I don't mean to be too alarmist, but this is VERY bad news. See, it's easy to get access to uranium ore. Many countries have the mineral, and buying yellowcake is not supposed to be all that hard. Heck, some of it supposedly went through Africa. If you have just a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, again it is easy to make a bomb. Spherical explosives aren't needed, a simple crashing together of a critical mass is enough. 10-20 kilotons is still enough to cut the heart out of a major world city, and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
But getting from A->B WAS ludicriously expensive. I read that it takes a year for a sample to travel from one side of the centrifuge plant to another, and these plants have to be enormous, costing billions. The laser method as described appears to be much cheaper and generates probably close to 100% pure U-235. Yes, it is a secret technology, but the plans can be stolen or bought, and lasers and all the other stuff needed to make it work are not restricted exports.
It might still cost a billion dollars to make a nuke, but that's it - not 10 billion. Most private individuals without access to nation state resources can't do it, but even the poorest dictatorship in the world can probably scrape together or steal from the U.N. a billion.
Oh. Yep, easier solution and the tags don't have to be writable. I'm not an RFID programmer, I just thought it seemed like a cool way to do it. No need for any tags to be writable actually, just that they have a unique tag code and encryption key. Oh : they need to make sure the tags have enough bitspace for any conceivable use of the tags. Would be a real pain if every store in every major country went to the system, and then we run out of bitspace for the tags and readers at some future date. I think 128 bits for the tag code, and 128 bits for the security key should be sufficient, I vaguely recall 2^128 is more particles than there are in the universe.
Problems 1 and 2 are easily addressed. The tag is write once but has an additional field that can be incremented to show the item as having been returned, resold, ect. Each tag has a unique 128 bit encryption key (unique to THAT tag...yes it's a lot of data to process I suppose, but nothing to modern computers, much less the ones when this tech hits the mainstream) that must be known by any equipment that communicates with the tag. So an emitter wouldn't work unless it had access to this database, and any applications accessing the key database would have to be carefully written and kept simple.
Problem 3 is what the guard at the door is for. He doesn't need to check receipts any more, but he does need to look for items that are bagged supiciously, no different than today with clerks at clothing stores. Bags would be transparent, or at least very translucent, so the guard can spot foil linings.
Another idea is that the store continuously pings every few seconds every expensive item in the store that has not yet been paid for. If someone puts one into a foil bag, "kidnapping" the RFID chip, the store quickly notices and notifies someone. This would require VERY rock solid technology to not have an obscene number of false alarms, however. Also, passive RFID chips wouldn't cut it : have to use active ones with tiny lithium ion battery packs, would only be cost effective for VERY expensive, small items.
Ideal solution : throw even more tech at the problem! Use LCDs or OLEDs for the SIGNS labeling products on sale. So, above/below each item for sale an electronic display would have both the name of the product and the current price as of right now. This information would be pulled from the same database that the store computer looks up the price from when you go to check out...
Course, you can see where this is going. A good implementation, using high quality electronics and software...with the level of care put into it that the software that say, runs on TI calculators, has, or maybe good medical equipment, would work better than the system of paper tags we use now. (and clueless store employees who screw up entering into the 'system' the new prices)
But a mediocre, 'Microsoft' grade implementation...would have so many glitches and mysterious problems you'd WISH there were just simple paper tags. Lol people would hand-write labels and afix them over the electronic labels that either are out of order or show the wrong price.
Oh, and a hackers dream if you could get in, say if the store computers were running M$ SQL connected to an accessible network... Imagine typing a few keys and watching the prices on the item you want to buy plummet as you watch...or installing a 'prank' application that randomly adds or subtracts from each price in the store a penny at a time, EVERY SECOND.....so as you look around at the countless glowing labels, they change price constantly...
RIFD technology has the potential to do everything it's backers claim. Inventory tracking for all manner of transportation and commerce could be MUCH more efficient because it is possible to read hundreds of tagged items at once, and without having to rotate the items to expose the barcodes. Unlike a barcode, or a credit card which is basically just a magentic barcode, easily readable with commonly available readers or even iron filings, RFIDs can be made to keep their codes secret with encryption. It has to be competently done encryption, with secure, proven algorithms and a unique encryption key for EVERY device (it would be retarded if a bank made all of it's rfid credit cards, for instance, use the same key)
Credit card theft and misuse could be almost eliminated with better cards that use encryption so the code changes every time they are used. No longer would the number of your visa card suffice, every transaction would need a new code. For a business relationship, you would press a button on the card to generate a code that a particular merchant could then use repeatedly to charge the card from, and only that merchant.
Of course, every security measure can be broken. Thieves could still swipe actual cards (and they could be cancelled just as quickly like it is today, but no thief could use the card without phyisically possessing it). With electron microscopes and specialized equipment someone could read the codes out of memory for a card, and create duplicates : but the cost and time involved could easily be so onerous that no criminal ever did it.
I think the slashdot mentality is one of fear of the tech because if the megacorps deploying these cards screw it up, we could end up with a system far less secure than we have now. For instance, wireless internet could have been made pretty much 100% secure from the start, but instead was pathetically easy to hack and far less secure than standard cat-5 jacks with no log on.
I imagine a future walmart or best buy where you grab anything you want to buy and throw it in a mostly plastic shopping cart. You wheel it through a special detector booth enclosed on three sides, and with one big electronic beep EVERYTHING gets instantly scanned, and a total price comes. You take your credit card out of its protective foil sheath, push a physical button ON the card (or press your thumbprint to it), and put it into a little recess on the self checkout machine. You close the foil lined door, another beep follows, you open the door and the transaction is done. 15 seconds, start to finish, whether you are buying 1 item or an entire cart full. No more lines at stores that use the technology, ever. Instead of 30 clerks on the job at Walmart, there are just 4 or so "customer service representatives" to handle problems that come up. There's a roll of bags if you want to bag your own stuff, but otherwise you just push the cart right on out of the store. The guards even at best buy never bother to inspect your cart because each expensive or routinely stolen item has a deeply embedded rfid tag with a writable (WRITE ONCE) field that "knows" if it has been bought. Everything in your cart gets interrogated when you push it through the doors.
No need for a paper receipt, either - a customer id for who bought the item is on the tag for each item. When you return stuff, you don't need a receipt, either, the clerk can quickly scan all your items when returned and press one button to instantly refund your money or give you store credit with your store card.
