The group behavior you are talking about is possibly because of evolutionary programming so that the species or a smaller group can survive. imo. Looking at robots through the same viewpoint is wrong.
If you could program any law into a robot, and Asimov's law places the humans well being above that of a robot, then the robot will not get this group-feeling of "us vs. them".
Yet, there are scenarios that still cause a robot to break the first law according to Asimov.
The whole point of Asimov's laws was to apply a set of rules to an **autonomous** robot so that it would safely operate in a human society. This robot is hardly autonomous and the article kills the whole idea of Asimov's laws.
In his books, Asimov came up with his 3 laws and went on to show numerous examples of how robots could break those laws while operating under those constraints.
Asimov's laws:
* A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
* A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov eventually recognized the need to extend the first law and he came up with a 0th law that placed humanity's interests over that of a single person.
Actually magnetos are in universal use in aircraft internal combustion engines. Reason they are used is because they can provide a spark even in the case of a complete electrical failure.
right after i posted I realized my assumption of substituting visual cues with balance cues is wrong. Visual cues can be substituted with cockpit instrumentation signals.. but then it wont be very nice when the instrument fails and you need to ignore the faulty instrument. Besides the pilot can see the instrument anyway.
Brr.. just a bad application of the brain port I suppose.
On a related note: the article talks about pilots regaining their sense of balance when the horizon is not visible. Unfortunately this is not true.
The assumption here is that the balance organs in the ear will substitute for the lost visual cues. But the balance organs are the least trustworthy because they are affected by forces in the aircraft (banking the wings or speeding up or pitching the nose up or down). For example, after a prolonged climb in zero visibility, leveling the aircraft produces the sensation that one is tumbling down. Another example: after a long shallow left turn, levelling the aircraft produces the sensation of a sharp bank in the other direction.
This happens because of the way the balance organs in the ear work. Heres a link to the workings of the vestibular system and pilot illusions.: www.aopa.org/asf/publications/sa17.pdf
This may be slightly off topic.. but here is a good article on the direction building architecture should take according to this architect -> thought I'd share.
Part of the reason for making it slightly blurry is probably to fit in the actors/actresses seamlessly into the background (no sharp edges etc.), but part of it could also be deliberate.. (gives you the feeling that you are watching a comic book in motion ).
After all you only need to blur the edge of the actors and not the whole scene. Per haps somebody knowledgable i graphics could comment.
As for being out of sync -> the worst case I saw was when Gyneth was running along side the robots in the streets of NY. Otherwise they were pretty much in sync (as far as I could detect). For example, people interacting with objects in a room.
Another strange thing was the movie never showed the people getting in and out of the vehicles, to save some graphics work.
flying is always going to be more inefficient than ground transportation, just because you have to hold the thing up in the air and then expend energy to move it forward.
This is true only for personal transportation as opposed to commercial air traffic.
Some figures:
Cessna 152 - 2 seats - 100 hp - 105 mph, 5 gallons per hour, 3$ per gallon (100 octane low lead) - approx 21 mpg
Mooney M20-C - 4 seats - 180 hp - 208 mph, 12 gallons per hour, 3$ per gallon, - approx 17 mpg.
Its much more efficient to have high speed rail links or more air traffic. The FAA is currently working on implementing a traffic solution where commercial air traffic dont have to travel on air highways, instead they can fly whatever course they want. This will increase the number of flights that are in the air at one point in time dramatically while not reducing safety (in this system, airplanes will be aware of each others position and will route themselves accordingly).
To support personal air transportation on the scale of cars, a lot of advanced systems are necessary (thing will be mostly automated) and those systems wont be in place in 10 years definitely.
I am not very sure about this but one reason hyperthreading was turned off may be because:
The G5 is an out of order processor and the P4 and Xeon are in order processors. So the G5 has in built parallelism even in a single threaded case while the P4/Xeon has to be explicity told what is parallel (for threads).
This is speculation: Most everyday apps are still single-threaded or a single thread does 90% of the work. Apps are not inherently parallel. So comparisons with hyperthreading would have been justified.
However.. all this depends on what apps you plan to run on the machines. If you have highly parallel apps then the benchmarks with hyperthreading on would have been a help.
Since the site was ranting about hyperthreading off.. heres some more benchmark confusion for you guys:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_3734_3750,00.html
There is a subtle problem to this if the US and Russian space missions teach us anything.
Missions (such as moon missions) that do not give long term tangible benifits to the people will soon run their course. And what will be left behind is a military-industrial-bureaucratic complex that will refuse to die. As a result the government will pour more money into this (e.g., the space shuttle program and the ISS). All this money will be wasted.
Although missions like these will provide other technological advances, care must be taken not to fall into the above trap.
If you are satisfied with driving at and below 3000 rpm go ahead and drive your veggie oil car.
There are problems with high viscosity fuels for high speed compression engines, foremost of which is the fact that the fuel will ignite late. So when the RPMs go high, fuel starts entering the cylinder but doesnt ignite until maximum compression by the piston. This creates a sort of explosion of a lot of fuel (not desirable) instead of a steady pushing burn (desirable). This causes less power to go to the wheels and more power to vibration or diesel knock. This problem becomes worse with higher RPMs.
