Uh...actually, they have had x ray machines that can do that for 30 years. It's called a CT scanner, and yes, the manufacturers make a ton of money from that.
Oh...you mean, make a machine that can CHEAPLY resolve a 3d image...well, that's another story.
What moron makes the patent system such that patent holders don't HAVE to license their patent. I agree that if you come up with an idea, you should get a share of the revenue if other people use your idea in a product. BUT, the law should be this : you MUST license your idea to ANYONE who asks, as long as they pay the royalty. (you can deny license to people or firms who consistently neglect to pay patent royalties to other patent holders). Second, the royalty is capped to a FRACTION of the gross revenue for the product. The exact percentage should depend on how significant a feature the patented item is, or what percent of the product it is composed of.
So, if you patent a "back scratcher", and basically the patent covers an entire product, then you should get a significant fraction of the gross revenue from selling the product. 10-20% tops. On the other hand, if the patent is for a method to control a touchscreen by "pinching", then the patent royalties should be about 0.1% of the gross revenue, since this feature is only one of thousands that the product has.
I AGREE with you on the software design part. Our entire model has a MASSIVE, single flaw that I perceive (not quite sure what the 'intelligent design' thing you are talking about is a problem). Simply put, computer code is linear : it is a series of exactly described mathematical operations, where an off by one error ANYWHERE can bring everything else crashing down.
For instance, in windows, one function can't accept an "almost correct" binary answer from a previous function because binary math tends to produce gibberish answers when things go wrong. A single line of code carelessly used can break thousands, even millions of lines of other code that is working correctly.
Neurons are not optimal, but a single misfiring neuron has little or no effect. (in fact, the synapses attached to that neuron would automatically become weaker, limiting the effects of that neuron). "Answers" to a problem consist of a firing pattern coming from an axon trunk, and if that firing pattern is a little bit off from what the next stage of neural processing expects, it still works.
If we could create software that mimicked this, FAR more complex projects would be practical. Instead of subroutines, there would be "modules" of virtual neurons that could be linked together in various ways. These modules would have been "pre-trained", and would have their learning function disabled, so they would act in predictable ways.
So, for instance, you could start with the output from a video camera. Add in a module that converts the camera data into line spots, then a subsequent modules that converts the data into vectors. Link that output to the next stage, and so forth. (the reason I give this specific example is that we know WHAT the lower stages of visual processing due in mammals)
How to implement computer software this way is unknown. I just know that if neural net "modules" could work, we could make software MUCH more reliable and complex at the same time. It would even be spookily capable of recognizing input it shouldn't. Mistype a command into an operating system, and the text parsing module would probably still know what you meant, because enough virtual neurons fire to 'recognize' the garbled command. And so the OS would still do what you wanted.
From this basis it is not hard to imagine eventually creating an intelligence that pushes things over the cliff. For the 2029 prediction to be correct, we don't actually have to design a human level AI - JUST an AI good enough to improve itself recursively and exponentially. (such that it might start at below "human" intelligence in some respects, but due to enormous processing speed, iteratively improves itself explosively rapidly until it ends up far beyond the human level)
Actually, I'm positive we could, although we'd have to replace fuel from imported oil with fuel generated from coal. Not a very efficient solution because it outputs just as much carbon or more.
BUT, I think with a 10-100x increase in R&D spending we could give a big F-U to the middle east. In 4 years we could certainly have a rock solid plan that would allow us to replace oil consumption in 10-20 years.
First, let me say that I agree with you. There will ALWAYS be a scarcity of resources as long as we, or our descendents, live in this universe. And violence is the most basic way to resolve a dispute over resources. No amount of 'talk' changes the simple physical fact that if it is profitable to beat someone up/kill them and take their stuff, you should do it.
And if you can't win that way, perhaps you can win by creating a vast, complex, "system" that distributes wealth in such a way that the winners get all the resources.
With that said...it looks like invading Iraq is NOT profitable. The total oil underneath Iraq is probably NOT worth the cost of occupation, especially since we can't just steal all that oil without looking bad in the eyes of the world.
And your snide remark about inventing fusion...you should realize that despite the perceived lack of progress, current fusion projects are almost at break even, having improved yields a million fold over 40 years. If in November Obama decided to withdraw all troops from Iraq and spend the billions on the war on a crash program to COMPLETELY replace imported oil in 4 years, I think it could be done. 200 billion a year is enough money to buy kilometers of solar panels, tends of thousands of windmills, investigate 5 different ways to improve electric cars and pay Detroit the money they need to switch to mostly plug in hybrids. AND, with that kind of funding, there could be 5-10 different simultaneous fusion projects, Manhattan project style.
A good, although expensive, way to bypass the inherent uncertainties in developing new technology is to spend enough money to fund ALL of the credible approaches instead of trying to see ahead of time which way is the most likely to work. There are at least 10 major fusion plant concepts that are inherently different from one another. Build em all.