Course, this is the real world. We can't get fcking word processing to work without any trouble at all on computers in offices because viruses, bloatware, stupid users, features creep, and constant other problems mean that the commonly used Word is MORE trouble prone that windows and DOS word perfect I used back in 1990. That's like a modern car being out performed by a model T! I can imagine this RFID stuff not working right either, or a health scare starting up due to the magneti
Thank you. The point of my post was not to point to specific technology, but the fact that the history of innovation and technology is positive choc full of examples where the smaller, less funded, sometimes flat out discredited scientists or engineers create something far better than the 'bigger' team. Microsoft seems like a smoking gun example because according to the news, they have the largest programming budget in the world. They also headhunt a ton of top programmers, and their management style is supposed to be based around their coders. They are also supposed to eat their own dog food.
Yet their software sucks. It is complicated, yet it doesn't ever seem to have that specialized feature you actually NEED, but it has a shitload of useless ones. It tries to hold your hand yet often just screws up. They write programs that when doing features that have been around for decades can slow 3ghz machines down to a trot. Their word processing program shouldn't eat advanced processing power when it is only doing what word perfect for windows did 10 years ago, basic spelling and grammar checks and WYSIWYG presentation. It should load instantly.
Well, the wired article indicated the algorithm was a breakthrough. (the software 'learns' what objects shaped a certain way look like in the distance, hundreds of thousands of times)
It wouldn't be the first time a few students from an elite school beat out a better funded project with a clever approach or algorithm. THEIR software won a contest against a lot of competitors, and made it across the desert. Is it better? It seems reasonable to speculate it might be. Apple has a lot few programmers and a smaller budget than Microsoft....
As I recall, Yahoo and Altavista had their hardware and algorithms working for years before some punks from Stanford made google.
I read an article in wired about the pretty spiffy, learning, video processing algorithm the Grand Challenge bot used. Not sharing technology seems kind of limiting to me.
When are you going to mount a gun on this robot?
Can they be produced cheaply? (are the computers just ruggedized PCs? can the sensor packages be obtained for a reasonable price per vehicle)
My argument works from the "let's be different" viewpoint because I picked popular things that are INCREDIBLY dumb. Listening to her average singing voice or watching her music video does NOT in any way give you a chance at a girl like that. Only dumbass reasoning would cause you to buy a cd simply because the girl on the front is hot. You should be buying protein powder and Organic Chemistry textbooks instead. (since medical school (money) and muscles are MUCH MUCH more likely to give you a chance at a girl like that)
Uh...yeah...you forgot to mention she's a multi-millionaire. You know you'd trade your left nut to be in Kevin's place (heh, with a girl that fertile you only need one anyway...). I would.
Oh yeah, Forgot to add : Britney Spears listening AND buying. I mean even I couldn't help but notice that the music executives had picked a pretty hot, underage at the time, blond girl from a hick town to be their poster star, and had underdressed her and put her in some pretty suggestive songs. But I'm not among those MILLIONS of fools who paid at least 15 bucks for a whole cd of this! Some did it more than one time.
Course, *cough*, I have blown a lot more than 15 bucks on graphics cards I didn't really need that were less than 1/3 the price once games came out that needed it...
This article really sheds light on a fundamental dichotomy : hardcore gamers versus the rest of the public. As I'm sure most slashdotters will post here in a second, online gaming CAN be and generally is far more engrossing and much, much harder than any single player game. Online is also much more technically complex which is the real reason why it's only recently come to consoles : you need a voice chat or keyboard, and to get the kind of smooth gameplay console players are used to you need broadband. So to hardcore gamers like us, there's not even a second's thought : the vast majority of the games in the xbox lineup will be more fun online, if the game is written well enough technically to support it. (for instance, games like Gears of War will probably be a lot of fun Co-op if that game supports it smoothly)
Further, WoW/other MMORPGs and the Battlefield series I think offer some of THE most intense gaming available in any form, anywhere. No console solo or online game or PC game can really touch the intensity and complexity of these games. (and the difficulty level, especially in Battlefield. Even n00bs shoot me down and gun me down every 5-10 kills I get, which is a far harder game that most solo ones)
But the regular public, the joes on the streets who buy game consoles by the millions and make up the "average", fat, T.V. watching, braindead gameplay game playing, Geography ignorant, stereotyping and racially biased, Americans? Who the hell knows what sort of trash they'll really buy. Unfortunatly for us, they make up the real market that Microsoft needs to make money from, and it seems that Microsoft, composed mostly of top C.S. graduates, thinks more like we do.
The reality is, to create the real thing I think the process will involve these steps.
1. We will discover through exhaustive research the exact rules the neurons in human brains follow in creating synapses and reinforcing or degrading each connection according to neurotransmitter input. We will also discover how the brain develops each of the 20 or so neuron layer types it uses and how overall it can convert broad brush biochemical motivations into the fine level of cognition real minds are capable of.
2. We will build hardware, asics and the like, that actually act like neurons from a low level. This is because while technically any Turing complete machine might be able to run our 'simulation' of neural hardware, current estimates suggest that there are as many as 10,000 synapses PER NEURON. Each has its own set of membrane and regulatory protein, the exact number of molecules each governing its behavoir. I suspect that an accurate simulation of this would require more memory and computing power than every computer on earth combined.
Naturally, with an application like neurons which rely heavily on interconnections, hardware that is mostly optical with all optical routers and such would probably be ideal.
3. Unfortunatly, effective research into this may require some unethical decisions. Accurate enough information about how the brain developes may require using actual developing human beings in the final stages of the research. (at first, just human neural tissue and other mammals would be enough) There are a number of subtle little tricks nature uses to make our cortexs like it does.
Further, once we have this kind of hardware to mimic whole sections of a human brain we'll need to wire it up to actual people. While we might not ever be able to duplicate the entire structure, we could probably build electrode arrays attached by brain surgery that made existing neurons in a person 'think' they were attached to a new region of the brain and then use that hardware to perform certain tasks. Further, we could temporarily surpress sections and then in effect force a human to use the synthetic hardware to do what the existing meatware used to.
