sounds to me like they are trying to allow teachers to present both sides of the argument... I thought we WANTED our children to learn how to think on their own, not to be spoon fed theories that are widely accepted (and taught) as fact but still not proven.
Presenting ID as equal to a sturdy, well researched and rigorous theory as evolution is tantamount to teaching 5+5=11 because some people like ones more than zero. There's no good reason to believe that 5+5=11, it just looks like a good idea and fits in nicely with my personal theory that all numbers should have as many ones in their sums as possible. If I were to teach that to your children, you'd probably have me chucked out the window. Teaching ID as science is equally as irresponsible. ID is NOT science as it is not testable. Presenting ID as an example of a bad scientific theory is a GREAT idea, but full of too many landmines to be useful in a classroom. Teaching kids to recognize good science from bad science is a great idea, however.
When we teach science we should teach science, not religious creation stories. Those belong in another, equally important class, but not in a science class.
I find it very, very frustrating when the state legislature decides the particulars of what I should teach in the classroom. This bill does not specifically force me, a LA teacher, to teach ID, or the mythical status of global warming, but it does represent law makers meddling in an area they are not experts.
This would be like the legislature directing doctors on the proper methods of suturing a wound, or instructing how to treat a form of cancer. Doctors wouldn't stand for that for more than a second because they are highly trained professionals that know how to do their job. Teachers are also highly trained professionals that know how to do their job without the state meddling directly in the goings on of the classroom.
The new law does not force teachers to teach ID, only makes it acceptable to teach ID as science. This bothers me. This bothers me almost more than I can stand. ID is NOT science. Science is a process of developing TESTABLE theories that can checked and re-checked for error. Until someone creates a litmus test for God, ID is completely unprovable. One might also argue that there is a giant invisible, undetectable yet all powerful beetle that pushes the earth around the sun. If we can't create a test that supports a theory, it's NOT a theory (nor is it science), it's just a nice story.
As a science teacher, my job is to teach science. I teach how to do science, not just words and definitions. I can't even begin to teach ID as science because it is not testable. I teach science as a method of answering questions through experiment and analysis of result. There is no way to do this reliably or reproducibly with ID because God doesn't settle down into a test tube very well.
Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.
Just imagine all the suspects involved with fingerprints on the brass cartridges:
1. The packing person who took the cartridges and placed them in a cardboard box.
2. The shop owner who took the cartridge out of the box to ensure it was a match with what the customer wanted.
3. The actual person who loaded the weapon.
It's not that big of a deal to eliminate individuals once the prints have been pulled. If a crime is committed in say Idaho, and the shells were manufactured and packaged in Virginia and prints from A (criminal), B (packager), C (store owner) are pulled, it's trivial to eliminate the B set as being irrelevant.
Under normal circumstances, person B will be flagged as a suspect (because her prints are on the brass) and once it is determined that she was in Virginia when the crime was committed, she will be eliminated from the suspect list. Persons A and C are the only ones of interest left and are of course both valuable witnesses in the investigation. This is how any traditional fingerprint evidence is treated. Prints are gathered, irrelevant prints are excluded and the remaining prints are kept until they prove to be useful.
Yeah, using hydrofluoric acid in the bathtub is a BAD IDEA (tm).
There's a great Scene in Breaking Bad where Jessee tries to dispose of a body in a tub using hydrofluoric acid and a disgusting cheese body gloop falls through the ceiling after the HF eats the tub.
That's a really good question; it could be a huge boon for unsolved cases, vindicating wrongfully convicted individuals. I could also be a huge disaster for police departments. Thousands upon thousands of individuals appealing for reexamination of fingerprint evidence could swamp crime labs.
That being said, it is far worse to convict an innocent individual than to let a guilty man go free.
This is some seriously cool tech. I wonder if there will be a portable method available. It sounds like it takes some wicked voltage to kick off the process, so it would work great in the lab, but not so great in the field.
This isn't even remotely a problem for bomb fragments, guns or other regularly handled objects. It becomes more of a problem for large objects attached to or part of buildings. This does not diminish the way-coolness of this discovery, however.
