaks and is unlikely they will be able to add an ordorant as it may poison the catalyst.
Not everything succeeds, cars are expensive, make wise choices, not just OMG it’s cool and green.
..than to have the FBI wondering why I'm contributing money to this cause. I applaud the goal, but I'll let someone more altruistic than me step up to bat.
Save me the "When Good Men Do Nothing," I have family and other considerations outside Slashdot idealism.
Let’s see, my Volkswagen Passat, which I paid 18K, for will go 450 miles and refuel just about anywhere.
Green is nice and all, but why even bother rolling something out that is obviously not ready for primetime? At least Hybrids can refuel anywhere even if over priced. I’ll go all electric or hybrid once the economics are in place, and I have no problem with early adopters, but getting one of these seems to be for masochists only at this point. Give me a range of 500+ miles, or the ability to fuel at home (maybe natural gas to hydrogen conversion – though that somewhat defeats the purpose).
Remember, Hydrogen is really just a battery when you think about it, the power still has to come from somewhere else like coal (though ideally wind or solar). In most cases hydrogen is generated from natural gas, generating, you guessed it, carbon dioxide in the process.
I don’t recall seeing boot camps for Electrical Engineers or boot Camps for Medical Doctors. I remember back in the late 70s when I first started coding on an Apple ][ people regarded me with awe for being able to write a print statement in a for loop. In those days everyone probably could learn to code simple text based game and recipe organizers, but they didn’t. Now that we need stable object oriented code that actually takes some discipline to write we’ve decided everyone should do – it is the path too quick riches after all.
I’m not saying our discipline is too hard for a person with an average IQ, but it deserves the same respect as any other technical field. There is enough bad code to fix from people that spent 4-8 years learning to code, I don’t think boot camp graduates will write better code. If anything we should be toughening the academic standards for writing maintainable code and take the time to be sure the lessons have sunk in, not shortening the time we learn to code – I can only imagine that leads to a quick and dirty solutions.
Of course maybe this is not really about true web development, but about just being able to fire up something like Cold-Fusion and churn out volumes of similar looking websites -- you know to keep costs down.
45+ years ago when I was a kid and before cellphone towers dotted the landscape there were these funnel shaped microwave repeating towers everywhere that carried long distance phone traffic across the country without wires.
So your point is you would ignore the list, so it shouldn't be available to anyone? Or because you think people like parents who may not agree with your stance on violence might use it -- again removing their role as a parent, because evidently gamers in the Slashdot community know better.
I could have thought I specifically said as long as it is not censorship. So why bring in Australia's practices to this discussion? Rating will lead to censorship? Not sure that follows.
Make it stop, dear God make it stop!
The things you mention should be covered in gaming review sites. Now maybe you think the magazines should just list these elements as well, but here is the situation, my 8 or 10 year old has requested I buy some innocuous sounding racing game. I’m at the store, I but it. We get it home and there are big busted ladies jumping around and possibly occasionally losing their tops.
Now you may have decided I’m a prude and that it’s OK for my 8 or 10 year to see these things, but really that isn’t your call. I didn’t ask for censorship, I just asked for informative labeling on the product similar to food.
How to achieve that fair labeling may be neigh-on-impossible, but there is nothing I see wrong with the goal.
Of course you may worry that if these elements are labeled then people like me might hurt sales of games with titillating sex and violence thus making for fewer of these available – because a pretty good number of Slashdotters think people should be mature enough to handle nudity, sex, and violence at all ages and that parents isolate their children too much, or that the parents should invest time researching a game before buying (which I concede to some small degree as a fair point). Still I would contend we should make it easier for people to make informed decisions, especially parents.
I would give Negative grades for each of the following:
Violence
Nudity
Sexism
Racism/Stereotyping (including slights to LGBT society)
Culturally insensitive
Religiously Intolerant
Religious Indoctrination
Politically Driven Agenda
Historically Inaccurate
Positive Grades for These:
Educational
Social Responsible
Mentally Stimulating
Historically Accurate
And an overall aggregate score
Granted things like Politically Driven Agenda would be hotly contested every time and couldn’t possibly work in the real world, but this would be a near ideal list. As long as it isn’t censorship what’s wrong with full disclosure. If a game would be embarrassed to be labeled Sexism Level 4, then maybe they need to dial back the bikini babes at the race start. I wouldn't want to get too carried away with categories, others may suggest a few more, but if we keep it to under 20 that shouldn't be too over the top, more like a list of ingredients in prepackaged food.
I had initially been interested in Google Glass initially as well, though I didn't really expect to buy one soon. I figured I'd wait a generation or two and for the resolution to be Full-HD and all the kinks worked out. I had expressed my curiosity about Google Glass to my wife who flat out said no way because of the nerdy look in public. Still I followed the progress passively and it never came and it never came. I figured we be on generation 3 by now.
Now Oculus Rift is on my radar – my wife is less skeptical (mostly because I will be in the basement when I get my geek on). This one too is beginning to drag out, though supposedly now only months away.
These companies seem very hesitant to bring first generation products to market, evidently worried anything less than perfection will doom long term adoption. Seems to me Google Glass should have had a for-businesses version first that acclimated the public to its appearance. There would seem to be literally hundreds of uses business could put these things too, whereas there doesn't seem to be a killer-app for the general public yet.