Unfortunatly, and this is delving into brave new world territory, truly good results might only be possible by attaching these electrode grids to developing minds, like in children, and so the individual would develop already using artificial hardware as part of his own mind. Just like in autism cases where the brain shunts whole sections of itself to storing data or crunching numbers, we would in a sense try to make the person use the huge section of artificial neurons to perform tasks. Autism cases proves that this could, and would work assuming our hardware is accurate enough.
It's easy to see where this could lead to super human abilities : once we have the system working for a given area of the brain, we can reprogram it to do it more efficiently than nature does it. For instance, there are clusters of neurons that calculate a sort of mental 'number line' that lets us do arithmetic in hardware. Well, a person thinking about a specific number and comparing it or adding it ect to another would have these neuron firing patterns decoded and then software would change other neuron firing patterns directly, in effect making the 'answer' pop into the persons head. If the artifical neurons handled certain types of memory, recall would be instantaneous and perfectly accurate. Eventually, the goal would be to force a person to perform large scale decision making using the artifical hardware so that the heart of cognition and sense of consciousness and so forth is handled by circuitry.
What would it all 'look' like. I imagine hundreds, eventually thousands of people retrofitted like this as part of the research and developement. Each would have had major brain surgery and have probably permanent fiber optic cables coming from their body that go to the banks of artificial neuron hardware, probably in a fac
Yes. You are correct, I overlooked that when I made the post. 20,000 watts might be more like it....which proves my point...there are now kilowatts and kilowatts of waste heat that could only be gotten rid of by having the cold water supply go through a radiator that is attached to the circuitry. Would be sort of expensive to replace a 20k (or larger) magnetron when it breaks lol though... Not to mention the EM danger if the system leaks radiation, or the EM weapon someone could make using a tube that big.
1. EXCEPT for cold Northern climates where the heater is properly installed inside the house's heated area (not all of them are, some are in closets in the garage) all the heat used the majority of the time is wasted for a typical heater. Have you ever noticed how much that thing is running during the day when there is minimal demand for hot water? Net efficiency can't possibly be above 50%.
Oh, and you still pay a lot more for the 'heat' wasted by the electric hot water heater than you do for heat generated by the fuel burning furnace (whether it uses oil or natural gas). A system that doesn't have that waste heat would be more economical.
2. Where do you think the energy lost in capictors, magnetron, ect goes? I have a bright idea...let's put the heat sinks for those AGAINST THE WATER TANK COLD SIDE!!! DOH! Where else do you think the heat for a 2000 watt magnetron gets dissipated. Without knowing exactly how this implementation of a fairly obvious idea actually works, I can say that that would take some bigass fans and a huge radiator to get rid of 40% of the heat lost running a magetron this big. It must be a BIG one to heat water in these volumes this fast. It almost certainly MUST vent the excess heat into the cold water coming into the system through a radiator or something. This would have the net effect over a prolonged run-time (perhaps someone is taking a shower) of making the system very efficient. Perhaps 90% net.
At the least, this kind of system should obsolete electric hot water heaters, as well as electric assists to solar and geothermal systems.
Google has the right idea. Their superior backend software and architecture might could allow them to extend their email service to other applications. Gmail offers better email than most large commercial clients, yet it takes up no footprint on the host machine and can be accessed from any browser.
A pared down version of open office, that had almost all the features but a 90% reduction in size seems like a worthy project. It would be 10 megs, with procedural graphics and very efficient code so it would load instantly, have all the important features, and would be capable of all sorts of interesting functions via network access to google. It would work without a network connection.
While highly implausible, the whole idea of science is to discover things that one wouldn't expect. If soundly gathered evidence suggests psychic powers or teleportation is real, then we should investigate it. If the facts fit, then no matter how much someone might not desire to accept an explanation (whether it be for or against any phenomena), it is most likely the truth.
Just curious...why would it be hard to launch a missile while the plane is on the ground? Has this ever even been done before? Thinking about it, do the missile's fins even generate enough lift or is the rocket motor pointing down enough to keep the missile from hitting the ground right after it leaves the rail?
And what good would someone outside do? Surely it's just master arm and pull the trigger and it launches.
The desserts of Arizona? The Amazon basin isn't unused land : were it cleared, it would be coverd with farms, not solar panels. I mean areas that humans can't use even for agriculture because there is relatively little life/km there due to terrain or lack of water.
Because solar cell technology is the first cousin of semiconductor chip tech. The laws of physics suggest 50-60% efficiency may ultimately be possible, and prototype panels are extremely thin and require very little in the way of materials, as well as give at least 30% efficiency.
200 billion, if the future resembles the past 30 years, would advance microchip technology several generations, buying the R&D to make dramatically faster integrated circuits and new fabrication plants to make them. "Moores law" is approximately the value it is mainly because that is the rate that profitable businesses can afford to create new generations of parts - were profits and budget not a concern, obviously faster progress could be made, including venturing in new directions that may not be profitable for some time. There are hundreds of superior, exotic approaches R&D labs have found over the years that have not been pursued because the initial investment is too high for a corporation.
The same applies to solar manufacture.
There are credible statistical studies that show less than 50 people total died from the Chernobyl accident. There were approximately 600 additional cases of thyroid cancer (3 deaths) and little elevation in other forms of cancer, and 38 people who died from direct exposure as well as several hundred who survived acute radiation poisoning.
While not cheap, it is a relatively paltry human cost, comparable to a major accident with conventional forms of power and industry.
Bruce Sterling has little of value to add to this debate. He equates nuclear energy plants using different elements and isotopes to nuclear warheads. Conversion is possible, it is true...but Lovelock is not proposing building nuclear plants in countries that do not already have the warheads. The biggest energy user in the world, the united states, already has so many warheads and so much plutonium it has no need to make more using any power reactors built, and China has a considerable amount as well.
With all this said, solar may ultimately be a better idea. The relatively limited research into creating more efficient solar panels has yield extremely promising results. A panel that is perhaps 50% efficient and wafer thin, mass produced and used to cover vast tracts of unused land might ultimately be cheaper than burning coal.
It seems clear that were the 200 billion already burned in Iraq used to develop this technology further and built the vast plants to make solar panels of this quality on a large scale one would get better results.
Trying to generate an unbiased opinion : without name-calling, there are a couple of huge issues here. It only costs a tiny fraction of the money record companies receive to make good music (even with groupies and band buses and the works it is still a pitiful few million compared to the billions groups that get all this take in).