It shows the difficult part of ideas isn't dreaming them up, it's actually realizing them.
I disagree, look at the sketch books of Da Vinci, the man was clearly a genius. Just because he didn't have the technology to create the parts he needed, doesn't detract from the thought and creativity required to conceive them.
Otlet was definitely a visionary. He saw a need for an accessible and indexable catalog of information that was linked by context. Even 100 years ago people began choking on massive amounts of paper. Otlet was arguably the first to conceive of a novel solution to this problem. Just because he didn't have access to electronic mass storage and computing power doesn't mean that his idea wasn't brilliant.
As other posters have mentioned, just because hyper links and networks seem obvious today, 70 years ago the idea was just starting to form. Someone had to have the insight to envision them.
Exactly! Some organization that is legally bound, and not directly appointed by the current government would be perfect. The GAO fits most of those criteria.
The big idea here is that there should be accountability and transparency, not clouded un-auditable disasters.
It's fairly obvious that the tapes have been misplaced (misplaced into the shredder next to the giant electro-magnet and then shot into the sun). There's really no hope of seeing them again. If a copy turns up, it will only be because of a sudden outbreak of morality on some stooge's part, not because a court orders it.
That being said, what can we do to ensure this doesn't happen again? One obvious method would be to have each branch of government actually run the backup for another branch. For example, the Judicial would backup the Legislature, the legislature would backup the Executive, and the Executive the Judicial.
I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups, for example. I'm sure the Legislative branch wouldn't want the Executive branch to be flipping through its emails, and vice-vice-versa for the other branches.
In any backup scenario, those that could be incriminated by the backups, should NEVER be allowed to manage them. An independent organization should be tasked with managing the IT behind the scenes, it should not be left in the hands of the administration. Someone like the library of congress, the secret service or some agency that is not directly under each branch's control would be vastly superior.
Let's figure out which scape-goat will be ritually sacrificed for this screw up, then move on to a real solution that makes this sort of thing a whole lot more difficult in the future.
It would be nice if the researchers could find a way to inject a "cure" and disable the malware on the target computer.
Once an infected host is identified, that data should be sent off to the ISP and the host should be blacklisted until the owner can be contacted and the computer cleaned. A simple method would be for bot-tracking squads to send authenticated lists of infected hosts to isps. The ISP would then block any and all outgoing requests on that host until the owner cleans up their computers. The ISP could then direct any web queries to a page informing them of the problem.
It's not perfect, but it could definitely ameliorate a good chunk of the problem. I'm sure some clever bot-herder would then try to take advantage of the reporting and blacklisting system and cause blackouts, but that's a problem for someone else.
Part of me wants to do a happy dance that a spammer is finally doing some serious time for their crimes. The rest of me sadly realizes that he is but one of many. One, albeit large head, has been cut off, but the SpamaHydra has many, many more.
I've seen some pretty interesting ideas regarding a more robust email standard, but I wonder what it will take for everyone to switch to something other than SMTP. We're sort of at a point where spam filters are just good enough to keep the signal within reasonable limits. I guess until spam levels reach a tipping point, we'll all destined to stick with the current standard.
We are Spam of Borg. You shall be cordially invited to participate in our newest Nigerian scam of the month. Resistance is futile.
But that is not license to assume that no problems will result that are enabled by technology. If there can be social impact of technology, what causes the problem is the failure to track and respond to the social implications, and the assumption that society will (or even can) just automatically "keep up" and "be ready". I'm not big on those stupid headlines either, but then, I wish the public could hear a calm headline and still be interested enough to discuss something.
Indeed, a more open and involved discourse on the social implications of new technology is what is needed in our world. I see all sorts of amazing technology being developed for or by the military of the world; it excites me and scares my pants off as well. I love the idea of using unmanned vehicles for clearing mines, providing reconnaissance and disarming bombs. This is a brilliant application of technology that takes humans out of the way of harm.
