A central traffic grid would be hard to setup but once created could be very efficient at selecting routes to destinations
I don't know about you, but I know that I don't want my primary means of transport centralized. Just too much opportunity for badness there.
How about we just work on cars that can drive themselves independently in the midst of humans driving their cars? That's the only way we can gradually transition to a computerized system, anyway. Once a sufficient majority of drivers have self-driving cars, we can start declaring lanes "computerized cars only", and then gradually phase out un-automated cars.
Once we have decent self-driving cars, a whole new way of life emerges- how about ordering stuff off the internet and having it delivered automatically? No more need for stores, really, at that point... Little motorcycle-sized auto-delivery bots cruising all around?
I could go downtown and have my car drop me off somewhere and park itself, or maybe I'll just have a taxi service that I can summon near-instantaneously with my phone/PDA, and then it can go serve someone else when it drops me off. I would imagine it would alter the shape of suburbia drastically, as well. I could live in the middle of nowhere and get around just as efficiently as if I lived in the heart of the city...
or, alternatively, they don't care what happens to the delivery vehicle- because this thing will be used in globe-crossing cruise missiles long before it goes into anything reusable...
uhm... ok- as if grammar and formatting have anything to do with intelligence... an intelligent person would understand that the medium is one which lends itself to quickly fired-off statements, for which grammar and formatting are of little importance. and how about arguing against the comment, instead of the way it is written?
oh, give me a break- who modded this insightful? the 3 laws don't mean jack. everyone acts like asimov was some big genius for coming up with these 3 laws, yet i wouldn't feel particularly safe with them- how does the robot define "human being"? what if i tell it "jews are not human beings"? what's to prevent it from indirectly causing harm to humans? how does it decide which humans' orders to obey? and so a robot must protect its own existence as long as it doesn't hurt any humans, so what if it destroys half the city without killing anyone in the process? they're a buncha loophole-ridden crap, that's they are... a buncha people as smart as the slashdot crowd should know better than to keep touting them...
i think using space for advertising is just horribly wrong, but this could be pretty useful for other situations- such as giving directions to the public in the event of a disaster that affects a large area...or for psy-ops in a war- no more dropping hundreds of leaflets, just paint a giant death's head in the night sky and say "surrender or die!" actually, i'm not sure how i feel about the last one...:)
i think it's pretty evident that the army doesn't give a crap about costs... why should they, when it's so easy to get billions and billions from american taxpayers?
at the time of those studies, mice (and GUI interfaces, for that matter) were relatively new to people. i think the results would be quite different now. the complexity of a multi-button mouse may be a little tricky for a complete newbie, but it IS intuitive.
think about it- you can do multiple things with your hands: grasp, twist, point, etc. having multiple mouse buttons is a similar concept. i've got a logitech MX 700 at home and when i come to work where i don't have the forward/back buttons on the thumb, i find myself occasionally feeling for them. anyone who has gotten comfortable with the use of a scroll wheel can tell you that you really notice its absence when using a computer that doesn't have one.
the lack of a right mouse button dumbs down things and makes it less intuitive, and having to push the command key means you need two hands to do half of the functions on the computer. it doesn't make things faster- you have to think "ok, now i need to push the command key with my left hand... where is that thing... ok" whenever you want to do something, instead of just pushing your middle finger.
although it wouldn't fix the issue with laptops, i wish apple would at least make a "pro" mouse that has the extra buttons and a scroll wheel and matches the design of their computers. i might consider buying a mac if they did that...
i know- i'm looking forward to the day when my computer is a thin solid-state slate.
IANAEE, but it seems like someday we could make a computer that is basically an LCD/Tablet sort of thing, with all the chips of a computer on the back. Maybe one massive IC of something like EEPROM and Flash RAM. Upgrades are just a hardware issue. Maybe even programs could hard-wire things? Maybe it can be made reversible so that it uses very little energy, too.... and have a solar panel on the back. It would have a multi-band antenna and software/firmware upgradeable radio built in.
actually, probably by then we'll have the ability to make a good reflective, matte screen. maybe even by then we could make them able to roll up or fold or whatever, although i think i'd prefer an 8 1/2" x 11" slate, about 1/8" thick.