And second, how can they compete with free? The threat of a lawsuit is almost insignificant compared to the ease with which one can grab pretty much anything they like.
Go retake economics. Every hour anyone spends driving is an hour that could go into the economy elsewhere. In many jobs, workers basically need the leisure time to continue working. That is, over time the work week becomes the maximum the employer can get away with without the employee becoming too stressed and unhappy from lack of time off. Increase the amount of time available, and some of that extra time goes back into the economy, eventually.
Name something that fits all these criteria? The changes during the world wars fit all of them. The invention of the tractor did a lot, as well. My construction schedules aren't unrealistic : go read up on just how quickly some of the big projects during world war 2 were finished.
The comments about trains : there's actually no technical reason why a monorail train can't approach the speed of a passenger jet, it just would be obscenely expensive to build the track hardware to allow that kind of speed. (the fastest today is about 350mph, and doubling that speed would require 4 times as much energy and hardware to handle said energy). Actually, come to think of it, you're right : it wouldn't be practical to replace planes, except for when the cities are so close many drive.
And, once the cities are all switched over to a grid driven by this, you would need some project for all those newly trained train workers. And I may have been misleading about time : I meant a few months for all the workers from everywhere to finish a few hundred miles of track and stations in ONE section of ONE city. To convert America might take 10-20 years.
Deep seated social change once it's finished? Ever looked at how a city is built? It's all designed around transportation. Change the transportation mechanism; speed it up by 3 to 10 times, and you change the city and likely how everyone lives. Evidently you didn't really think of all the consequneces. For one, a more flexible economy : everyone could work several jobs because the transition time between workplaces would be minimal and not as disruptive. (instead of driving 30 minutes across town) For another, the cities could be far less packed : they are only crammed together because highways don't really work that well past a point. And so on, I may be a genius or not but I can't exactly extrapolate 10,000 other factors.
Inner city driving : I was a little mad. Actually, I hate pretty much all kind of driving where there are other cars on the road and lanes to follow. I can't think of any time I had even a little bit of fun. It takes too little mental energy to be a fully engrossing task, yet requires constant attention...so you're in a sort of alert boredom that sucks. And I hate the idea that all I'm accomplishing while driving could be done by an 8 bit microcontroller (meaning control of speed and steering), except for the visual recognition of obstacles and other vehicles. I do like bikes, both the pedal kind and the dirt bike I rode once...but you can't use those in a city without asking to get killed or paralyzed.
I think I outlined a quite nifty plan to change it all.
You're right, though, certain deep seated injustices wouldn't change, either : people have a false sense that the jury system works and so on. Yes, that is something else I think should be changed : the system in Sweden sounds like a significant improvement. Rather than a jury of 12 random idiots, it is 5 experts on the case matter and 4 random idiots. While I do understand the elitism experts have could make them biased, at least they would have some inkling of what is happening rather than making their decision on false emotional states easily manipulated by a good lawyer. I don't just refer to criminal cases; I'm sure it is completely obvious that the civil system is broken as well.
Hmm. Just a few comments I didn't like. First, I wasn't trying to emphasize the sex aspect of it, and you have a good point there...it would be like a motel bedspread after a while. Bring your own sheets? This isn't an un-solvable problem.
Second, you're completely forgetting the TIME aspect of it: do you have any inkling how much time truly fast automated vehicles would save EVERYONE? (including millions of drivers). WTF do you mean it won't pay for itself? If the best paid workers in our society are wasting 1-2 hours PER DAY by car (10% of their workday? 20? total economy is a bit over 10 trillion), that's probably a half a trillion dollars PER YEAR right there to pay for it. (in economic costs, collecting the money is another story).
Do you understand economies of scale at all? Have you ever worked on a car? Do you realize just how much complexity is in one? Replacing all that with 1 motor, brakes, and power conversion circuitry would SLASH costs, especially if there are only maybe THREE models of vehicle to construct using ONE heavily automated plant. Have you ever looked around and seen how much wealth our economy spends on new vehicles anyway? Second largest expenditure?
So, I call bullshit...the money is there. People just haven't worked it out yet. And yeah, the overall cost WOULD be cheaper to run...no wrecks, cheaper vehicles, less land for lanes, less wear on the track, and on, and on.
Morman race car driver : i.e. he doesn't drink so he won't crash the truck into a piling. A pickup generally will survive most vehicle collision accidents with passengers intact, and a race car driver is less likely to get in a wreck anyways.
No part is anonymous? I don't think you understand : you could pay cash, about a thousand dollars or so including the interior deposit, and get a transit card like a prepaid phone card. The authorities would know where someone went, but not who said someone was.
Meager cost of a manned mission? Umm...ok...My point was you could likely finish several cities for the half trillion a manned mission would cost, which would directly benefit the millions living there. Who benefits from going to mars? (besides the lucky few who blast off?)
Felons the opportunity to work and play : do you have a clue how the justice system works? Do you honestly just skim past the hundreds of overturned convictions on DNA evidence and the likely tens of thousands of innocents in jail? Do you think getting raped in the ass is not a cruel and unusual punishment? A real form of 'house arrest' is needed, to put non violent drug offenders and the like on notice without essentially killing them. (thanks to attitudes like yours, a prison sentence is basically death. The psychological trauma destoys most inmates, and on release they are banned from virtually every useful form of employment. Sounds fair...except that an awful lot of them are innocent. The error rate could be 10% or more...under the jury system, just ONE witness is enough to convict someone else of pretty much any crime)
The mysteries of science? You reveal your own ignorance. Yes, you can detect radioactive materials in a lead briefcase. Read about it in Wired. A hint : just because the radiation is mostly blocked doesn't mean the flux from the leakage won't tell you something.
*I* don't like driving? Ok, so you're a weirdo : almost EVERYONE HATES INNER CITY DRIVING! It requires minimal thinking yet requires constant attention so you don't run someone over! It sucks! And that's only if you don't have to drive 2 hours per day! Unfortunatly, developing truly automated cars is probably impossible, unless you make the roadway something that anything can navigate.
Why would you send the homeless out of the city at night? Because that's where the soup kitchens are and the showers. They would be basically forced to leave.
I haven't made things signficantly cheaper? Umm, wtf are you smoking. Maintainence costs would be far lower because t
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Two Words : OH SHIT.