From R(ing)TFA, it appears that this thin material allows taking of a holographic IMAGE quickly. It still would be incredible useful, as holographs can be viewed from multiple angles and are in 3 dimensions. A photograph that sticks out. Granted, most of the ones I have seen are pretty bad but in principle they could be useful. The medical application does sound handy : instead of flat 2d xrays, xray machines would be basically digital CT scanners that gather enough information to produce a 3d image from a specific angle. This digitally processed 3d model would then be used as the basis for forming a holograph, suitable for placement on the X-ray reading boards and having on a clip next to a surgeon during surgery.
BUT...it is by no means a 3d display. The best way to have full motion, high resolution 3d images is still using a head mounted display combined with a sensor for tracking head movement.
Why this happens : I have a 1080p set using LCoS. I use it both as a TV and as my main computer display for my gaming box.
For movies, I have noticed that there is a HUGE difference between DVD and 720p HD movies. Just like the trial, I can tell the difference immediatly. But, for movies the style that film lenses and lighting and so forth gives movies a 'soft' look that seems to reduce detail.
For television content such as OTA ATSC, there is a clear difference between the 1080i channels and the 720p channels. The 720p channels aren't interlaced, and so look better diplaying motion, but clearly have less detail than the 1080i channels, which are excellent for things such as golf. In all cases HD is instantly obvious as being more detailed than SD.
Actually, you cross over a LOT sooner in convenience. What would you rather burn, one 700GB disk or 148 DVDs. Granted, I'm sure it will take the burner hours to fill up a disk....but there's NO DISK SWAPPING. I'd say having to swap 100 disks would be the limit at which all but a poor man would switch..
Two key notes
1. Expensive, high energy storage devices will be developed for practical electric cars. The actual technology might be flywheels, ultra-capacitors, or some type of super battery. Point is, that's a huge investment in energy storage that shouldn't go to waste.
2. It's not as inefficient as you might think - the power released would not go far, probably just to help power the suburban house/apartment building that the car owner is plugged in to.
3. This technology would dovetail perfectly with mass adoption of solar. If Nano-Solar or another firm makes enough large scale cheap solar panels, it would become economically expedient for ALL new power generation to be solar panels. (since the cost/watt might be about half what burning coal costs) But, solar won't power the grid at night, and so storage would be much more valuable to utility companies in a few decades. (not at first, normally there is less load at night and conventional power plants work fine at night)
Actually, that's why they used electronically steered antennae. For all practical purposes, the radio spectrum IS infinite, if you add the SPATIAL domain to your communication. Basically, now it matters not only what frequency you use, the time you send the signal, amplitude (conventional radios use all three characteristics of electronic waves) but also where in space your robot is located. As long as the thousands of robots, all with multi-megabit data links, are spread out over miles of battlefield and use electronically steered antennae, they can all work at once.
You simply CAN deliver high bandwidth to a large number of robots over radio.
You're right. I just wanted to specify something that avoids any chance of the obvious problem : enemy either jams the communications, making all the robots stop working, or the worst possible problem : they crack the codes and send your own robots after you.
There's a way to efficiently generate the terrabytes of pure random data.
First, it's been obvious for a long time that robot tanks (and eventually robot infantry) are an inevitable development. It WILL happen, has to happen. Some of the posters will spout some meaningless garbage about how you can't trust a machine to decide whether or not to kill someone. Others will give some meaningless "rah rah" about how you can't hold ground without a 20 year old with a rifle standing there to keep it.
In response to this : first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization. Requiring a human operator to directly control the machine from a safe distance away is the plan.
And second, a fleshy 20 year old is a bad way to hold ground. Robots have numerous advantages over humans. 1. Disposable. 2. Can take risks with a robot that a human wouldn't take. 3. Don't need supplies when not operating. Could deploy robots in hidden capsules located in the ground, using no fuel and minimal battery power. When something happens, months or years later, you activate the robot and guide it on it's mission. 4. A control center for an army of robots could have far more educated and experienced people manning it than the kind of people you can get to sign up for the Army and marines. Notably, you could have experienced translators, and input from high ranking officers.
Finally, robots mass produced should be cheaper than human soldiers.
Ultimately, the only thing holding this all back is technology. The KEY technology that made tele-operated robotic war-fighters impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s was that there was no way to get the kind of bandwidth needed over digital radios using un-jammable and unbreakable codes.
Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad.
As far as I know, the kind of radio hardware to do that was not possible before 2000, and using one time pad encryption means each bot would need to have many gigabytes of internal non-volatile storage. The tech wasn't possible in the past. It is today.
Sure, in the 1980s and 1990s there were demos of related technology, and people laughed at it and said it could never replace human beings. It can.
I've personally stood in a studio while a small college band was recording. I've fiddled with pro tools and positioning the mikes. I know what it costs per hour (about $100) and the total cost to record an album ($1-2k for a demo, about 10k-??? for a full on professional album). It's NOT THAT EXPENSIVE. It only takes a band a few weeks to make an album! SO, the minimum number of people buying music in order to have JUST as much music actually produced as there is today is only a TINY fraction of the money currently spent on music. If, say, HALF the revenues of a cd actually went to the band/production costs(cds are about 8 bucks wholesale, so $4.00) instead of maybe $0.10 they'd have to sell a LOT less.