What I really don't like, as cheesy as it sounds, is the violation of Asimov's Laws. Robots should never, never, never be given the ability to pull a trigger on their own. I hardly hear anyone outside of the geek community and the far left discussing this possibility at all. The average citizen hears about a new whiz-bang robot soldier and thinks, "cool!" Instead of, "geez, I wonder if we should even be making these things..."
How do we, as a society, make sure that we have conversations about new technology? How do we ensure that some thought other than mutually assured destruction goes into the production and application of new ideas? I for one don't want to leave that up to the military. They have a job to do and they do it fairly well, but I don't always agree with their priorities.
You don't need the actual robots to do that. Just the software.
Sure, but watching code compile isn't nearly as much fun as watching a swarm of robots dismember each other. Never forget about the production value! Code compiling == LOW production value; Swarm of angry robots with saws, drills, flails and FRICKIN' LASERS that dismember each other == High production value.
What facility does this unstoppable robot force have for creating more of its self? Did you read the article? Even a quick skimming mentions using swarm technology to solve problems, not to replicate. Just because there are thousands of problem solving robots doesn't imply that they will suddenly decide to begin to evolve and replicate.
Solving problems en mass is one thing, spontaneously developing the ability to replicate is completely another. Even if a snake robot swarm, unleashed into a collapsed building to find and help survivors, spontaneously decided to start replicating, where would it find the materials to do so? I'm pretty sure most collapsed buildings are short on snake robot parts.
This idea is related to Rodney Brooks "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" idea. Instead of having one super expensive robot that symbolically processes the world around it and then interacts with it, you have thousands of fast, cheap and barely controlled robots that do the same task as one big by working together and each supplying one small piece of functionality such as sensing, moving or manipulating. Nothing about this implies that they will suddenly begin to replicate.
If, at some point in the future, we develop the ability build robots that can use raw materials to create more of themselves, unleashing thousands of them with no direct control mechanism would probably be a bad idea. Until then, there's not much to worry about unless you work for FOX news and need a SCARY and SENSATIONAL headline for the hour.
Something like this would be awesome on battle bots. Swarm robots, or robots that work cooperatively to complete a challenge against another single or swarm of robots would be really fascinating to watch. It would be truly interesting to watch the evolution of different techniques and methods every week.
I agree, the FIRA WorldCup or perhaps something similar would be vastly more interesting to watch on a weekly basis. The geek factor would trump the slowness of it all. Also, with the magic of TV, the matches could be sped up and really just run as highlight reels for some of the longer matches.
I was really disappointed with the Battle Bots on CC. I never could get into the episodes; they all felt really staged and predictable. The winner was always decided quickly and rarely had much trouble ascending through the ranks.
Also, the mayhem was just too limited. I wanted more sparks, more dismembered, twitching robot bits laying on the arena floor.
What I'd really like to see is different divisions, RC controlled robots with killer death-hammers, saws and drills. And another division with AI bots that triumph creatively. It would be cool to see a "survival of the fittest" type competition where the robots competed for resources in the form of tokens or light or something along those lines.
Whatever the new version is, I really don't want to see any more bimbos nor hear any more annoying play-by-play. I want innovation, creativity, sparks and most of all, destruction!
It will definitely hire a few more grad students and provide for a few more research projects to continue. While it's only $14 million, it is something. I agree there needs to be much, much more money put into this type of research, but at least it's not being totally ignored.
That said, it should be noted that the current administration definitely has it's priorities skewed as far as renewable energy. Ethanol looks good at first glance, but upon deeper inspection appears to be a losing game. With current technology, we're doomed to put more energy in than we can possibly get out in the form of fertilizer, transportation, processing, etc. Truly renewable and green projects have been ignored for too long in this country.
At least Europe has invested a good deal of time and energy into wind, solar and nuclear options. We're probably destined to buy our tech from Europe in the coming years.
The tit-for-tat Palestinian/Israeli thing is really getting old. I see this behavior in my 10 year-old students. One kid says something nasty, another one says something more nasty and eventually somebody gets shoved and then fists are flying. If the villagers get a death ray and start toasting Palestinians like ants, I can assure you that the Palestinians are going to fight back.