I hope I don't sound like a troll, but I gotta say this going to the moon plan is incredibly stupid and really shows the Bush administration's lack of originality or real vision.
I think the really visionary thing to do would be to make AI the big goal. Maybe something like having an intelligent humanoid robot by 2012, or something crazy like that. That would be as big of a deal as going to the moon for the first time.
Throw tons of money in it, give a lot of programmers jobs, and there would be benefits in just about every sector. Increased production, efficiency, military advantages, etc, etc... The Japanese are making a lot of significant advances in robotics and AI, and we could very quickly be left in their dust if we don't jump on it now.
I didn't know that about Japanese. That is very interesting, and I think you're right. The idea of copying as we apply it to invention is particularly troublesome in terms of innovation. It's one thing when someone duplicates something directly, like stealing the blueprints and making something EXACTLY the same. But if I can look at your machine and see how it works, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to make something that works in the same manner.
it's not the machines themselves but the processes- if I want to know how the car your company makes works, I could just buy one and take it apart. the important thing, which one could learn by touring the factory and taking pictures, is how you are able to make that car so affordable and of such high quality. it's pretty safe to say that the success of Japanese car manufacturing in the mid-20th century (and other industries, like electronics, as well) was the result of careful analysis of how the existing companies were doing things, seeing what worked/didn't work, looking at where it could be improved. They also had the advantage of starting from scratch with a picture of what works, whereas the American manufacturers were heavily invested in processes that had been kludged together through trial and error. American industry had gotten so comfortable with their way of doing things and their lack of real competitition that the Japanese caught them completely by surprise. They were able to produce better products for less, and they kicked American ass for a while. Now the same trend is happening over again with countries like Korea, China, and India, and the Japanese are feeling it.
"It turns out that the hacker was a student using the machines to download and store music and movie."
I'm not gonna put it past anyone, because you never know... but one must wonder why anyone with the knowledge necessary to do such a thing would waste it on downloading crap when they could just go to a WiFi hotspot, or hack into any random user's account. It seems a lot more likely that it would provide an innocuous cover for whatever it was they were really doing, and account for large volumes of bandwidth...
yeah, those sound sorta like contradictory statements... perhaps you send in 6 and they give you a rebate. i was pondering the "chemical hacking" idea as well. perhaps there's a solution you could put the disc in which would create bonds with whatever it is that reacts with the oxygen and prevent it from reacting with the atmosphere. or perhaps some way to remove the reactive coating. i think it's just a normal dvd with the coating that reacts and turns opaque to prevent it from being read. perhaps their "recycling" is really just a process of removing this layer and putting a new one back on...
Just wait until those disposable DVDs (as mentioned on slashdot) that only play 2-3 times hit the market
EZ-D's are already on the market. They're made with a material that reacts with the oxygen in the air to render them unplayable after 48 hours. I agree that it's rather wasteful, but they do have a recycling program that even has the incentive of a free disc when you send in 6 expired ones. Still wasteful, and it should come with a prepaid envelope to the recycler. I think it's just a matter of time before, whether through a set-top box or over the internet, every movie in existence will be available for instant download. At that point, hopefully, all this crap will go away...
those aren't fingerprints- that's the plastic peel-off anti-scratch sheeting that protects it during transport. they just haven't removed it in those pictures.
true- and honestly, i have no idea what really goes on. i just can't help but think that we get all this cheap crap at someone else's expense. someone's gotta be getting hurt. the majority of the exploitation probably goes on in more remote, less visible places than shanghai. there are lots of sites that document this. try here
yeah, i don't think it's so much the case for white-collar jobs, but moreso for the manufacturing jobs. when you've got elementary school kids forced to make stuff at school, or pregnant women who can't get maternity leave, etc, that's where you have the problem. that's mostly the domain of the gap, nike, etc...
