I think it is fair that they are offering an uncapped service.
BUT : is this a scam like cell phone text messenging?
Where if you go past your cap one month, you could receive a bill for $500...far more than the company would have accepted for unlimited service?
That's what really irks me : situations where the company can charge a stupendous amount of money that is 10 times what they would have accepted for unlimited service.
I think these kinds of abusive, after the fact contracts should be outlawed : both cell and cable companies are monopolies, and should not have the freedom to force customers to agree to such deals.
Interesting idea, except that face recognition is just not accurate enough.
In fact, I would comment that it may never be accurate enough for what you propose : I don't always recognize the faces of my own friends in photos. The human 'face' can be altered, obscured, distorted, lit differently, aged, scarred in countless ways that would prevent this software from being able to be certain enough to auto-evict people from wal mart.
Now, RFID tags...that's easily an accurate enough technology. But someone who found themselves banned could just remove those.
What has Gates done PERSONALLY to make slashdotters so hateful of him? Honestly, the real reason Microsoft is able to get away with what it does is that monopolies are an inherent flaw in our current economic system. Microsoft is no different, or annoying and heartless, than the cell phone companies or how AT&T was.
Bill Gates smoothly made sure his company won the monopoly, but even without the man, a different software company would have won it.
If you made indecent proposals to one of those MySpace sluts that is in a state where it is illegal, but you are doing it from a state where it is legal, are you committing a crime? And you invite her to come to said notel in your state?
LOL and that doesn't even get into even more legal gray areas. Maybe you make a lewd electronic proposal to a girl who SAYS she is 18 in her online profile, but is actually under age. Can't very well demand to see ID from there.
And if you are one of those 'players' who videotapes their sexual encounters with a hidden camera in order to protect yourself from rape allegations and provide beat off material for dry spells... Then it's kiddie porn.
And what if you demand to see ID from one of those skanks prior to sex and she shows a fake one that appears to prove she is of legal age...
Damn asshole lawmakers...only way to be safe from all this is to only have sex with cougars...
Reading the wiki article, and I noticed that about half the states, the legal age is 16, the other half it is 18.
So, if you were having sex with a 16 year old in a moving car, that started in a state where it was legal and the car drove across the border into a state where it wasn't... It would magically turn into a felony. Neat.
I wonder if the same law applies to airplanes... (granted, it's pretty tough to do anything in an airplane, but it has been done)
Of course, the obvious thing is...if you can make a robot arm good enough to let a doctor do an exam, why don't you instead build a robot arm that SHOOTS BACK and reduces the total number of infantry you need???!
I mean, what kind of idiots put money into this? For the same cost to develop the robotics and telepresence tech and to get it engineered for this medical purpose, you could build a combat robot that would soak up the bullets!
The reason I assume exploding, constant growth (meaning if other civilizations were close to us, we would SEE THEM...they could NOT hide) is that it's just evolution all over again. Suppose you have a population of super-intelligent machines that each have the capability to machine matter (aka asteroids, planets, ect) into more components of themselves (hence growing exponentially) at a frenetic rate. Some of these machines might get 'bored' and not expand...but at least a few will perpetually have ambition, and so the overall size of the civilization will always grow.
It's kind of like a human population : YOU may refuse to breed, but that just means, long term, the people who don't refuse will grow to dominate the landscape and use up every last scrap of available resources.
It has been a little over a century since we developed radio. At the current rate of progress, it'll be little more than a century or two before we develop the machines I describe and our solar system gets converted into a cloud of machines. The universe has been around for 14 billion years : you do the math. The odds that we see an extraterrestrial civilization at our stage of developement is infitesimal.
I think the people that study these things have their head in the clouds.
There are two very obvious technological trends that fully explain the Fermi "paradox"
1. The better our radios have gotten, the more the output becomes indistinguisable from noise. A signal processing engineer can explain more, but ultimately the maximum bandwidth for a radio is obtained for a signal that has the maximum entropy content possible. So the output of more and more advanced radios look more and more like random noise.
2. Technology begets technology. It seems obvious that tech change will accelerate faster and faster, until we develop machines that have trillions of times our own intelligence and cognitive capacity, and can rearrange matter on the molecular level at an exponentially expanding rate. A civilization that develops radios will likely continue to develop until they have gathered all the available resources in their starting star system. They will then expand outward from their starting point at close to the speed of light, exploiting the resources of every star system they enter.
So the first sign of extraterrestrial intelligence will be when they roar into our star system and set up shop. Hopefully, they'll be kind enough to not consume our planet if we don't yet have the technology to defend ourselves...
I guess that's the hole. By definition, the laws of physics are what they are. If an event happens, it is by definition ALLOWED.