I don't mean to be too alarmist, but this is VERY bad news. See, it's easy to get access to uranium ore. Many countries have the mineral, and buying yellowcake is not supposed to be all that hard. Heck, some of it supposedly went through Africa. If you have just a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, again it is easy to make a bomb. Spherical explosives aren't needed, a simple crashing together of a critical mass is enough. 10-20 kilotons is still enough to cut the heart out of a major world city, and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
But getting from A->B WAS ludicriously expensive. I read that it takes a year for a sample to travel from one side of the centrifuge plant to another, and these plants have to be enormous, costing billions. The laser method as described appears to be much cheaper and generates probably close to 100% pure U-235. Yes, it is a secret technology, but the plans can be stolen or bought, and lasers and all the other stuff needed to make it work are not restricted exports.
It might still cost a billion dollars to make a nuke, but that's it - not 10 billion. Most private individuals without access to nation state resources can't do it, but even the poorest dictatorship in the world can probably scrape together or steal from the U.N. a billion.
Oh. Yep, easier solution and the tags don't have to be writable. I'm not an RFID programmer, I just thought it seemed like a cool way to do it. No need for any tags to be writable actually, just that they have a unique tag code and encryption key. Oh : they need to make sure the tags have enough bitspace for any conceivable use of the tags. Would be a real pain if every store in every major country went to the system, and then we run out of bitspace for the tags and readers at some future date. I think 128 bits for the tag code, and 128 bits for the security key should be sufficient, I vaguely recall 2^128 is more particles than there are in the universe.
Problems 1 and 2 are easily addressed. The tag is write once but has an additional field that can be incremented to show the item as having been returned, resold, ect. Each tag has a unique 128 bit encryption key (unique to THAT tag...yes it's a lot of data to process I suppose, but nothing to modern computers, much less the ones when this tech hits the mainstream) that must be known by any equipment that communicates with the tag. So an emitter wouldn't work unless it had access to this database, and any applications accessing the key database would have to be carefully written and kept simple.
Problem 3 is what the guard at the door is for. He doesn't need to check receipts any more, but he does need to look for items that are bagged supiciously, no different than today with clerks at clothing stores. Bags would be transparent, or at least very translucent, so the guard can spot foil linings.
Another idea is that the store continuously pings every few seconds every expensive item in the store that has not yet been paid for. If someone puts one into a foil bag, "kidnapping" the RFID chip, the store quickly notices and notifies someone. This would require VERY rock solid technology to not have an obscene number of false alarms, however. Also, passive RFID chips wouldn't cut it : have to use active ones with tiny lithium ion battery packs, would only be cost effective for VERY expensive, small items.
Ideal solution : throw even more tech at the problem! Use LCDs or OLEDs for the SIGNS labeling products on sale. So, above/below each item for sale an electronic display would have both the name of the product and the current price as of right now. This information would be pulled from the same database that the store computer looks up the price from when you go to check out...
Course, you can see where this is going. A good implementation, using high quality electronics and software...with the level of care put into it that the software that say, runs on TI calculators, has, or maybe good medical equipment, would work better than the system of paper tags we use now. (and clueless store employees who screw up entering into the 'system' the new prices)
But a mediocre, 'Microsoft' grade implementation...would have so many glitches and mysterious problems you'd WISH there were just simple paper tags. Lol people would hand-write labels and afix them over the electronic labels that either are out of order or show the wrong price.
Oh, and a hackers dream if you could get in, say if the store computers were running M$ SQL connected to an accessible network...
Imagine typing a few keys and watching the prices on the item you want to buy plummet as you watch...or installing a 'prank' application that randomly adds or subtracts from each price in the store a penny at a time, EVERY SECOND.....so as you look around at the countless glowing labels, they change price constantly...
RIFD technology has the potential to do everything it's backers claim. Inventory tracking for all manner of transportation and commerce could be MUCH more efficient because it is possible to read hundreds of tagged items at once, and without having to rotate the items to expose the barcodes. Unlike a barcode, or a credit card which is basically just a magentic barcode, easily readable with commonly available readers or even iron filings, RFIDs can be made to keep their codes secret with encryption. It has to be competently done encryption, with secure, proven algorithms and a unique encryption key for EVERY device (it would be retarded if a bank made all of it's rfid credit cards, for instance, use the same key)
Credit card theft and misuse could be almost eliminated with better cards that use encryption so the code changes every time they are used. No longer would the number of your visa card suffice, every transaction would need a new code. For a business relationship, you would press a button on the card to generate a code that a particular merchant could then use repeatedly to charge the card from, and only that merchant.
Of course, every security measure can be broken. Thieves could still swipe actual cards (and they could be cancelled just as quickly like it is today, but no thief could use the card without phyisically possessing it). With electron microscopes and specialized equipment someone could read the codes out of memory for a card, and create duplicates : but the cost and time involved could easily be so onerous that no criminal ever did it.
I think the slashdot mentality is one of fear of the tech because if the megacorps deploying these cards screw it up, we could end up with a system far less secure than we have now. For instance, wireless internet could have been made pretty much 100% secure from the start, but instead was pathetically easy to hack and far less secure than standard cat-5 jacks with no log on.
I imagine a future walmart or best buy where you grab anything you want to buy and throw it in a mostly plastic shopping cart. You wheel it through a special detector booth enclosed on three sides, and with one big electronic beep EVERYTHING gets instantly scanned, and a total price comes. You take your credit card out of its protective foil sheath, push a physical button ON the card (or press your thumbprint to it), and put it into a little recess on the self checkout machine. You close the foil lined door, another beep follows, you open the door and the transaction is done. 15 seconds, start to finish, whether you are buying 1 item or an entire cart full. No more lines at stores that use the technology, ever. Instead of 30 clerks on the job at Walmart, there are just 4 or so "customer service representatives" to handle problems that come up. There's a roll of bags if you want to bag your own stuff, but otherwise you just push the cart right on out of the store. The guards even at best buy never bother to inspect your cart because each expensive or routinely stolen item has a deeply embedded rfid tag with a writable (WRITE ONCE) field that "knows" if it has been bought. Everything in your cart gets interrogated when you push it through the doors.
No need for a paper receipt, either - a customer id for who bought the item is on the tag for each item. When you return stuff, you don't need a receipt, either, the clerk can quickly scan all your items when returned and press one button to instantly refund your money or give you store credit with your store card.