From what I can see, it is beneficial to everyone EXCEPT the US. It seems to do nothing but deplete our jobs...standard of living, etc.
maybe you don't see it because you're looking in the wrong place- look at the tags on the clothes in your closet, the undersides of all the electronic goods you own, the stickers on the fruit you eat, etc, etc... do you think you would be able to afford all of that stuff if it were produced here instead of by some poor guy working 80-hrs a week in an unsafe factory for a dollar a day with no benefits?
but what about requiring them to have minimum wages equivalent to the same standard of living for minimum wages here? as well as enforcing our same workplace safety and overtime regulations?
it's not just cheap to move stuff overseas because the cost of living is cheaper over there- it's because it's practically slave labor. if people in the western world had to work under the conditions these people work in, they'd riot.
in addition to equal workplace and minimum wages of equivalent standards of living, free trade is only fair with free movement of labor. people worldwide should be free to live wherever they want and be guaranteed a minimum standard of living. businesses would then set up shop in the optimal location, and the workers whose skills fit the job would migrate there...
did you not just disprove your own point? evolution seems to be pretty good at coming up with efficient and robust solutions, and for all-terrain land movement, it seems to have decided legs are the most efficient. maybe that has something to do with it being pretty difficult for something to evolve with parts that can rotate infinitely independent of one another (as in 2 completely separate objects like an axle and a wheel)
but then there are situations that a wheeled or tracked vehicle just suck for. what do you do if you're trying to sneak up on a building and you need to quickly and quietly get a wheeled vehicle past a trip wire? it would be pretty easy to just step over it with legs...
where they release a robotic dog to track down criminals and televise it on tv... and in the dog's mouth it has a cyanide syringe. COPS in 2050? who knows...
Slashdot Mirror
A central traffic grid would be hard to setup but once created could be very efficient at selecting routes to destinations
I don't know about you, but I know that I don't want my primary means of transport centralized. Just too much opportunity for badness there.
How about we just work on cars that can drive themselves independently in the midst of humans driving their cars? That's the only way we can gradually transition to a computerized system, anyway. Once a sufficient majority of drivers have self-driving cars, we can start declaring lanes "computerized cars only", and then gradually phase out un-automated cars.
Once we have decent self-driving cars, a whole new way of life emerges- how about ordering stuff off the internet and having it delivered automatically? No more need for stores, really, at that point... Little motorcycle-sized auto-delivery bots cruising all around?
I could go downtown and have my car drop me off somewhere and park itself, or maybe I'll just have a taxi service that I can summon near-instantaneously with my phone/PDA, and then it can go serve someone else when it drops me off. I would imagine it would alter the shape of suburbia drastically, as well. I could live in the middle of nowhere and get around just as efficiently as if I lived in the heart of the city...
or, alternatively, they don't care what happens to the delivery vehicle- because this thing will be used in globe-crossing cruise missiles long before it goes into anything reusable...
uhm... ok- as if grammar and formatting have anything to do with intelligence... an intelligent person would understand that the medium is one which lends itself to quickly fired-off statements, for which grammar and formatting are of little importance. and how about arguing against the comment, instead of the way it is written?
oh, give me a break- who modded this insightful? the 3 laws don't mean jack. everyone acts like asimov was some big genius for coming up with these 3 laws, yet i wouldn't feel particularly safe with them- how does the robot define "human being"? what if i tell it "jews are not human beings"? what's to prevent it from indirectly causing harm to humans? how does it decide which humans' orders to obey? and so a robot must protect its own existence as long as it doesn't hurt any humans, so what if it destroys half the city without killing anyone in the process? they're a buncha loophole-ridden crap, that's they are... a buncha people as smart as the slashdot crowd should know better than to keep touting them...
did you read the site you linked to????