They're not going to just cry and go running home after a FREAKING laser attack. Oh no. You can bet that handfuls of Qassam missiles will rain down on a pretty regular basis. What Israel needs is a good read of Dr. Suse's Butter Battle Book and have a sudden outbreak of common sense. Palestine needs to grow the hell up and stop acting like an angry child too.
Escalating weapons and violence rarely solve anything unless EVERYBODY is just charcoal in the bottom of a big-ass crater. Then the problem pretty much solves its self.
All this commotion about domestic spying, wire-tapping, etc. could have easily been avoided if everybody was playing by the rules and held accountable to the rules. There already exists a method for the president to issue warrant-less wiretaps within FISA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy#FISA. The big difference between the current methods and FISA is the lack of oversight. FISA requires that a warrantless wire tap is brought before a judge in closed session within 72 hours of its inception.
This means that in a "ticking time bomb" scenario, investigators have the power to tap and begin monitoring suspects before a proper warrant can be obtained. Once the surveillance has begun, investigators have 72 hours (an ample amount of time in a ticking bomb scenario) to collect evidence and present it. If there indeed is a bomb out there, the judge should have no problem issuing a proper warrant.
The current problem is this; nobody wants to play by the rules. Everybody in the intelligence community along with most of the executive branch want to play king. They want to work independently and forgo the checks and balances. It is not that uncommon for branches of government to try to gain more power so they can do their work "easily." Unfortunately, it's our civil liberties that are being stomped on.
Transparent and balanced oversight is the only thing that will cure this ill. Without a diverse and unconnected group monitoring each other, we will lose the liberties that make this country so fantastic. Sure, it's scary to think about dying in a World Trade Center type attack, but it's much more scary to live in a state with secret police secretly monitoring you. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are vanishingly small; the chances of losing your civil liberties if laws like the Protect America Act are allowed to exist are alarmingly high.
I for one, believe that laws like the Protect America Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007 are just the thing that erode our liberty for the fleeting promise of a tiny bit of security. Without judicial or congressional oversight, who polices the police? The answer is scary and we only need to look to Peru, East Germany or any other state with Stazi like organizations for the answer.
Ben Franklin said it best over 200 years ago, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's almost like he knew what he was doing...
Ebooks are a fantastic invention for the following reasons:
1. Searching: An index is nice, but I can think of times that I'd rather be able to search.
3. Commenting: The ability to markup the book without damaging it book in some way.
4. The ability to make as many bookmarks as you want. I don't know if any reader has instituted this yet, but this would be a killer feature that would allow you to mark all your favorite pages/passages so you can jump to any of them in a second.
College kids would die for those features in their text books, not to mention the whole portability thing. Lugging 30 pounds of books from class to class is never fun. As somebody who studied literature and science in university, I would have loved having all of Shakespeare at my fingertips in a highly search able format. No more skimming and poking around for the verse I wanted. Also, being able to search a chemistry text for the word "redux" or "hydronium" or whatever would have saved me tons of time when studying. The book marking feature is brilliant as well.
Unfortunately, for the some of same reasons an ebook is perfect, it also is lacking.
1. Searching instead of an index - I've stumbled upon countless, worthwhile side tracks while flipping to a particular page. It's sort of like finding a hidden treasure right there in the book you've used hundreds of times. You're digging through your perl book, looking for how to parse a string and you stumble on some database function that is EXACTLY what you need for some other project. That just doesn't happen when you search. It's serendipity at its best.
2. Commenting - buying a used book with someone else's comments is both entertaining and incredibly helpful. I don't think I would have made it through some political science classes without some of the notes scribbled in the margins of my text books. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and some of the summaries in the margins really helped me along. Today, when I borrow a cook book from someone and find all sorts of notes in the margin, it's like a gift of insight from a much more talented chef.
3. Bookmarks - On that one, I agree, bookmarks in dead-tree books suck. They fall out, they're not at all transmittable between copies.