Course, this is the real world. We can't get fcking word processing to work without any trouble at all on computers in offices because viruses, bloatware, stupid users, features creep, and constant other problems mean that the commonly used Word is MORE trouble prone that windows and DOS word perfect I used back in 1990. That's like a modern car being out performed by a model T! I can imagine this RFID stuff not working right either, or a health scare starting up due to the magneti
Thank you. The point of my post was not to point to specific technology, but the fact that the history of innovation and technology is positive choc full of examples where the smaller, less funded, sometimes flat out discredited scientists or engineers create something far better than the 'bigger' team. Microsoft seems like a smoking gun example because according to the news, they have the largest programming budget in the world. They also headhunt a ton of top programmers, and their management style is supposed to be based around their coders. They are also supposed to eat their own dog food. Yet their software sucks. It is complicated, yet it doesn't ever seem to have that specialized feature you actually NEED, but it has a shitload of useless ones. It tries to hold your hand yet often just screws up. They write programs that when doing features that have been around for decades can slow 3ghz machines down to a trot. Their word processing program shouldn't eat advanced processing power when it is only doing what word perfect for windows did 10 years ago, basic spelling and grammar checks and WYSIWYG presentation. It should load instantly.
Well, the wired article indicated the algorithm was a breakthrough. (the software 'learns' what objects shaped a certain way look like in the distance, hundreds of thousands of times)
It wouldn't be the first time a few students from an elite school beat out a better funded project with a clever approach or algorithm. THEIR software won a contest against a lot of competitors, and made it across the desert. Is it better? It seems reasonable to speculate it might be. Apple has a lot few programmers and a smaller budget than Microsoft....
As I recall, Yahoo and Altavista had their hardware and algorithms working for years before some punks from Stanford made google.
I read an article in wired about the pretty spiffy, learning, video processing algorithm the Grand Challenge bot used. Not sharing technology seems kind of limiting to me.
When are you going to mount a gun on this robot?
Can they be produced cheaply? (are the computers just ruggedized PCs? can the sensor packages be obtained for a reasonable price per vehicle)
My argument works from the "let's be different" viewpoint because I picked popular things that are INCREDIBLY dumb. Listening to her average singing voice or watching her music video does NOT in any way give you a chance at a girl like that. Only dumbass reasoning would cause you to buy a cd simply because the girl on the front is hot. You should be buying protein powder and Organic Chemistry textbooks instead. (since medical school (money) and muscles are MUCH MUCH more likely to give you a chance at a girl like that)
Uh...yeah...you forgot to mention she's a multi-millionaire. You know you'd trade your left nut to be in Kevin's place (heh, with a girl that fertile you only need one anyway...). I would.
Oh yeah, Forgot to add : Britney Spears listening AND buying. I mean even I couldn't help but notice that the music executives had picked a pretty hot, underage at the time, blond girl from a hick town to be their poster star, and had underdressed her and put her in some pretty suggestive songs. But I'm not among those MILLIONS of fools who paid at least 15 bucks for a whole cd of this! Some did it more than one time.
Course, *cough*, I have blown a lot more than 15 bucks on graphics cards I didn't really need that were less than 1/3 the price once games came out that needed it...
This article really sheds light on a fundamental dichotomy : hardcore gamers versus the rest of the public. As I'm sure most slashdotters will post here in a second, online gaming CAN be and generally is far more engrossing and much, much harder than any single player game. Online is also much more technically complex which is the real reason why it's only recently come to consoles : you need a voice chat or keyboard, and to get the kind of smooth gameplay console players are used to you need broadband. So to hardcore gamers like us, there's not even a second's thought : the vast majority of the games in the xbox lineup will be more fun online, if the game is written well enough technically to support it. (for instance, games like Gears of War will probably be a lot of fun Co-op if that game supports it smoothly)
Further, WoW/other MMORPGs and the Battlefield series I think offer some of THE most intense gaming available in any form, anywhere. No console solo or online game or PC game can really touch the intensity and complexity of these games. (and the difficulty level, especially in Battlefield. Even n00bs shoot me down and gun me down every 5-10 kills I get, which is a far harder game that most solo ones)
But the regular public, the joes on the streets who buy game consoles by the millions and make up the "average", fat, T.V. watching, braindead gameplay game playing, Geography ignorant, stereotyping and racially biased, Americans? Who the hell knows what sort of trash they'll really buy. Unfortunatly for us, they make up the real market that Microsoft needs to make money from, and it seems that Microsoft, composed mostly of top C.S. graduates, thinks more like we do.
The reality is, to create the real thing I think the process will involve these steps.
1. We will discover through exhaustive research the exact rules the neurons in human brains follow in creating synapses and reinforcing or degrading each connection according to neurotransmitter input. We will also discover how the brain develops each of the 20 or so neuron layer types it uses and how overall it can convert broad brush biochemical motivations into the fine level of cognition real minds are capable of.
2. We will build hardware, asics and the like, that actually act like neurons from a low level. This is because while technically any Turing complete machine might be able to run our 'simulation' of neural hardware, current estimates suggest that there are as many as 10,000 synapses PER NEURON. Each has its own set of membrane and regulatory protein, the exact number of molecules each governing its behavoir. I suspect that an accurate simulation of this would require more memory and computing power than every computer on earth combined.
Naturally, with an application like neurons which rely heavily on interconnections, hardware that is mostly optical with all optical routers and such would probably be ideal.
3. Unfortunatly, effective research into this may require some unethical decisions. Accurate enough information about how the brain developes may require using actual developing human beings in the final stages of the research. (at first, just human neural tissue and other mammals would be enough) There are a number of subtle little tricks nature uses to make our cortexs like it does.
Further, once we have this kind of hardware to mimic whole sections of a human brain we'll need to wire it up to actual people. While we might not ever be able to duplicate the entire structure, we could probably build electrode arrays attached by brain surgery that made existing neurons in a person 'think' they were attached to a new region of the brain and then use that hardware to perform certain tasks. Further, we could temporarily surpress sections and then in effect force a human to use the synthetic hardware to do what the existing meatware used to.
Unfortunatly, and this is delving into brave new world territory, truly good results might only be possible by attaching these electrode grids to developing minds, like in children, and so the individual would develop already using artificial hardware as part of his own mind. Just like in autism cases where the brain shunts whole sections of itself to storing data or crunching numbers, we would in a sense try to make the person use the huge section of artificial neurons to perform tasks. Autism cases proves that this could, and would work assuming our hardware is accurate enough.