If, on itunes, about half the money went to the people making the music (the band, the songwriters, the studio workers) they could probably charge $0.30 a song. Furthermore, popular bands easily make millions by touring - if they ONLY had income from tours, popular musicians wouldn't starve - they'd just have to live in smaller mansions and throw fewer parties with less free cocaine.
Once the middlemen all die and stop drowning out the industry with "popular" music and billions in advertising, I think the industry will be healthier. Just as much music will be made, and people will pay a lot less for it.
I don't get it. The amazing thing about solar is very simple : it is fundamentally the CHEAPEST option. If adding more generating capacity costs less per watt than ANY other form of power, including burning coal, then solar wins by default. All NEW power plants would be solar. Sure, it may take a while to replace all of the old power plants : but it will happen. I mean, common sense dictates that making basically a high precision piece of multi-layered film that then produces power for the next 20 years without maintenance is cheaper than digging up coal and burning it. The only time where solar might have problems is if it ever got to the point that existing power plants could not supply enough energy for use at night. Obviously, most power consumption is in the day, but there is some load at night.
Yes and no. The wormhole would be extremely tiny during transport, and would have mass added and the mouth enlarged once it is in place where you want it. This all assumes of course that the exotic matter you'd need does exist or can be made.
Also, keep in mind the level of tech I am discussing. Basically, the assumptions are these
1. Human grade intelligence is what it seems : a large enough piece of custom circuitry could emulate it better than the real thing. Assuming a 5ghz clock speed for the circuitry, an "AI" made to model a human brain would run 10 million times faster. These beings would have every bit of reasoning and motivation that you have, just 10 million times the computational resources. In addition, they could copy their thought patterns freely to as much circuitry as can be manufactured.
2. These "beings" set to work, exploding in size and resources exponentially. Within 1 century, using energy gathered from our sun and an exponentially increasing number of robots they convert all the matter in our solar system into useful components. Essentially, all the energy that can be harnessed from our star using the mass of everything, including Jupiter, is available.
At that point building whatever it takes to make wormholes work would be possible, if wormholes can be made in the first place. Obviously wormholes would be a history making difference : with them the entire "empire" of these beings could be interconnected across the entire universe into one giant civilization. Without them, and the speed of light delays (which are RIDICULOUS especially for beings that think as fast as I posit) make an empire impossible.
Note : the "empire" cannot expand any faster than life : you cannot send a wormhole mouth somewhere faster than light from the reference frame of the destination. Due to a quirk of physics, from OUR perspective (assuming human observers left in Sol system perhaps in the equivalent of a pet cage) the wormhole mouths might take a fraction of the time to reach their destination that light would take.
It depends upon your theory of HOW intelligent life develops. I, personally, believe in the Singularity and the law of accelerating returns. Any idiot can look at the overall rate of technological progress over the last 100 years (which is not nearly as fast as the progress in computers, but it still FAST), look at the century before that, and figure out that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. It'll presumably continue until progress can't be made due to hard laws of physics...
A society that advanced won't need to use "radios" to communicate with other life forms...they'll be able to send ships out at 90% of the speed of light (VERY technically possible and even practical with technology in probably a few hundred years, or post Singularity) to visit other intelligences "in person".
Or better still, send wormhole mouths out at 99.99999% of the speed of light (maybe possible within the laws of physics : it all depends on whether "dark energy" can be generated) and establish instantaneous links with the rest of the universe.
But, getting to my main point : I believe that a reasonable person would conclude the odds vanishingly small (like 1 in 10^200 small) that there are intelligent life forms that we will be able to detect with SETI. Either they are farther away than the speed of light would allow access to or they are already here and hiding among us. (no, not x files style, presumably with nanotech they could be completely and totally undetectable, with atomic sized observation bots.)
Point is, I think SETI is a waste of money. I don't see how we would find anything.
It depends upon your theory of HOW intelligent life develops. I, personally, believe in the Singularity and the law of accelerating returns. Any idiot can look at the overall rate of technological progress over the last 100 years (which is not nearly as fast as the progress in computers, but it still FAST), look at the century before that, and figure out that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. It'll presumably continue until progress can't be made due to hard laws of physics...
A society that advanced won't need to use "radios" to communicate with other life forms...they'll be able to send ships out at 90% of the speed of light (VERY technically possible and even practical with technology in probably a few hundred years, or post Singularity) to visit other intelligences "in person".
Or better still, send wormhole mouths out at 99.99999% of the speed of light (maybe possible within the laws of physics : it all depends on whether "dark energy" can be generated) and establish instantaneous links with the rest of the universe.