What I'd really love to see is some sort of hybrid Ebook. A book with REAL e-paper pages and perhaps an input pad that you could write on with a stylus. You could write notes on the pad and insert them INTO the "margins" of the document where ever you wanted. I enjoy the act of turning a page; that could be simulated with a 4 page epaper book with some sort of ADVANCE> button that would display another set of pages. It wouldn't satisfy my desire for skimming, but the portability would be phenomenal.
You'd be amazed what goes on in a classroom. There are a good number of teachers that should be competent and knowledgeable in a subject area, but simply aren't. Ideally, their supervisors (team leaders, department heads, administrators, etc.) should check in on what they're teaching and correct ideas that are way, way out of whack. In reality, this breaks down from time to time and a good number of whack-job ideas get passed along.
I've been teaching for a few years and I've seen some embarrassingly bad ideas being passed along to students. I'm sure there's a whole lot of cracks that ID lessons could slip through and be passed on to students.
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sounds to me like they are trying to allow teachers to present both sides of the argument... I thought we WANTED our children to learn how to think on their own, not to be spoon fed theories that are widely accepted (and taught) as fact but still not proven.
Presenting ID as equal to a sturdy, well researched and rigorous theory as evolution is tantamount to teaching 5+5=11 because some people like ones more than zero. There's no good reason to believe that 5+5=11, it just looks like a good idea and fits in nicely with my personal theory that all numbers should have as many ones in their sums as possible. If I were to teach that to your children, you'd probably have me chucked out the window. Teaching ID as science is equally as irresponsible. ID is NOT science as it is not testable. Presenting ID as an example of a bad scientific theory is a GREAT idea, but full of too many landmines to be useful in a classroom. Teaching kids to recognize good science from bad science is a great idea, however.
When we teach science we should teach science, not religious creation stories. Those belong in another, equally important class, but not in a science class.
I find it very, very frustrating when the state legislature decides the particulars of what I should teach in the classroom. This bill does not specifically force me, a LA teacher, to teach ID, or the mythical status of global warming, but it does represent law makers meddling in an area they are not experts.
This would be like the legislature directing doctors on the proper methods of suturing a wound, or instructing how to treat a form of cancer. Doctors wouldn't stand for that for more than a second because they are highly trained professionals that know how to do their job. Teachers are also highly trained professionals that know how to do their job without the state meddling directly in the goings on of the classroom.
The new law does not force teachers to teach ID, only makes it acceptable to teach ID as science. This bothers me. This bothers me almost more than I can stand. ID is NOT science. Science is a process of developing TESTABLE theories that can checked and re-checked for error. Until someone creates a litmus test for God, ID is completely unprovable. One might also argue that there is a giant invisible, undetectable yet all powerful beetle that pushes the earth around the sun. If we can't create a test that supports a theory, it's NOT a theory (nor is it science), it's just a nice story.
As a science teacher, my job is to teach science. I teach how to do science, not just words and definitions. I can't even begin to teach ID as science because it is not testable. I teach science as a method of answering questions through experiment and analysis of result. There is no way to do this reliably or reproducibly with ID because God doesn't settle down into a test tube very well.
Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.
Just imagine all the suspects involved with fingerprints on the brass cartridges:
1. The packing person who took the cartridges and placed them in a cardboard box.
2. The shop owner who took the cartridge out of the box to ensure it was a match with what the customer wanted.
3. The actual person who loaded the weapon.
It's not that big of a deal to eliminate individuals once the prints have been pulled. If a crime is committed in say Idaho, and the shells were manufactured and packaged in Virginia and prints from A (criminal), B (packager), C (store owner) are pulled, it's trivial to eliminate the B set as being irrelevant.
Under normal circumstances, person B will be flagged as a suspect (because her prints are on the brass) and once it is determined that she was in Virginia when the crime was committed, she will be eliminated from the suspect list. Persons A and C are the only ones of interest left and are of course both valuable witnesses in the investigation. This is how any traditional fingerprint evidence is treated. Prints are gathered, irrelevant prints are excluded and the remaining prints are kept until they prove to be useful.
Yeah, using hydrofluoric acid in the bathtub is a BAD IDEA (tm).