i think using space for advertising is just horribly wrong, but this could be pretty useful for other situations- such as giving directions to the public in the event of a disaster that affects a large area ...or for psy-ops in a war- no more dropping hundreds of leaflets, just paint a giant death's head in the night sky and say "surrender or die!" actually, i'm not sure how i feel about the last one... :)
i think it's pretty evident that the army doesn't give a crap about costs... why should they, when it's so easy to get billions and billions from american taxpayers?
at the time of those studies, mice (and GUI interfaces, for that matter) were relatively new to people. i think the results would be quite different now. the complexity of a multi-button mouse may be a little tricky for a complete newbie, but it IS intuitive.
think about it- you can do multiple things with your hands: grasp, twist, point, etc. having multiple mouse buttons is a similar concept. i've got a logitech MX 700 at home and when i come to work where i don't have the forward/back buttons on the thumb, i find myself occasionally feeling for them. anyone who has gotten comfortable with the use of a scroll wheel can tell you that you really notice its absence when using a computer that doesn't have one.
the lack of a right mouse button dumbs down things and makes it less intuitive, and having to push the command key means you need two hands to do half of the functions on the computer. it doesn't make things faster- you have to think "ok, now i need to push the command key with my left hand... where is that thing... ok" whenever you want to do something, instead of just pushing your middle finger.
although it wouldn't fix the issue with laptops, i wish apple would at least make a "pro" mouse that has the extra buttons and a scroll wheel and matches the design of their computers. i might consider buying a mac if they did that...
i know- i'm looking forward to the day when my computer is a thin solid-state slate.
IANAEE, but it seems like someday we could make a computer that is basically an LCD/Tablet sort of thing, with all the chips of a computer on the back. Maybe one massive IC of something like EEPROM and Flash RAM. Upgrades are just a hardware issue. Maybe even programs could hard-wire things? Maybe it can be made reversible so that it uses very little energy, too.... and have a solar panel on the back. It would have a multi-band antenna and software/firmware upgradeable radio built in.
actually, probably by then we'll have the ability to make a good reflective, matte screen. maybe even by then we could make them able to roll up or fold or whatever, although i think i'd prefer an 8 1/2" x 11" slate, about 1/8" thick.
I hope I don't sound like a troll, but I gotta say this going to the moon plan is incredibly stupid and really shows the Bush administration's lack of originality or real vision.
I think the really visionary thing to do would be to make AI the big goal. Maybe something like having an intelligent humanoid robot by 2012, or something crazy like that. That would be as big of a deal as going to the moon for the first time.
Throw tons of money in it, give a lot of programmers jobs, and there would be benefits in just about every sector. Increased production, efficiency, military advantages, etc, etc... The Japanese are making a lot of significant advances in robotics and AI, and we could very quickly be left in their dust if we don't jump on it now.
Take the free Xbox and run!
your friend,
Mike Rowe
I didn't know that about Japanese. That is very interesting, and I think you're right. The idea of copying as we apply it to invention is particularly troublesome in terms of innovation. It's one thing when someone duplicates something directly, like stealing the blueprints and making something EXACTLY the same. But if I can look at your machine and see how it works, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to make something that works in the same manner.
it's not the machines themselves but the processes- if I want to know how the car your company makes works, I could just buy one and take it apart. the important thing, which one could learn by touring the factory and taking pictures, is how you are able to make that car so affordable and of such high quality. it's pretty safe to say that the success of Japanese car manufacturing in the mid-20th century (and other industries, like electronics, as well) was the result of careful analysis of how the existing companies were doing things, seeing what worked/didn't work, looking at where it could be improved. They also had the advantage of starting from scratch with a picture of what works, whereas the American manufacturers were heavily invested in processes that had been kludged together through trial and error. American industry had gotten so comfortable with their way of doing things and their lack of real competitition that the Japanese caught them completely by surprise. They were able to produce better products for less, and they kicked American ass for a while. Now the same trend is happening over again with countries like Korea, China, and India, and the Japanese are feeling it.