I am almost entirely certain that your brain is barely fast enough to handle "reality" in realtime. While you might have a memory implanted that made you THINK you had been on the beach for 2 weeks (or in dreams where your brain somehow fools itself into thinking a long time has passed) you would not have actually "experienced" every last moment of it, making decisions the whole way. A REAL full up virtual reality, where you have to decide upon every step and so forth would take about as much time as it would to actually "experience" the event. (granted, this terminology gets tricky if you're fighting virtual dragons)
How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to google for exactly how MANY developers Microsoft has versus how many apple has....but Microsoft had at least 5000 developers that worked on Windows Vista. While they must have lowered their standards in the last few years, originally microsoft was only hiring top graduates from top schools like MIT and CMU.
They have a gigantic number of some of the best people they can buy.
So why does their stuff suck so much by comparison to a small corporation? Apple cannot afford nearly the resources Microsoft has...I wouldn't be surprised if their OS X team had 1/5 the people.
I know that skill matters...but surely the top of the class people at Microsoft are no worse than the hippies at apple?
This suggestion might appeal to fellow slashdotters.
IMPLEMENTATION of the option :
As most of us know, installing an OS - any OS - properly for a given piece of hardware can be complicated. Getting the best possible drivers (which is not always the latest version), setting all the internal OS settings to appropriate ones for the computer being sold is a complex process. I am aware that many commodity PC makers do a shitty job of setting up the software for a PC, but they DO set it up a certain way when they make that disk image.
(if the computer is a gaming PC, the OS should be set to be efficient, if it is a work PC, it should be pre-installed with running anti-spyware and virus programs, ect)
SO...there would be recovery CDs, but everything would be on the new computer's hard drive.
When you start up the new pc, you would be taken to a screen where you can choose to
1. PAY the OEM price by credit card for Windows. The partition containing Windows preinstalled, a clean disk image all ready to go with appropriate drivers, is made the primary partition. The other partitions are deleted from the drive index table. There could easily be different options : Vista Home, Premium, XP, ect, and a version of Windows loaded with other programs in a bundle. You could either pay directly if the PC is connected to the internet, or, when you bought the PC you would have been given an activation number to type in.
2. Pay nothing, have the Ubuntu partition made primary
3. Pay nothing, wipe the disk so that you can install your own OS.
A small entry would be added to the BIOS Flash once you pay for Windows successfully. That way, if you have to use the Windows recovery disk, the PC already knows if you have paid for the software or not.
This could be IT. Or, it could be another technology still in the works, "any day now". Despite the fact that it's been a long, long road dealing with the horrible mess of coal and other CO2 releasing power generation technology, it won't be forever. Cheap as dirt solar should rapidly surpass all other forms of energy generation : no complex, expensive plants like nuclear. No mining coal and having to deal with pollution. No dealing with commodity fuel prices, once the panels are installed they keep making power until they wear out.
Half the problem of fossil fuels could be solved in one stroke. Sure, it would take 20-30 more years before all the existing plants are replaced, but solar can in principle, in conjunction with a good method of energy storage, supply all the energy needed for electric power.
If the police leave something in your car like that, do you now legally own them? If a burglar breaks into your house and leaves his jacket, I'm pretty sure he can't ask for it back. If the police did not obtain a warrant, it seems like an analogous situation. I'm not sure what the rules are if the cops did obtain a warrant.
Is it possible to convict someone for murder if no body is ever found? The CRX is a smoking gun, alas, it LOOKS very much like Reiser murdered his wife. The items found in it strongly suggest the crime, and, more importantly, how else would anyone else have used the car? I mean, the car was hidden somewhere that Reiser knew the location of, and he presumably had the only set of keys. It seems unlikely that Sturgeon had the keys. Heck, even if it were a frame up, how would Reiser have known where to get the car from?
It is pretty difficult to come up with a theory that fits the evidence that doesn't involve Reiser having killed his wife.
WITH THAT SAID, if no body nor sufficient blood to show a death occurred is ever found, what crime can he be charged with?
NASA has the brilliant "idea" of building a space station so that the "shuttle has somewhere to go". They spend $10,000 a kilogram to put things in low earth orbit, and are dreaming up moon and mars missions with no plans to build the infrastructure to slash launch costs.
I can't see how an organization with such sheer, boneheaded decisions at the core of their strategy is likely to dream up cars significantly CHEAPER overall than existing technologies. If a "Mr. Fusion" were possible, NASA's version of it would cost 1 billion per engine. It might be revolutionary technology, but no-one would ever drive it.
A wormhole isn't sci fi, it is a mathematical solution to Einstein's equations that allows for this warp. Interestingly, this would ALSO explain spooky action at a distance - the wormhole parts are entangled, with a path through a dimension we don't observe that doesn't depend on distance. (so the effect is instantaneous). The thing about this effect, spooky action at a distance, is that while you can't use it to communicate, you CAN prove that the UNIVERSE has instantaneous communication between far off particles.
The only part about what I am talking about is that I suspect a working wormhole would require immense amounts of matter and energy to construct, and be so tiny that only high frequency photons can pass.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh...actually, they have had x ray machines that can do that for 30 years. It's called a CT scanner, and yes, the manufacturers make a ton of money from that.