It's easy to see where this could lead to super human abilities : once we have the system working for a given area of the brain, we can reprogram it to do it more efficiently than nature does it. For instance, there are clusters of neurons that calculate a sort of mental 'number line' that lets us do arithmetic in hardware. Well, a person thinking about a specific number and comparing it or adding it ect to another would have these neuron firing patterns decoded and then software would change other neuron firing patterns directly, in effect making the 'answer' pop into the persons head. If the artifical neurons handled certain types of memory, recall would be instantaneous and perfectly accurate. Eventually, the goal would be to force a person to perform large scale decision making using the artifical hardware so that the heart of cognition and sense of consciousness and so forth is handled by circuitry.
What would it all 'look' like. I imagine hundreds, eventually thousands of people retrofitted like this as part of the research and developement. Each would have had major brain surgery and have probably permanent fiber optic cables coming from their body that go to the banks of artificial neuron hardware, probably in a fac
Yes. You are correct, I overlooked that when I made the post. 20,000 watts might be more like it....which proves my point...there are now kilowatts and kilowatts of waste heat that could only be gotten rid of by having the cold water supply go through a radiator that is attached to the circuitry. Would be sort of expensive to replace a 20k (or larger) magnetron when it breaks lol though... Not to mention the EM danger if the system leaks radiation, or the EM weapon someone could make using a tube that big.
Actually, you are wrong.
You forgot about 2 elements to the story.
1. EXCEPT for cold Northern climates where the heater is properly installed inside the house's heated area (not all of them are, some are in closets in the garage) all the heat used the majority of the time is wasted for a typical heater. Have you ever noticed how much that thing is running during the day when there is minimal demand for hot water? Net efficiency can't possibly be above 50%.
Oh, and you still pay a lot more for the 'heat' wasted by the electric hot water heater than you do for heat generated by the fuel burning furnace (whether it uses oil or natural gas). A system that doesn't have that waste heat would be more economical.
2. Where do you think the energy lost in capictors, magnetron, ect goes? I have a bright idea...let's put the heat sinks for those AGAINST THE WATER TANK COLD SIDE!!! DOH! Where else do you think the heat for a 2000 watt magnetron gets dissipated. Without knowing exactly how this implementation of a fairly obvious idea actually works, I can say that that would take some bigass fans and a huge radiator to get rid of 40% of the heat lost running a magetron this big. It must be a BIG one to heat water in these volumes this fast. It almost certainly MUST vent the excess heat into the cold water coming into the system through a radiator or something. This would have the net effect over a prolonged run-time (perhaps someone is taking a shower) of making the system very efficient. Perhaps 90% net.
At the least, this kind of system should obsolete electric hot water heaters, as well as electric assists to solar and geothermal systems.
Why not? I didn't say Java.
Google has the right idea. Their superior backend software and architecture might could allow them to extend their email service to other applications. Gmail offers better email than most large commercial clients, yet it takes up no footprint on the host machine and can be accessed from any browser. A pared down version of open office, that had almost all the features but a 90% reduction in size seems like a worthy project. It would be 10 megs, with procedural graphics and very efficient code so it would load instantly, have all the important features, and would be capable of all sorts of interesting functions via network access to google. It would work without a network connection.
While highly implausible, the whole idea of science is to discover things that one wouldn't expect. If soundly gathered evidence suggests psychic powers or teleportation is real, then we should investigate it. If the facts fit, then no matter how much someone might not desire to accept an explanation (whether it be for or against any phenomena), it is most likely the truth.
Just curious...why would it be hard to launch a missile while the plane is on the ground? Has this ever even been done before? Thinking about it, do the missile's fins even generate enough lift or is the rocket motor pointing down enough to keep the missile from hitting the ground right after it leaves the rail?
And what good would someone outside do? Surely it's just master arm and pull the trigger and it launches.
The desserts of Arizona? The Amazon basin isn't unused land : were it cleared, it would be coverd with farms, not solar panels. I mean areas that humans can't use even for agriculture because there is relatively little life/km there due to terrain or lack of water.
Because solar cell technology is the first cousin of semiconductor chip tech. The laws of physics suggest 50-60% efficiency may ultimately be possible, and prototype panels are extremely thin and require very little in the way of materials, as well as give at least 30% efficiency. 200 billion, if the future resembles the past 30 years, would advance microchip technology several generations, buying the R&D to make dramatically faster integrated circuits and new fabrication plants to make them. "Moores law" is approximately the value it is mainly because that is the rate that profitable businesses can afford to create new generations of parts - were profits and budget not a concern, obviously faster progress could be made, including venturing in new directions that may not be profitable for some time. There are hundreds of superior, exotic approaches R&D labs have found over the years that have not been pursued because the initial investment is too high for a corporation. The same applies to solar manufacture.
A couple of statements :
There are credible statistical studies that show less than 50 people total died from the Chernobyl accident. There were approximately 600 additional cases of thyroid cancer (3 deaths) and little elevation in other forms of cancer, and 38 people who died from direct exposure as well as several hundred who survived acute radiation poisoning.
While not cheap, it is a relatively paltry human cost, comparable to a major accident with conventional forms of power and industry.
Bruce Sterling has little of value to add to this debate. He equates nuclear energy plants using different elements and isotopes to nuclear warheads. Conversion is possible, it is true...but Lovelock is not proposing building nuclear plants in countries that do not already have the warheads. The biggest energy user in the world, the united states, already has so many warheads and so much plutonium it has no need to make more using any power reactors built, and China has a considerable amount as well.
With all this said, solar may ultimately be a better idea. The relatively limited research into creating more efficient solar panels has yield extremely promising results. A panel that is perhaps 50% efficient and wafer thin, mass produced and used to cover vast tracts of unused land might ultimately be cheaper than burning coal.
It seems clear that were the 200 billion already burned in Iraq used to develop this technology further and built the vast plants to make solar panels of this quality on a large scale one would get better results.
Trying to generate an unbiased opinion : without name-calling, there are a couple of huge issues here. It only costs a tiny fraction of the money record companies receive to make good music (even with groupies and band buses and the works it is still a pitiful few million compared to the billions groups that get all this take in).