Now, our current mathematical guesses at what these physical laws are don't allow certain things. That means that at least in some respects, our guesses as to the laws of physics are wrong.
Finally, about creating new universes : obviously, such a future civilization would not be trying to 'reset' the universe, they would be trying to create a new one to inhabit, in it's own separately expanding bubble of space that is almost completely isolated from our current universe.
I agree. We are both on the same page, we are just interpreting what this supernatural event might have been.
I'm saying that it COULD have actually been something that could be deliberately repeated by some civilization much, much smarter and better equipped than us. Or not, we don't know.
What we DO know is that it isn't impossible, as we have proof that it happened.
But, the event isn't impossible, because it DID happen. Duh! You can argue the specifics of WHAT exactly happened in the big bang, but the basics are indisputable : entropy STARTED at a very, very, very low state approximately 14 billion years ago.
Ok, I meant all "non burning plasma" matter. Scooping gas from the sun will probably never be efficient.
As for theoretical event : while the big bang is a theory, it defies logic to say that entropy cannot even be decreased. For there to be increasing disorder, there has to be order, originally.
And one theory for the big bang points out that the universe, as we see it, seems kind of arbitrary. A simple explanation for why it exists is that the big bang process didn't just happen once, but happens many, many many times creating a horde of universes in addition to the one we happen to be in. And, if a process can happen many times, maybe it can be fired off again. This is how some far future beings would dodge the heat death : they would somehow move themselves into a fresh universe where the entropy clock has been reset.
Look, whoever you are. I know what the second law is, and I've taken about 6 physics courses. Of course entropy wins in the end, but the sun has billions of years (4 or 5 at least) worth of fuel left.
What I MEANT was that we'll build machines that will replicate themselves and use a chunk of solar output to run, using all the matter we have. Yeah, net results, the decrease in entropy in the machines will be more than compensated by an increase in entropy in the sun, and in the radiation coming from the sun.
Total entropy will increase, as always, but just considering the balls of rock in our solar system being converted to machinery, on a local scale entropy will decrease.
And actually, even entropy MIGHT be beatable. Somehow, the world we live in was created, and whatever made the big bang obviously REDUCED entropy. Maybe technology could one day create new universes, starting from a state of maximal order.
You seem to think that this flood of energy is insufficient to overcome entropy and convert all available matter within a light day into machine parts that use this energy.
Please look into the sky. Notice the fireball of energy being thrown into space every second? Yeah, I thought not. I suspect the limit is not energy, but matter : we can grab every scrap of matter in the solar system, and still not have enough to surround the sun completely with solar cells.
This is neat technology, and may some day be practical. But, i don't think that day is coming for 50-100 years.
Here's why : solar is getting cheap very rapidly. Today, you can pick up panels at $2.85 a watt off the shelf. Below $1 a watt, and it will be cheaper to put panels up than it will be to burn coal.
To operate a fusion-fission hybrid system, as well as dozens of large gigawatt fission reactors takes a lot of well trained and educated people working round the clock to make all of the technology work. There are very real dangers, and very expensive regulations that have to be followed.
To build more solar panels? You print some more off the reel and slap them on to glass. You park the panels in the desert and leave them alone for 25 years. Maybe a simple robot wipes them off occasionally.
There's no liability, or need for exhaustive quality control. If a panel fails prematurely, you pay a warranty claim.
Inherently, solar is going to always be cheaper for the foreseeable future.
Well, there's a glitch : the "top level" universe would have finite amounts of matter and energy to build simulation computers with. And each layer of simulation puts more load on the 'top level' universe computers.
Unless, of course, the 'top level' universe has infinite resources because it doesn't have limitations such as entropy and finite size, like our universe does.
Some of the quirks of quantum physics IMPLY that we ARE in a simulated universe, and certain things aren't being calculated in order to limit the load on the computers simulating our universe.
The nice part about the scenario is that it lets you visualize what exponential growth/the singularity can do, without depending on technology that may or may not be developed.
We already have examples for everything in the scenario. Even the limit on human thinking power : if we had to, we could just control these self replicating factories with human neurons on an artifical substrate. That is, if we never made AI work using only semiconductor ICs.
And it might be chunky, but that doesn't mean inefficient. "bulk processing", or dealing with a lot of matter at once, is an efficient way to make things.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is fair that they are offering an uncapped service.
BUT : is this a scam like cell phone text messenging?
Where if you go past your cap one month, you could receive a bill for $500...far more than the company would have accepted for unlimited service?
That's what really irks me : situations where the company can charge a stupendous amount of money that is 10 times what they would have accepted for unlimited service.
I think these kinds of abusive, after the fact contracts should be outlawed : both cell and cable companies are monopolies, and should not have the freedom to force customers to agree to such deals.
Mathematical probability.