Oh...you mean, make a machine that can CHEAPLY resolve a 3d image...well, that's another story.
What moron makes the patent system such that patent holders don't HAVE to license their patent. I agree that if you come up with an idea, you should get a share of the revenue if other people use your idea in a product. BUT, the law should be this : you MUST license your idea to ANYONE who asks, as long as they pay the royalty. (you can deny license to people or firms who consistently neglect to pay patent royalties to other patent holders). Second, the royalty is capped to a FRACTION of the gross revenue for the product. The exact percentage should depend on how significant a feature the patented item is, or what percent of the product it is composed of.
So, if you patent a "back scratcher", and basically the patent covers an entire product, then you should get a significant fraction of the gross revenue from selling the product. 10-20% tops. On the other hand, if the patent is for a method to control a touchscreen by "pinching", then the patent royalties should be about 0.1% of the gross revenue, since this feature is only one of thousands that the product has.
I AGREE with you on the software design part. Our entire model has a MASSIVE, single flaw that I perceive (not quite sure what the 'intelligent design' thing you are talking about is a problem). Simply put, computer code is linear : it is a series of exactly described mathematical operations, where an off by one error ANYWHERE can bring everything else crashing down.
For instance, in windows, one function can't accept an "almost correct" binary answer from a previous function because binary math tends to produce gibberish answers when things go wrong. A single line of code carelessly used can break thousands, even millions of lines of other code that is working correctly.
Neurons are not optimal, but a single misfiring neuron has little or no effect. (in fact, the synapses attached to that neuron would automatically become weaker, limiting the effects of that neuron). "Answers" to a problem consist of a firing pattern coming from an axon trunk, and if that firing pattern is a little bit off from what the next stage of neural processing expects, it still works.
If we could create software that mimicked this, FAR more complex projects would be practical. Instead of subroutines, there would be "modules" of virtual neurons that could be linked together in various ways. These modules would have been "pre-trained", and would have their learning function disabled, so they would act in predictable ways.
So, for instance, you could start with the output from a video camera. Add in a module that converts the camera data into line spots, then a subsequent modules that converts the data into vectors. Link that output to the next stage, and so forth.
(the reason I give this specific example is that we know WHAT the lower stages of visual processing due in mammals)
How to implement computer software this way is unknown. I just know that if neural net "modules" could work, we could make software MUCH more reliable and complex at the same time. It would even be spookily capable of recognizing input it shouldn't. Mistype a command into an operating system, and the text parsing module would probably still know what you meant, because enough virtual neurons fire to 'recognize' the garbled command. And so the OS would still do what you wanted.
From this basis it is not hard to imagine eventually creating an intelligence that pushes things over the cliff. For the 2029 prediction to be correct, we don't actually have to design a human level AI - JUST an AI good enough to improve itself recursively and exponentially. (such that it might start at below "human" intelligence in some respects, but due to enormous processing speed, iteratively improves itself explosively rapidly until it ends up far beyond the human level)
Actually, I'm positive we could, although we'd have to replace fuel from imported oil with fuel generated from coal. Not a very efficient solution because it outputs just as much carbon or more.
BUT, I think with a 10-100x increase in R&D spending we could give a big F-U to the middle east. In 4 years we could certainly have a rock solid plan that would allow us to replace oil consumption in 10-20 years.
First, let me say that I agree with you. There will ALWAYS be a scarcity of resources as long as we, or our descendents, live in this universe. And violence is the most basic way to resolve a dispute over resources. No amount of 'talk' changes the simple physical fact that if it is profitable to beat someone up/kill them and take their stuff, you should do it.
And if you can't win that way, perhaps you can win by creating a vast, complex, "system" that distributes wealth in such a way that the winners get all the resources.
With that said...it looks like invading Iraq is NOT profitable. The total oil underneath Iraq is probably NOT worth the cost of occupation, especially since we can't just steal all that oil without looking bad in the eyes of the world.
And your snide remark about inventing fusion...you should realize that despite the perceived lack of progress, current fusion projects are almost at break even, having improved yields a million fold over 40 years. If in November Obama decided to withdraw all troops from Iraq and spend the billions on the war on a crash program to COMPLETELY replace imported oil in 4 years, I think it could be done. 200 billion a year is enough money to buy kilometers of solar panels, tends of thousands of windmills, investigate 5 different ways to improve electric cars and pay Detroit the money they need to switch to mostly plug in hybrids. AND, with that kind of funding, there could be 5-10 different simultaneous fusion projects, Manhattan project style.
A good, although expensive, way to bypass the inherent uncertainties in developing new technology is to spend enough money to fund ALL of the credible approaches instead of trying to see ahead of time which way is the most likely to work. There are at least 10 major fusion plant concepts that are inherently different from one another. Build em all.