That is why ships use high viscosity diesel fuels because they have slow speed engines and aircraft and cars (and aircraft) use petro-diesel fuels, because these ignite faster.
Slashdot Mirror
in futurama ... nothing new to see here
So in this particular case Intel is not reporting wild benchmarking results
If you could program any law into a robot, and Asimov's law places the humans well being above that of a robot, then the robot will not get this group-feeling of "us vs. them".
Yet, there are scenarios that still cause a robot to break the first law according to Asimov.
In his books, Asimov came up with his 3 laws and went on to show numerous examples of how robots could break those laws while operating under those constraints.
Asimov's laws:
* A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
* A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov eventually recognized the need to extend the first law and he came up with a 0th law that placed humanity's interests over that of a single person.
Actually magnetos are in universal use in aircraft internal combustion engines. Reason they are used is because they can provide a spark even in the case of a complete electrical failure.
Brr.. just a bad application of the brain port I suppose.
The assumption here is that the balance organs in the ear will substitute for the lost visual cues. But the balance organs are the least trustworthy because they are affected by forces in the aircraft (banking the wings or speeding up or pitching the nose up or down). For example, after a prolonged climb in zero visibility, leveling the aircraft produces the sensation that one is tumbling down. Another example: after a long shallow left turn, levelling the aircraft produces the sensation of a sharp bank in the other direction.
This happens because of the way the balance organs in the ear work. Heres a link to the workings of the vestibular system and pilot illusions.: www.aopa.org/asf/publications/sa17.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3553376.stm
Part of the reason for making it slightly blurry is probably to fit in the actors/actresses seamlessly into the background (no sharp edges etc.), but part of it could also be deliberate .. (gives you the feeling that you are watching a comic book in motion ).
After all you only need to blur the edge of the actors and not the whole scene. Per haps somebody knowledgable i graphics could comment.
As for being out of sync -> the worst case I saw was when Gyneth was running along side the robots in the streets of NY. Otherwise they were pretty much in sync (as far as I could detect). For example, people interacting with objects in a room.
Another strange thing was the movie never showed the people getting in and out of the vehicles, to save some graphics work.
flying is always going to be more inefficient than ground transportation, just because you have to hold the thing up in the air and then expend energy to move it forward. This is true only for personal transportation as opposed to commercial air traffic. Some figures: Cessna 152 - 2 seats - 100 hp - 105 mph, 5 gallons per hour, 3$ per gallon (100 octane low lead) - approx 21 mpg Mooney M20-C - 4 seats - 180 hp - 208 mph, 12 gallons per hour, 3$ per gallon, - approx 17 mpg. Its much more efficient to have high speed rail links or more air traffic. The FAA is currently working on implementing a traffic solution where commercial air traffic dont have to travel on air highways, instead they can fly whatever course they want. This will increase the number of flights that are in the air at one point in time dramatically while not reducing safety (in this system, airplanes will be aware of each others position and will route themselves accordingly). To support personal air transportation on the scale of cars, a lot of advanced systems are necessary (thing will be mostly automated) and those systems wont be in place in 10 years definitely.
But to get to it .. go to amd.com -> product info -> processors -> click on dekstop on the left pane -> dekstop benchmarks.
The G5 is an out of order processor and the P4 and Xeon are in order processors. So the G5 has in built parallelism even in a single threaded case while the P4/Xeon has to be explicity told what is parallel (for threads).
This is speculation: Most everyday apps are still single-threaded or a single thread does 90% of the work. Apps are not inherently parallel. So comparisons with hyperthreading would have been justified.
However.. all this depends on what apps you plan to run on the machines. If you have highly parallel apps then the benchmarks with hyperthreading on would have been a help.
Since the site was ranting about hyperthreading off .. heres some more benchmark confusion for you guys:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_3734_3750,00.html
Missions (such as moon missions) that do not give long term tangible benifits to the people will soon run their course. And what will be left behind is a military-industrial-bureaucratic complex that will refuse to die. As a result the government will pour more money into this (e.g., the space shuttle program and the ISS). All this money will be wasted.
Although missions like these will provide other technological advances, care must be taken not to fall into the above trap.
The new G5 based on IBM Power 4 is a 64-bit processor.
Diesel invented the constant pressure cycle (diesel cycle) .. he didnt invent or design the actual engine.
The actual engine came much later.
If you are satisfied with driving at and below 3000 rpm go ahead and drive your veggie oil car. There are problems with high viscosity fuels for high speed compression engines, foremost of which is the fact that the fuel will ignite late. So when the RPMs go high, fuel starts entering the cylinder but doesnt ignite until maximum compression by the piston. This creates a sort of explosion of a lot of fuel (not desirable) instead of a steady pushing burn (desirable). This causes less power to go to the wheels and more power to vibration or diesel knock. This problem becomes worse with higher RPMs. That is why ships use high viscosity diesel fuels because they have slow speed engines and aircraft and cars (and aircraft) use petro-diesel fuels, because these ignite faster.