Interesting idea, except that face recognition is just not accurate enough.
In fact, I would comment that it may never be accurate enough for what you propose : I don't always recognize the faces of my own friends in photos. The human 'face' can be altered, obscured, distorted, lit differently, aged, scarred in countless ways that would prevent this software from being able to be certain enough to auto-evict people from wal mart.
Now, RFID tags...that's easily an accurate enough technology. But someone who found themselves banned could just remove those.
What has Gates done PERSONALLY to make slashdotters so hateful of him? Honestly, the real reason Microsoft is able to get away with what it does is that monopolies are an inherent flaw in our current economic system. Microsoft is no different, or annoying and heartless, than the cell phone companies or how AT&T was.
Bill Gates smoothly made sure his company won the monopoly, but even without the man, a different software company would have won it.
If you made indecent proposals to one of those MySpace sluts that is in a state where it is illegal, but you are doing it from a state where it is legal, are you committing a crime? And you invite her to come to said notel in your state?
LOL and that doesn't even get into even more legal gray areas. Maybe you make a lewd electronic proposal to a girl who SAYS she is 18 in her online profile, but is actually under age. Can't very well demand to see ID from there.
And if you are one of those 'players' who videotapes their sexual encounters with a hidden camera in order to protect yourself from rape allegations and provide beat off material for dry spells... Then it's kiddie porn.
And what if you demand to see ID from one of those skanks prior to sex and she shows a fake one that appears to prove she is of legal age...
Damn asshole lawmakers...only way to be safe from all this is to only have sex with cougars...
Reading the wiki article, and I noticed that about half the states, the legal age is 16, the other half it is 18. So, if you were having sex with a 16 year old in a moving car, that started in a state where it was legal and the car drove across the border into a state where it wasn't... It would magically turn into a felony. Neat. I wonder if the same law applies to airplanes... (granted, it's pretty tough to do anything in an airplane, but it has been done)
Of course, the obvious thing is...if you can make a robot arm good enough to let a doctor do an exam, why don't you instead build a robot arm that SHOOTS BACK and reduces the total number of infantry you need???! I mean, what kind of idiots put money into this? For the same cost to develop the robotics and telepresence tech and to get it engineered for this medical purpose, you could build a combat robot that would soak up the bullets!
The reason I assume exploding, constant growth (meaning if other civilizations were close to us, we would SEE THEM...they could NOT hide) is that it's just evolution all over again. Suppose you have a population of super-intelligent machines that each have the capability to machine matter (aka asteroids, planets, ect) into more components of themselves (hence growing exponentially) at a frenetic rate. Some of these machines might get 'bored' and not expand...but at least a few will perpetually have ambition, and so the overall size of the civilization will always grow.
It's kind of like a human population : YOU may refuse to breed, but that just means, long term, the people who don't refuse will grow to dominate the landscape and use up every last scrap of available resources.
It has been a little over a century since we developed radio. At the current rate of progress, it'll be little more than a century or two before we develop the machines I describe and our solar system gets converted into a cloud of machines. The universe has been around for 14 billion years : you do the math. The odds that we see an extraterrestrial civilization at our stage of developement is infitesimal.
I think the people that study these things have their head in the clouds.
There are two very obvious technological trends that fully explain the Fermi "paradox"
1. The better our radios have gotten, the more the output becomes indistinguisable from noise. A signal processing engineer can explain more, but ultimately the maximum bandwidth for a radio is obtained for a signal that has the maximum entropy content possible. So the output of more and more advanced radios look more and more like random noise.
2. Technology begets technology. It seems obvious that tech change will accelerate faster and faster, until we develop machines that have trillions of times our own intelligence and cognitive capacity, and can rearrange matter on the molecular level at an exponentially expanding rate. A civilization that develops radios will likely continue to develop until they have gathered all the available resources in their starting star system. They will then expand outward from their starting point at close to the speed of light, exploiting the resources of every star system they enter.
So the first sign of extraterrestrial intelligence will be when they roar into our star system and set up shop. Hopefully, they'll be kind enough to not consume our planet if we don't yet have the technology to defend ourselves...
I guess that's the hole. By definition, the laws of physics are what they are. If an event happens, it is by definition ALLOWED.
Now, our current mathematical guesses at what these physical laws are don't allow certain things. That means that at least in some respects, our guesses as to the laws of physics are wrong.
Finally, about creating new universes : obviously, such a future civilization would not be trying to 'reset' the universe, they would be trying to create a new one to inhabit, in it's own separately expanding bubble of space that is almost completely isolated from our current universe.
I agree. We are both on the same page, we are just interpreting what this supernatural event might have been.
I'm saying that it COULD have actually been something that could be deliberately repeated by some civilization much, much smarter and better equipped than us. Or not, we don't know.