There's a great Scene in Breaking Bad where Jessee tries to dispose of a body in a tub using hydrofluoric acid and a disgusting cheese body gloop falls through the ceiling after the HF eats the tub.
That's a really good question; it could be a huge boon for unsolved cases, vindicating wrongfully convicted individuals. I could also be a huge disaster for police departments. Thousands upon thousands of individuals appealing for reexamination of fingerprint evidence could swamp crime labs.
That being said, it is far worse to convict an innocent individual than to let a guilty man go free.
This is some seriously cool tech. I wonder if there will be a portable method available. It sounds like it takes some wicked voltage to kick off the process, so it would work great in the lab, but not so great in the field.
This isn't even remotely a problem for bomb fragments, guns or other regularly handled objects. It becomes more of a problem for large objects attached to or part of buildings. This does not diminish the way-coolness of this discovery, however.
As we all know, invisioning technology can embiggen even the smallest mind.
It is very important to check your grammar and make sure your usage is cromulent at all times.
It shows the difficult part of ideas isn't dreaming them up, it's actually realizing them.
I disagree, look at the sketch books of Da Vinci, the man was clearly a genius. Just because he didn't have the technology to create the parts he needed, doesn't detract from the thought and creativity required to conceive them.
Otlet was definitely a visionary. He saw a need for an accessible and indexable catalog of information that was linked by context. Even 100 years ago people began choking on massive amounts of paper. Otlet was arguably the first to conceive of a novel solution to this problem. Just because he didn't have access to electronic mass storage and computing power doesn't mean that his idea wasn't brilliant.
As other posters have mentioned, just because hyper links and networks seem obvious today, 70 years ago the idea was just starting to form. Someone had to have the insight to envision them.
Exactly! Some organization that is legally bound, and not directly appointed by the current government would be perfect. The GAO fits most of those criteria.
The big idea here is that there should be accountability and transparency, not clouded un-auditable disasters.
It's fairly obvious that the tapes have been misplaced (misplaced into the shredder next to the giant electro-magnet and then shot into the sun). There's really no hope of seeing them again. If a copy turns up, it will only be because of a sudden outbreak of morality on some stooge's part, not because a court orders it.
That being said, what can we do to ensure this doesn't happen again? One obvious method would be to have each branch of government actually run the backup for another branch. For example, the Judicial would backup the Legislature, the legislature would backup the Executive, and the Executive the Judicial.
I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups, for example. I'm sure the Legislative branch wouldn't want the Executive branch to be flipping through its emails, and vice-vice-versa for the other branches.
In any backup scenario, those that could be incriminated by the backups, should NEVER be allowed to manage them. An independent organization should be tasked with managing the IT behind the scenes, it should not be left in the hands of the administration. Someone like the library of congress, the secret service or some agency that is not directly under each branch's control would be vastly superior.
Let's figure out which scape-goat will be ritually sacrificed for this screw up, then move on to a real solution that makes this sort of thing a whole lot more difficult in the future.
It would be nice if the researchers could find a way to inject a "cure" and disable the malware on the target computer. Once an infected host is identified, that data should be sent off to the ISP and the host should be blacklisted until the owner can be contacted and the computer cleaned. A simple method would be for bot-tracking squads to send authenticated lists of infected hosts to isps. The ISP would then block any and all outgoing requests on that host until the owner cleans up their computers. The ISP could then direct any web queries to a page informing them of the problem.
It's not perfect, but it could definitely ameliorate a good chunk of the problem. I'm sure some clever bot-herder would then try to take advantage of the reporting and blacklisting system and cause blackouts, but that's a problem for someone else.
Part of me wants to do a happy dance that a spammer is finally doing some serious time for their crimes. The rest of me sadly realizes that he is but one of many. One, albeit large head, has been cut off, but the SpamaHydra has many, many more.
I've seen some pretty interesting ideas regarding a more robust email standard, but I wonder what it will take for everyone to switch to something other than SMTP. We're sort of at a point where spam filters are just good enough to keep the signal within reasonable limits. I guess until spam levels reach a tipping point, we'll all destined to stick with the current standard.