And second, how can they compete with free? The threat of a lawsuit is almost insignificant compared to the ease with which one can grab pretty much anything they like.
So how is this going to play out?
Go retake economics. Every hour anyone spends driving is an hour that could go into the economy elsewhere. In many jobs, workers basically need the leisure time to continue working. That is, over time the work week becomes the maximum the employer can get away with without the employee becoming too stressed and unhappy from lack of time off. Increase the amount of time available, and some of that extra time goes back into the economy, eventually.
Name something that fits all these criteria? The changes during the world wars fit all of them. The invention of the tractor did a lot, as well. My construction schedules aren't unrealistic : go read up on just how quickly some of the big projects during world war 2 were finished.
The comments about trains : there's actually no technical reason why a monorail train can't approach the speed of a passenger jet, it just would be obscenely expensive to build the track hardware to allow that kind of speed. (the fastest today is about 350mph, and doubling that speed would require 4 times as much energy and hardware to handle said energy). Actually, come to think of it, you're right : it wouldn't be practical to replace planes, except for when the cities are so close many drive.
And, once the cities are all switched over to a grid driven by this, you would need some project for all those newly trained train workers. And I may have been misleading about time : I meant a few months for all the workers from everywhere to finish a few hundred miles of track and stations in ONE section of ONE city. To convert America might take 10-20 years.
Deep seated social change once it's finished? Ever looked at how a city is built? It's all designed around transportation. Change the transportation mechanism; speed it up by 3 to 10 times, and you change the city and likely how everyone lives. Evidently you didn't really think of all the consequneces. For one, a more flexible economy : everyone could work several jobs because the transition time between workplaces would be minimal and not as disruptive. (instead of driving 30 minutes across town) For another, the cities could be far less packed : they are only crammed together because highways don't really work that well past a point. And so on, I may be a genius or not but I can't exactly extrapolate 10,000 other factors.
Inner city driving : I was a little mad. Actually, I hate pretty much all kind of driving where there are other cars on the road and lanes to follow. I can't think of any time I had even a little bit of fun. It takes too little mental energy to be a fully engrossing task, yet requires constant attention...so you're in a sort of alert boredom that sucks. And I hate the idea that all I'm accomplishing while driving could be done by an 8 bit microcontroller (meaning control of speed and steering), except for the visual recognition of obstacles and other vehicles. I do like bikes, both the pedal kind and the dirt bike I rode once...but you can't use those in a city without asking to get killed or paralyzed.
I think I outlined a quite nifty plan to change it all.
You're right, though, certain deep seated injustices wouldn't change, either : people have a false sense that the jury system works and so on. Yes, that is something else I think should be changed : the system in Sweden sounds like a significant improvement. Rather than a jury of 12 random idiots, it is 5 experts on the case matter and 4 random idiots. While I do understand the elitism experts have could make them biased, at least they would have some inkling of what is happening rather than making their decision on false emotional states easily manipulated by a good lawyer. I don't just refer to criminal cases; I'm sure it is completely obvious that the civil system is broken as well.
Hmm. Just a few comments I didn't like. First, I wasn't trying to emphasize the sex aspect of it, and you have a good point there...it would be like a motel bedspread after a while. Bring your own sheets? This isn't an un-solvable problem.
Second, you're completely forgetting the TIME aspect of it: do you have any inkling how much time truly fast automated vehicles would save EVERYONE? (including millions of drivers). WTF do you mean it won't pay for itself? If the best paid workers in our society are wasting 1-2 hours PER DAY by car (10% of their workday? 20? total economy is a bit over 10 trillion), that's probably a half a trillion dollars PER YEAR right there to pay for it. (in economic costs, collecting the money is another story).
Do you understand economies of scale at all? Have you ever worked on a car? Do you realize just how much complexity is in one? Replacing all that with 1 motor, brakes, and power conversion circuitry would SLASH costs, especially if there are only maybe THREE models of vehicle to construct using ONE heavily automated plant. Have you ever looked around and seen how much wealth our economy spends on new vehicles anyway? Second largest expenditure?
So, I call bullshit...the money is there. People just haven't worked it out yet. And yeah, the overall cost WOULD be cheaper to run...no wrecks, cheaper vehicles, less land for lanes, less wear on the track, and on, and on.
Morman race car driver : i.e. he doesn't drink so he won't crash the truck into a piling. A pickup generally will survive most vehicle collision accidents with passengers intact, and a race car driver is less likely to get in a wreck anyways.
No part is anonymous? I don't think you understand : you could pay cash, about a thousand dollars or so including the interior deposit, and get a transit card like a prepaid phone card. The authorities would know where someone went, but not who said someone was.
Meager cost of a manned mission? Umm...ok...My point was you could likely finish several cities for the half trillion a manned mission would cost, which would directly benefit the millions living there. Who benefits from going to mars? (besides the lucky few who blast off?)
Felons the opportunity to work and play : do you have a clue how the justice system works? Do you honestly just skim past the hundreds of overturned convictions on DNA evidence and the likely tens of thousands of innocents in jail? Do you think getting raped in the ass is not a cruel and unusual punishment? A real form of 'house arrest' is needed, to put non violent drug offenders and the like on notice without essentially killing them. (thanks to attitudes like yours, a prison sentence is basically death. The psychological trauma destoys most inmates, and on release they are banned from virtually every useful form of employment. Sounds fair...except that an awful lot of them are innocent. The error rate could be 10% or more...under the jury system, just ONE witness is enough to convict someone else of pretty much any crime)
The mysteries of science? You reveal your own ignorance. Yes, you can detect radioactive materials in a lead briefcase. Read about it in Wired. A hint : just because the radiation is mostly blocked doesn't mean the flux from the leakage won't tell you something.
*I* don't like driving? Ok, so you're a weirdo : almost EVERYONE HATES INNER CITY DRIVING! It requires minimal thinking yet requires constant attention so you don't run someone over! It sucks! And that's only if you don't have to drive 2 hours per day! Unfortunatly, developing truly automated cars is probably impossible, unless you make the roadway something that anything can navigate.
Why would you send the homeless out of the city at night? Because that's where the soup kitchens are and the showers. They would be basically forced to leave.
I haven't made things signficantly cheaper? Umm, wtf are you smoking. Maintainence costs would be far lower because t