From R(ing)TFA, it appears that this thin material allows taking of a holographic IMAGE quickly. It still would be incredible useful, as holographs can be viewed from multiple angles and are in 3 dimensions. A photograph that sticks out. Granted, most of the ones I have seen are pretty bad but in principle they could be useful. The medical application does sound handy : instead of flat 2d xrays, xray machines would be basically digital CT scanners that gather enough information to produce a 3d image from a specific angle. This digitally processed 3d model would then be used as the basis for forming a holograph, suitable for placement on the X-ray reading boards and having on a clip next to a surgeon during surgery.
BUT...it is by no means a 3d display. The best way to have full motion, high resolution 3d images is still using a head mounted display combined with a sensor for tracking head movement.
Why this happens : I have a 1080p set using LCoS. I use it both as a TV and as my main computer display for my gaming box.
For movies, I have noticed that there is a HUGE difference between DVD and 720p HD movies. Just like the trial, I can tell the difference immediatly. But, for movies the style that film lenses and lighting and so forth gives movies a 'soft' look that seems to reduce detail.
For television content such as OTA ATSC, there is a clear difference between the 1080i channels and the 720p channels. The 720p channels aren't interlaced, and so look better diplaying motion, but clearly have less detail than the 1080i channels, which are excellent for things such as golf. In all cases HD is instantly obvious as being more detailed than SD.
Actually, you cross over a LOT sooner in convenience. What would you rather burn, one 700GB disk or 148 DVDs. Granted, I'm sure it will take the burner hours to fill up a disk....but there's NO DISK SWAPPING. I'd say having to swap 100 disks would be the limit at which all but a poor man would switch..
Two key notes 1. Expensive, high energy storage devices will be developed for practical electric cars. The actual technology might be flywheels, ultra-capacitors, or some type of super battery. Point is, that's a huge investment in energy storage that shouldn't go to waste. 2. It's not as inefficient as you might think - the power released would not go far, probably just to help power the suburban house/apartment building that the car owner is plugged in to. 3. This technology would dovetail perfectly with mass adoption of solar. If Nano-Solar or another firm makes enough large scale cheap solar panels, it would become economically expedient for ALL new power generation to be solar panels. (since the cost/watt might be about half what burning coal costs) But, solar won't power the grid at night, and so storage would be much more valuable to utility companies in a few decades. (not at first, normally there is less load at night and conventional power plants work fine at night)
Actually, that's why they used electronically steered antennae. For all practical purposes, the radio spectrum IS infinite, if you add the SPATIAL domain to your communication. Basically, now it matters not only what frequency you use, the time you send the signal, amplitude (conventional radios use all three characteristics of electronic waves) but also where in space your robot is located. As long as the thousands of robots, all with multi-megabit data links, are spread out over miles of battlefield and use electronically steered antennae, they can all work at once.
You simply CAN deliver high bandwidth to a large number of robots over radio.
You're right. I just wanted to specify something that avoids any chance of the obvious problem : enemy either jams the communications, making all the robots stop working, or the worst possible problem : they crack the codes and send your own robots after you.
There's a way to efficiently generate the terrabytes of pure random data.
First, it's been obvious for a long time that robot tanks (and eventually robot infantry) are an inevitable development. It WILL happen, has to happen. Some of the posters will spout some meaningless garbage about how you can't trust a machine to decide whether or not to kill someone. Others will give some meaningless "rah rah" about how you can't hold ground without a 20 year old with a rifle standing there to keep it.
In response to this : first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization. Requiring a human operator to directly control the machine from a safe distance away is the plan.
And second, a fleshy 20 year old is a bad way to hold ground. Robots have numerous advantages over humans. 1. Disposable. 2. Can take risks with a robot that a human wouldn't take. 3. Don't need supplies when not operating. Could deploy robots in hidden capsules located in the ground, using no fuel and minimal battery power. When something happens, months or years later, you activate the robot and guide it on it's mission. 4. A control center for an army of robots could have far more educated and experienced people manning it than the kind of people you can get to sign up for the Army and marines. Notably, you could have experienced translators, and input from high ranking officers.
Finally, robots mass produced should be cheaper than human soldiers.
Ultimately, the only thing holding this all back is technology. The KEY technology that made tele-operated robotic war-fighters impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s was that there was no way to get the kind of bandwidth needed over digital radios using un-jammable and unbreakable codes.
Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad.
As far as I know, the kind of radio hardware to do that was not possible before 2000, and using one time pad encryption means each bot would need to have many gigabytes of internal non-volatile storage. The tech wasn't possible in the past. It is today.
Sure, in the 1980s and 1990s there were demos of related technology, and people laughed at it and said it could never replace human beings. It can.
Note : I am in the US Army reserves as a medic.
I've personally stood in a studio while a small college band was recording. I've fiddled with pro tools and positioning the mikes. I know what it costs per hour (about $100) and the total cost to record an album ($1-2k for a demo, about 10k-??? for a full on professional album). It's NOT THAT EXPENSIVE. It only takes a band a few weeks to make an album! SO, the minimum number of people buying music in order to have JUST as much music actually produced as there is today is only a TINY fraction of the money currently spent on music. If, say, HALF the revenues of a cd actually went to the band/production costs(cds are about 8 bucks wholesale, so $4.00) instead of maybe $0.10 they'd have to sell a LOT less.