We are Spam of Borg. You shall be cordially invited to participate in our newest Nigerian scam of the month. Resistance is futile.
What I really don't like, as cheesy as it sounds, is the violation of Asimov's Laws. Robots should never, never, never be given the ability to pull a trigger on their own. I hardly hear anyone outside of the geek community and the far left discussing this possibility at all. The average citizen hears about a new whiz-bang robot soldier and thinks, "cool!" Instead of, "geez, I wonder if we should even be making these things..."
How do we, as a society, make sure that we have conversations about new technology? How do we ensure that some thought other than mutually assured destruction goes into the production and application of new ideas? I for one don't want to leave that up to the military. They have a job to do and they do it fairly well, but I don't always agree with their priorities.
What facility does this unstoppable robot force have for creating more of its self? Did you read the article? Even a quick skimming mentions using swarm technology to solve problems, not to replicate. Just because there are thousands of problem solving robots doesn't imply that they will suddenly decide to begin to evolve and replicate.
Solving problems en mass is one thing, spontaneously developing the ability to replicate is completely another. Even if a snake robot swarm, unleashed into a collapsed building to find and help survivors, spontaneously decided to start replicating, where would it find the materials to do so? I'm pretty sure most collapsed buildings are short on snake robot parts.
This idea is related to Rodney Brooks "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" idea. Instead of having one super expensive robot that symbolically processes the world around it and then interacts with it, you have thousands of fast, cheap and barely controlled robots that do the same task as one big by working together and each supplying one small piece of functionality such as sensing, moving or manipulating. Nothing about this implies that they will suddenly begin to replicate.
If, at some point in the future, we develop the ability build robots that can use raw materials to create more of themselves, unleashing thousands of them with no direct control mechanism would probably be a bad idea. Until then, there's not much to worry about unless you work for FOX news and need a SCARY and SENSATIONAL headline for the hour.
Something like this would be awesome on battle bots. Swarm robots, or robots that work cooperatively to complete a challenge against another single or swarm of robots would be really fascinating to watch. It would be truly interesting to watch the evolution of different techniques and methods every week.
I agree, the FIRA WorldCup or perhaps something similar would be vastly more interesting to watch on a weekly basis. The geek factor would trump the slowness of it all. Also, with the magic of TV, the matches could be sped up and really just run as highlight reels for some of the longer matches.
I was really disappointed with the Battle Bots on CC. I never could get into the episodes; they all felt really staged and predictable. The winner was always decided quickly and rarely had much trouble ascending through the ranks.
Also, the mayhem was just too limited. I wanted more sparks, more dismembered, twitching robot bits laying on the arena floor.
What I'd really like to see is different divisions, RC controlled robots with killer death-hammers, saws and drills. And another division with AI bots that triumph creatively. It would be cool to see a "survival of the fittest" type competition where the robots competed for resources in the form of tokens or light or something along those lines.
Whatever the new version is, I really don't want to see any more bimbos nor hear any more annoying play-by-play. I want innovation, creativity, sparks and most of all, destruction!
It will definitely hire a few more grad students and provide for a few more research projects to continue. While it's only $14 million, it is something. I agree there needs to be much, much more money put into this type of research, but at least it's not being totally ignored.
That said, it should be noted that the current administration definitely has it's priorities skewed as far as renewable energy. Ethanol looks good at first glance, but upon deeper inspection appears to be a losing game. With current technology, we're doomed to put more energy in than we can possibly get out in the form of fertilizer, transportation, processing, etc. Truly renewable and green projects have been ignored for too long in this country.
At least Europe has invested a good deal of time and energy into wind, solar and nuclear options. We're probably destined to buy our tech from Europe in the coming years.
The tit-for-tat Palestinian/Israeli thing is really getting old. I see this behavior in my 10 year-old students. One kid says something nasty, another one says something more nasty and eventually somebody gets shoved and then fists are flying. If the villagers get a death ray and start toasting Palestinians like ants, I can assure you that the Palestinians are going to fight back.