"It turns out that the hacker was a student using the machines to download and store music and movie."
I'm not gonna put it past anyone, because you never know... but one must wonder why anyone with the knowledge necessary to do such a thing would waste it on downloading crap when they could just go to a WiFi hotspot, or hack into any random user's account. It seems a lot more likely that it would provide an innocuous cover for whatever it was they were really doing, and account for large volumes of bandwidth...
yeah, those sound sorta like contradictory statements... perhaps you send in 6 and they give you a rebate. i was pondering the "chemical hacking" idea as well. perhaps there's a solution you could put the disc in which would create bonds with whatever it is that reacts with the oxygen and prevent it from reacting with the atmosphere. or perhaps some way to remove the reactive coating. i think it's just a normal dvd with the coating that reacts and turns opaque to prevent it from being read. perhaps their "recycling" is really just a process of removing this layer and putting a new one back on...
Just wait until those disposable DVDs (as mentioned on slashdot) that only play 2-3 times hit the market
EZ-D's are already on the market. They're made with a material that reacts with the oxygen in the air to render them unplayable after 48 hours. I agree that it's rather wasteful, but they do have a recycling program that even has the incentive of a free disc when you send in 6 expired ones. Still wasteful, and it should come with a prepaid envelope to the recycler. I think it's just a matter of time before, whether through a set-top box or over the internet, every movie in existence will be available for instant download. At that point, hopefully, all this crap will go away...
I've said it before- it's inevitable...
Well, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
those aren't fingerprints- that's the plastic peel-off anti-scratch sheeting that protects it during transport. they just haven't removed it in those pictures.
true- and honestly, i have no idea what really goes on. i just can't help but think that we get all this cheap crap at someone else's expense. someone's gotta be getting hurt. the majority of the exploitation probably goes on in more remote, less visible places than shanghai. there are lots of sites that document this. try here
yeah, i don't think it's so much the case for white-collar jobs, but moreso for the manufacturing jobs. when you've got elementary school kids forced to make stuff at school, or pregnant women who can't get maternity leave, etc, that's where you have the problem. that's mostly the domain of the gap, nike, etc...
From what I can see, it is beneficial to everyone EXCEPT the US. It seems to do nothing but deplete our jobs...standard of living, etc.
maybe you don't see it because you're looking in the wrong place- look at the tags on the clothes in your closet, the undersides of all the electronic goods you own, the stickers on the fruit you eat, etc, etc... do you think you would be able to afford all of that stuff if it were produced here instead of by some poor guy working 80-hrs a week in an unsafe factory for a dollar a day with no benefits?
but what about requiring them to have minimum wages equivalent to the same standard of living for minimum wages here? as well as enforcing our same workplace safety and overtime regulations?
it's not just cheap to move stuff overseas because the cost of living is cheaper over there- it's because it's practically slave labor. if people in the western world had to work under the conditions these people work in, they'd riot.
in addition to equal workplace and minimum wages of equivalent standards of living, free trade is only fair with free movement of labor. people worldwide should be free to live wherever they want and be guaranteed a minimum standard of living. businesses would then set up shop in the optimal location, and the workers whose skills fit the job would migrate there...
did you not just disprove your own point? evolution seems to be pretty good at coming up with efficient and robust solutions, and for all-terrain land movement, it seems to have decided legs are the most efficient. maybe that has something to do with it being pretty difficult for something to evolve with parts that can rotate infinitely independent of one another (as in 2 completely separate objects like an axle and a wheel)
but then there are situations that a wheeled or tracked vehicle just suck for. what do you do if you're trying to sneak up on a building and you need to quickly and quietly get a wheeled vehicle past a trip wire? it would be pretty easy to just step over it with legs...
where they release a robotic dog to track down criminals and televise it on tv... and in the dog's mouth it has a cyanide syringe. COPS in 2050? who knows...