If, on itunes, about half the money went to the people making the music (the band, the songwriters, the studio workers) they could probably charge $0.30 a song. Furthermore, popular bands easily make millions by touring - if they ONLY had income from tours, popular musicians wouldn't starve - they'd just have to live in smaller mansions and throw fewer parties with less free cocaine.
Once the middlemen all die and stop drowning out the industry with "popular" music and billions in advertising, I think the industry will be healthier. Just as much music will be made, and people will pay a lot less for it.
I don't get it. The amazing thing about solar is very simple : it is fundamentally the CHEAPEST option. If adding more generating capacity costs less per watt than ANY other form of power, including burning coal, then solar wins by default. All NEW power plants would be solar. Sure, it may take a while to replace all of the old power plants : but it will happen. I mean, common sense dictates that making basically a high precision piece of multi-layered film that then produces power for the next 20 years without maintenance is cheaper than digging up coal and burning it. The only time where solar might have problems is if it ever got to the point that existing power plants could not supply enough energy for use at night. Obviously, most power consumption is in the day, but there is some load at night.
Yes and no. The wormhole would be extremely tiny during transport, and would have mass added and the mouth enlarged once it is in place where you want it. This all assumes of course that the exotic matter you'd need does exist or can be made.
Also, keep in mind the level of tech I am discussing. Basically, the assumptions are these
1. Human grade intelligence is what it seems : a large enough piece of custom circuitry could emulate it better than the real thing. Assuming a 5ghz clock speed for the circuitry, an "AI" made to model a human brain would run 10 million times faster. These beings would have every bit of reasoning and motivation that you have, just 10 million times the computational resources. In addition, they could copy their thought patterns freely to as much circuitry as can be manufactured.
2. These "beings" set to work, exploding in size and resources exponentially. Within 1 century, using energy gathered from our sun and an exponentially increasing number of robots they convert all the matter in our solar system into useful components. Essentially, all the energy that can be harnessed from our star using the mass of everything, including Jupiter, is available.
At that point building whatever it takes to make wormholes work would be possible, if wormholes can be made in the first place. Obviously wormholes would be a history making difference : with them the entire "empire" of these beings could be interconnected across the entire universe into one giant civilization. Without them, and the speed of light delays (which are RIDICULOUS especially for beings that think as fast as I posit) make an empire impossible.
Note : the "empire" cannot expand any faster than life : you cannot send a wormhole mouth somewhere faster than light from the reference frame of the destination. Due to a quirk of physics, from OUR perspective (assuming human observers left in Sol system perhaps in the equivalent of a pet cage) the wormhole mouths might take a fraction of the time to reach their destination that light would take.
It depends upon your theory of HOW intelligent life develops. I, personally, believe in the Singularity and the law of accelerating returns. Any idiot can look at the overall rate of technological progress over the last 100 years (which is not nearly as fast as the progress in computers, but it still FAST), look at the century before that, and figure out that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. It'll presumably continue until progress can't be made due to hard laws of physics...
A society that advanced won't need to use "radios" to communicate with other life forms...they'll be able to send ships out at 90% of the speed of light (VERY technically possible and even practical with technology in probably a few hundred years, or post Singularity) to visit other intelligences "in person".
Or better still, send wormhole mouths out at 99.99999% of the speed of light (maybe possible within the laws of physics : it all depends on whether "dark energy" can be generated) and establish instantaneous links with the rest of the universe.
But, getting to my main point : I believe that a reasonable person would conclude the odds vanishingly small (like 1 in 10^200 small) that there are intelligent life forms that we will be able to detect with SETI. Either they are farther away than the speed of light would allow access to or they are already here and hiding among us. (no, not x files style, presumably with nanotech they could be completely and totally undetectable, with atomic sized observation bots.)
Point is, I think SETI is a waste of money. I don't see how we would find anything.
It depends upon your theory of HOW intelligent life develops. I, personally, believe in the Singularity and the law of accelerating returns. Any idiot can look at the overall rate of technological progress over the last 100 years (which is not nearly as fast as the progress in computers, but it still FAST), look at the century before that, and figure out that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. It'll presumably continue until progress can't be made due to hard laws of physics...
A society that advanced won't need to use "radios" to communicate with other life forms...they'll be able to send ships out at 90% of the speed of light (VERY technically possible and even practical with technology in probably a few hundred years, or post Singularity) to visit other intelligences "in person".
Or better still, send wormhole mouths out at 99.99999% of the speed of light (maybe possible within the laws of physics : it all depends on whether "dark energy" can be generated) and establish instantaneous links with the rest of the universe.