They're not going to just cry and go running home after a FREAKING laser attack. Oh no. You can bet that handfuls of Qassam missiles will rain down on a pretty regular basis. What Israel needs is a good read of Dr. Suse's Butter Battle Book and have a sudden outbreak of common sense. Palestine needs to grow the hell up and stop acting like an angry child too.
Escalating weapons and violence rarely solve anything unless EVERYBODY is just charcoal in the bottom of a big-ass crater. Then the problem pretty much solves its self.
All this commotion about domestic spying, wire-tapping, etc. could have easily been avoided if everybody was playing by the rules and held accountable to the rules. There already exists a method for the president to issue warrant-less wiretaps within FISA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy#FISA. The big difference between the current methods and FISA is the lack of oversight. FISA requires that a warrantless wire tap is brought before a judge in closed session within 72 hours of its inception.
This means that in a "ticking time bomb" scenario, investigators have the power to tap and begin monitoring suspects before a proper warrant can be obtained. Once the surveillance has begun, investigators have 72 hours (an ample amount of time in a ticking bomb scenario) to collect evidence and present it. If there indeed is a bomb out there, the judge should have no problem issuing a proper warrant.
The current problem is this; nobody wants to play by the rules. Everybody in the intelligence community along with most of the executive branch want to play king. They want to work independently and forgo the checks and balances. It is not that uncommon for branches of government to try to gain more power so they can do their work "easily." Unfortunately, it's our civil liberties that are being stomped on.
Transparent and balanced oversight is the only thing that will cure this ill. Without a diverse and unconnected group monitoring each other, we will lose the liberties that make this country so fantastic. Sure, it's scary to think about dying in a World Trade Center type attack, but it's much more scary to live in a state with secret police secretly monitoring you. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are vanishingly small; the chances of losing your civil liberties if laws like the Protect America Act are allowed to exist are alarmingly high.
I for one, believe that laws like the Protect America Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007 are just the thing that erode our liberty for the fleeting promise of a tiny bit of security. Without judicial or congressional oversight, who polices the police? The answer is scary and we only need to look to Peru, East Germany or any other state with Stazi like organizations for the answer.
Ben Franklin said it best over 200 years ago, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's almost like he knew what he was doing...
Unfortunately, for the some of same reasons an ebook is perfect, it also is lacking.
1. Searching instead of an index - I've stumbled upon countless, worthwhile side tracks while flipping to a particular page. It's sort of like finding a hidden treasure right there in the book you've used hundreds of times. You're digging through your perl book, looking for how to parse a string and you stumble on some database function that is EXACTLY what you need for some other project. That just doesn't happen when you search. It's serendipity at its best.
2. Commenting - buying a used book with someone else's comments is both entertaining and incredibly helpful. I don't think I would have made it through some political science classes without some of the notes scribbled in the margins of my text books. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and some of the summaries in the margins really helped me along. Today, when I borrow a cook book from someone and find all sorts of notes in the margin, it's like a gift of insight from a much more talented chef.
3. Bookmarks - On that one, I agree, bookmarks in dead-tree books suck. They fall out, they're not at all transmittable between copies.
What I'd really love to see is some sort of hybrid Ebook. A book with REAL e-paper pages and perhaps an input pad that you could write on with a stylus. You could write notes on the pad and insert them INTO the "margins" of the document where ever you wanted. I enjoy the act of turning a page; that could be simulated with a 4 page epaper book with some sort of ADVANCE> button that would display another set of pages. It wouldn't satisfy my desire for skimming, but the portability would be phenomenal.
You'd be amazed what goes on in a classroom. There are a good number of teachers that should be competent and knowledgeable in a subject area, but simply aren't. Ideally, their supervisors (team leaders, department heads, administrators, etc.) should check in on what they're teaching and correct ideas that are way, way out of whack. In reality, this breaks down from time to time and a good number of whack-job ideas get passed along.
I've been teaching for a few years and I've seen some embarrassingly bad ideas being passed along to students. I'm sure there's a whole lot of cracks that ID lessons could slip through and be passed on to students.
And I, for one welcome our new bed-pan-emptying robot overlords.