As for Oculus Rift gaming is already a killer-app not to mention tele-sight-seeing and 360 degree immerse movies.
I wouldn't be surprised in the long run to see Google Glass conquer business uses, and Oculus Rift conquer entertainment uses.
I remember back in the 80's all the excitement about building faster and faster super computers to solve all sorts of grand challenge problems and how a teraflop would just about be nirvana for science. Around 2000 teraflops came and went and then petaflops became the new nirvana for science where we would be able to solve grand challenge problems. Now exaflop is the new nirvana that will solve grand challenge science problems once again. Seems raw computing power hasn't given us the progress in science we predicted. Sure it's been used for stuff, but it hasn't helped us crack nuclear fusion for instance, one of its often hyped goals.
Where's the score card on how much progress has been made because of super computing? I know drug design is one very useful application, but what are other areas that have been transformed?
I literally get sick to my stomach every time I see these kinds of proposals. I know us turning into a police state is not the goal of radical Islam, but having us live in fear is and which this will promulgate as a constant reminder.
We use to want to defeat authoritarian regimes by being a beacon of freedom that their citizens aspired to – thus defeating them without having to have boots on the ground. It worked well against the Soviet Union and given enough time will work against radical Islam, that is if we don’t turn into something their people don’t admire and aspire to be.
Just quit playing their game, seriously, leave things alone to sort themselves out. I’m not completely isolationist, groups like ISIS certainly deserve a thumping. I’m not blind that some intervention is called for in extreme cases.
How about we get to UN to quit backsliding on basic freedoms, instead of worrying about the sensitivities of religions? How about to be full fledged member of the UN your people have to have freedom of speech and religion? Political systems and economic systems are up to whoever is in charge, but quit letting theocracies to get a pass on human rights. Do this and within a generation religious radicalism will be a thing of the past.
This looks promising for third world markets, but it seems we could/should have something much better here already. Why not some mini LIDAR or other depth ranging technology that sends info to an array of vibrators that encircle the chest, thus giving a crude 3D representation (even behind) instead of one fixed line that must be manually scanned?
Why not send a 40 khz signal out, then down convert it to 5-10khz on return and feed it directly to the blind persons ears (I suggest this in addition to the scheme outlined above) to echo locate instead of having the blind having to constantly click with their tongues to do a crude echo locate as some do?
My main point is there should be lots of ways more accurate and immersive than this, that while more expensive are still affordable, doable, and practical (especially considering what we already spend on other aids and help animals).
We seem to have been on the verge of artificial eyes for decades. How about we dump representing 2D images and present Depth in place of Brightness. Crude 3D might be much better for navigating in the world as a blind person instead of crude 2D vision. This could even be switchable between 2D and 3D, or 2D in one eye and depth in the other.
Surely a remote control device of some sort should suffice, be smaller, faster and good enough if not perfect.
I’m amazed the windows aren't pre-designed for some kind of semi-automatic, rc-controled cleaning device.
There may then be some difficult areas that occasionally need a human crew on the outside, but if you could get this down to 5% or even 20% it would be a big safety win.
I imagine a range of remote units. Some very dumb and cleaning the bulk of the windows, then bigger more expensive units that do the less frequent more intricate edge work.
I went to the University of Illinois in the 80’s, I’d heard of Plato, but didn’t get to experience it. That said I had gone to a community college my first two years (Blackhawk College in Moline) and remember a multimedia learning experience involved slides, audio, and text input that really seemed to accelerate my learning on some writing fundamentals that may not have been up to snuff after high school. I remember thinking this is the way education should be. That experience didn’t linger however and it was back to a slog of just regular book learning.
I have thought on this over an over the last few decades. I took the huge Stanford AI course by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. I did well, but it was a disappointment in presentation and did not feel to be the accelerated learning sensation I’d had all those years ago at Blackhawk.
Why are we re-writing Calculus books over and over? Why isn’t there some insanely great multimedia interactive national curriculum for this sort of stuff. Why when we are busing kids around aren’t they on tablets watching lectures and doing interactive lessons?
I have seen the argument over and over that kids need individualized attention by teachers to do well, but I fail to understand why all the drudge assignment work and pre-scripted presentations have to be created and done by those same teachers. Why aren’t the teachers more like facilitators helping the kids to navigate and understand the material as created and presented by the truly best presenters online?
We frequently find mistakes in the material our child brings home that the teachers have prepared. We send it back with corrections explained to the teachers, but why should I have to proof read the teacher’s material? And our local elementary school is supposedly among the best here in Maryland. I can only imagine how abysmal the homework assignments are at poorer schools. Again, why are the teachers creating the homework assignments? I understand tailoring the explanations to the students as they struggle to master something, I don’t understand why the bulk of of assignments have to be custom created by the teachers, especially when they are going to flub it so often.
My wife and I spend a great deal of time educating our daughter, I feel it is almost home schooling and she gets very little from school itself. While she is an straight A student and we are proud, I am also angry we have to invest so much time and energy to teach her what she should be getting in school. Yes our daughter absolutely wants harder assignments and material in school, but the teachers hold back students like our daughter to keep the material at a level the bulk of the class can keep up with.