What we DO know is that it isn't impossible, as we have proof that it happened.
But, the event isn't impossible, because it DID happen. Duh! You can argue the specifics of WHAT exactly happened in the big bang, but the basics are indisputable : entropy STARTED at a very, very, very low state approximately 14 billion years ago.
Ok, I meant all "non burning plasma" matter. Scooping gas from the sun will probably never be efficient.
As for theoretical event : while the big bang is a theory, it defies logic to say that entropy cannot even be decreased. For there to be increasing disorder, there has to be order, originally.
And one theory for the big bang points out that the universe, as we see it, seems kind of arbitrary. A simple explanation for why it exists is that the big bang process didn't just happen once, but happens many, many many times creating a horde of universes in addition to the one we happen to be in. And, if a process can happen many times, maybe it can be fired off again. This is how some far future beings would dodge the heat death : they would somehow move themselves into a fresh universe where the entropy clock has been reset.
Look, whoever you are. I know what the second law is, and I've taken about 6 physics courses. Of course entropy wins in the end, but the sun has billions of years (4 or 5 at least) worth of fuel left.
What I MEANT was that we'll build machines that will replicate themselves and use a chunk of solar output to run, using all the matter we have. Yeah, net results, the decrease in entropy in the machines will be more than compensated by an increase in entropy in the sun, and in the radiation coming from the sun.
Total entropy will increase, as always, but just considering the balls of rock in our solar system being converted to machinery, on a local scale entropy will decrease.
And actually, even entropy MIGHT be beatable. Somehow, the world we live in was created, and whatever made the big bang obviously REDUCED entropy. Maybe technology could one day create new universes, starting from a state of maximal order.
Care to cite your source? I have done the math myself, and a 100x100 mile chunk of arizona is enough to power it all.
You seem to think that this flood of energy is insufficient to overcome entropy and convert all available matter within a light day into machine parts that use this energy.
Please look into the sky. Notice the fireball of energy being thrown into space every second? Yeah, I thought not. I suspect the limit is not energy, but matter : we can grab every scrap of matter in the solar system, and still not have enough to surround the sun completely with solar cells.
Even if there is no waste at the END, you still have intermediate waste that has to be transferred to our nifty fusion plant.
You still have mountains of low level waste that has to go in those special landfills.
You still have to perform all kinds of quality control and pay people to watch your reactors to make sure they don't blow up.
Finally, the current system doesn't charge the power companies for final disposal of the waste, the taxpayer pay it.
Also, if we develop the battery tech for powering electric cars, we would solve the night problem as a side benefit.
The battery tech isn't available today. You'd need a giant bank of flywheels or some other tech that isn't being mass produced as of right now.
This is neat technology, and may some day be practical. But, i don't think that day is coming for 50-100 years.
Here's why : solar is getting cheap very rapidly. Today, you can pick up panels at $2.85 a watt off the shelf. Below $1 a watt, and it will be cheaper to put panels up than it will be to burn coal.
A fusion-fission hybrid system will cost a LOT. According to the wall street journal, nuclear fission plants are already deal-breaker expensive. It would be cheaper per watt to build more wind farms than new fission reactors. http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/12/its-the-economics-stupid-nuclear-powers-bogeyman/
Another way to look at it :
To operate a fusion-fission hybrid system, as well as dozens of large gigawatt fission reactors takes a lot of well trained and educated people working round the clock to make all of the technology work. There are very real dangers, and very expensive regulations that have to be followed.
To build more solar panels? You print some more off the reel and slap them on to glass. You park the panels in the desert and leave them alone for 25 years. Maybe a simple robot wipes them off occasionally.
There's no liability, or need for exhaustive quality control. If a panel fails prematurely, you pay a warranty claim.
Inherently, solar is going to always be cheaper for the foreseeable future.
Well, there's a glitch : the "top level" universe would have finite amounts of matter and energy to build simulation computers with. And each layer of simulation puts more load on the 'top level' universe computers.
Unless, of course, the 'top level' universe has infinite resources because it doesn't have limitations such as entropy and finite size, like our universe does.
Some of the quirks of quantum physics IMPLY that we ARE in a simulated universe, and certain things aren't being calculated in order to limit the load on the computers simulating our universe.
At least there could be an afterlife...if we are even alive in the first place...
The nice part about the scenario is that it lets you visualize what exponential growth/the singularity can do, without depending on technology that may or may not be developed.
We already have examples for everything in the scenario. Even the limit on human thinking power : if we had to, we could just control these self replicating factories with human neurons on an artifical substrate. That is, if we never made AI work using only semiconductor ICs.
And it might be chunky, but that doesn't mean inefficient. "bulk processing", or dealing with a lot of matter at once, is an efficient way to make things.