I am almost entirely certain that your brain is barely fast enough to handle "reality" in realtime. While you might have a memory implanted that made you THINK you had been on the beach for 2 weeks (or in dreams where your brain somehow fools itself into thinking a long time has passed) you would not have actually "experienced" every last moment of it, making decisions the whole way. A REAL full up virtual reality, where you have to decide upon every step and so forth would take about as much time as it would to actually "experience" the event. (granted, this terminology gets tricky if you're fighting virtual dragons)
How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to google for exactly how MANY developers Microsoft has versus how many apple has....but Microsoft had at least 5000 developers that worked on Windows Vista. While they must have lowered their standards in the last few years, originally microsoft was only hiring top graduates from top schools like MIT and CMU.
They have a gigantic number of some of the best people they can buy.
So why does their stuff suck so much by comparison to a small corporation? Apple cannot afford nearly the resources Microsoft has...I wouldn't be surprised if their OS X team had 1/5 the people.
I know that skill matters...but surely the top of the class people at Microsoft are no worse than the hippies at apple?
This suggestion might appeal to fellow slashdotters.
IMPLEMENTATION of the option :
As most of us know, installing an OS - any OS - properly for a given piece of hardware can be complicated. Getting the best possible drivers (which is not always the latest version), setting all the internal OS settings to appropriate ones for the computer being sold is a complex process. I am aware that many commodity PC makers do a shitty job of setting up the software for a PC, but they DO set it up a certain way when they make that disk image.
(if the computer is a gaming PC, the OS should be set to be efficient, if it is a work PC, it should be pre-installed with running anti-spyware and virus programs, ect)
SO...there would be recovery CDs, but everything would be on the new computer's hard drive.
When you start up the new pc, you would be taken to a screen where you can choose to
1. PAY the OEM price by credit card for Windows. The partition containing Windows preinstalled, a clean disk image all ready to go with appropriate drivers, is made the primary partition. The other partitions are deleted from the drive index table. There could easily be different options : Vista Home, Premium, XP, ect, and a version of Windows loaded with other programs in a bundle. You could either pay directly if the PC is connected to the internet, or, when you bought the PC you would have been given an activation number to type in.
2. Pay nothing, have the Ubuntu partition made primary
3. Pay nothing, wipe the disk so that you can install your own OS.
A small entry would be added to the BIOS Flash once you pay for Windows successfully. That way, if you have to use the Windows recovery disk, the PC already knows if you have paid for the software or not.
This could be IT. Or, it could be another technology still in the works, "any day now". Despite the fact that it's been a long, long road dealing with the horrible mess of coal and other CO2 releasing power generation technology, it won't be forever. Cheap as dirt solar should rapidly surpass all other forms of energy generation : no complex, expensive plants like nuclear. No mining coal and having to deal with pollution. No dealing with commodity fuel prices, once the panels are installed they keep making power until they wear out.
Half the problem of fossil fuels could be solved in one stroke. Sure, it would take 20-30 more years before all the existing plants are replaced, but solar can in principle, in conjunction with a good method of energy storage, supply all the energy needed for electric power.
If the police leave something in your car like that, do you now legally own them? If a burglar breaks into your house and leaves his jacket, I'm pretty sure he can't ask for it back. If the police did not obtain a warrant, it seems like an analogous situation. I'm not sure what the rules are if the cops did obtain a warrant.
Is it possible to convict someone for murder if no body is ever found? The CRX is a smoking gun, alas, it LOOKS very much like Reiser murdered his wife. The items found in it strongly suggest the crime, and, more importantly, how else would anyone else have used the car? I mean, the car was hidden somewhere that Reiser knew the location of, and he presumably had the only set of keys. It seems unlikely that Sturgeon had the keys. Heck, even if it were a frame up, how would Reiser have known where to get the car from?
It is pretty difficult to come up with a theory that fits the evidence that doesn't involve Reiser having killed his wife.
WITH THAT SAID, if no body nor sufficient blood to show a death occurred is ever found, what crime can he be charged with?
NASA has the brilliant "idea" of building a space station so that the "shuttle has somewhere to go". They spend $10,000 a kilogram to put things in low earth orbit, and are dreaming up moon and mars missions with no plans to build the infrastructure to slash launch costs.
I can't see how an organization with such sheer, boneheaded decisions at the core of their strategy is likely to dream up cars significantly CHEAPER overall than existing technologies. If a "Mr. Fusion" were possible, NASA's version of it would cost 1 billion per engine. It might be revolutionary technology, but no-one would ever drive it.
A wormhole isn't sci fi, it is a mathematical solution to Einstein's equations that allows for this warp. Interestingly, this would ALSO explain spooky action at a distance - the wormhole parts are entangled, with a path through a dimension we don't observe that doesn't depend on distance. (so the effect is instantaneous). The thing about this effect, spooky action at a distance, is that while you can't use it to communicate, you CAN prove that the UNIVERSE has instantaneous communication between far off particles.
The only part about what I am talking about is that I suspect a working wormhole would require immense amounts of matter and energy to construct, and be so tiny that only high frequency photons can pass.