But if I want to carry something over a mountain pass, give me today's mule over the 8-years-from-now robotic mule any day.... You won't beat it with any foreseeable technology, and you won't make the unforeseeable come any faster with research in this area.
Really? I forsee the day when the soldier doesn't even have to go into harm's way any more, just send the robot.
Pedantic, no. I genuinely think it is incorrect to attribute the vast, rich Internet of today to any single company or individual. Just as we would still have PCs without Bill Gates, electric lights without Edison, and residential broadband without Comcast. Just because one solution is adopted doesn't mean a different (perhaps even better) one would have been adopted otherwise. Another way to look at it, the percentage of code in a modern web browser that serves to implement HTML 1.0 is a minute fraction. (I'd guess at least 100 times as much code to support Javascript, for example).
Don't get me wrong, Berners-Lee made a very significant contribution, more than most of us ever will, but there were thousands of others too, and simplifying it just to him is less informative than not naming names at all.
Obama's proposed national high-speed rail network [wired.com] as "socialist" and it will be an uphill struggle to get legislation passed. The Chinese administration, in comparison, can decide to build those networks and immediately procure the funding without the legislative battle.
But that will be their downfall, too. China's doing great right now, but let's not lose our nerves. All the same arguments about cooperation vs competition, and the efficiency of a powerful executive, were made when the Soviet Union seemed to be 10 feet tall and sweeping the globe.
I'm not saying we Americans shouldn't be changing things; the distribution of wealth has gotten out of whack for one thing. But concentrated power is the power to make huge mistakes, too.
Obviously I can't vouch for his soul and he may be driven more by ambition than curiosity, or whatever it is we think he should be driven by. But the things he is driving for are great ambitions, moreso than his initial success with PayPal, and clearly not just scamming taxpayers. I love the part of the article where one of his suppliers is having production issues that threaten the entire Tesla production line so he jumps on it and works the issue with the supplier, personally, until it is fixed.
We are sitting here doing almost nothing "real" about the looming energy crisis. We need more people like this with bold visions.
Interesting speculation, but after reading about Tesla's founder Elon Musk I think you're wrong. He made a fortune on PayPal and could easily have called it quits and retired rich. Instead he doubles down again and again, pouring his own money into Space-X and Tesla. He's an engineer and he what he has accomplished so far, and looks poised to accomplish, is quite amazing.
Seriously, I would love some objective metrics for tastiness. I feel meat and vegetables have been selected for all the wrong things - resistance to herbicides, vibrant color, durability during shipping - because these are what consumers can see through the shinkwrap at the store. If we could put a number on how "zesty" tomatoes taste, then there would be an incentive to sell tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.
Graphics have now progressed to about what VR was promising back then. Natal appears poised to add full-body interactivity. What else is left? Wraparound 3d viewing. (And the "wraparound" part is probably not desirable due to VR sickness).
I am becoming less skeptical about futuristic technolgies eventually "making it." Look at robots and now lasers taking to the battlefield, after decades of always being "one day."
I too have wondered why China isn't going big on nuclear, if the only problem with the technology is a lack of collective will, or authority, as the case may be.
After perusing this page, a couple thoughts... first, they have 11 in operation and 20 under construction; a small number but a huge growth rate.
But why the continued big plans for coal? A major second factor is they do not yet have self-sufficiency in reactor design, construction, or fuel processing. Relying on foreigners for their energy supply would be a huge national security risk (just like the US and oil, look how many entanglements that has caused). Building a new industry from scratch takes a while, even in China. But they are planning to get from virtually nothing today to 16% of electricity generation by 2030.
You have to wear headphones to use portable media, and that doesn't seem to have been a deal-breaker.
After watching Avatar in 3d, I am delaying my next TV purchase to when 3d settles out. If in the end I can get a 3d-capable TV for an extra $100 or so, which also works perfectly well in 2d mode, I wouldn't mind donning the glasses for make-popcorn-sit-down-and-turn-out-the-lights movie watching.
I'd suggest you not even try to find any info on your last question, that's worded almost exactly like some of the shit put out by the antigun lobbies and they use so much bad reasoning in those things..
As you say, I would not want to include deaths of intruders. On the other hand, it's too easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "well I don't need to worry about children shooting each other either... other kids do it but I'm such a good parent and my little Johnny is so responsible!"
I ride motorcycles and see this sort of thing all the time, whenever a group of motorcyclists hear about somebody dying in an accident, they always start saying how dumb the person was, implying that could never happen to them; it's only other people who make mistakes like getting distracted or losing their temper.
Well, to be fair, the iPad clearly *is* more functional than the Kindle.
At least the Kindle is really good at one important thing, reading books. What is the iPad really good at? I've long thought tablets were useless; just laptops without keyboards. And now Apple gives us another tablet which, moreover, is limited to the applications available only through Apple, and that's what's supposed to make tablets finally work!?
Frankly, I trust my neighbors with guns more than I trust the politicians trying to "regulate" them.
Well, that sounds nice. But what are the statistics regarding homicides by neighbors vs homocides by Senators?
I am about fed up with all "arguments" that sounds suspiciously like plotlines of "24", or any Mel Gibson revenge flick. At the same time, like all guys I occasionally fantasize about protecting my family by gunning down the evil bad guys.
Does somebody have some hard data on fatalities in households with vs without guns in them, where households are compared to others in the same neighborhood?
Sure it's possible somebody might need to fire with their other hand, but that must be weighed against the everyday occurrence of kids hurting themselves in gun accidents, and guns being used against their owners. Of course responsible users can use e.g. trigger locks to reduce the risk, but that slows down your reaction far more than having to wear an rfid bracelet, or whatever this is.
It would be nice if this could become a deterrent to gun theft, but I can't imagine it's too hard to circumvent with tools and time.
I wouldn't be surprised if iPad e-books cost even more than on Kindle, since they're higher resolution and in color. What difference does that make to publishing costs, you ask? Virtually none! But whether from tape to CD, or VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray, publishers always use any bump in functionality to increase the price as well.
But is it more functional? Personally, I think the backlit LCD screen is the achilles heel of the iPad as a e-book reader. Being readable outdoors, and consuming no power at all unless turning pages, is what virtually defines the usefulness of an ebook. But I look at how color screens ruined the mp3 player market by pushing out B&W LCD screens that were sunlight visible and had great battery life, with color screens that were in no way superior for an mp3 player, and I fear the same for e-paper.
CNN is running an iPad vs Kindle fluff piece thought experiment this morning and give virtually no weight to the utility of e-paper vs. the pizzazz of color, and unfortunately I expect the same from most consumers.
Only if it can do what people want. I would love to have such a cheap option for my kids, but they'll only use it they can play flash games and watch video on the web, and do their homework on it. But you can't run flash on there, and OpenOffice wouldn't run well with 128 MB RAM. Getting closer though!
SS is paying beneficiaries now with money taxed now. It is not going into some magical pot with your name on it to be opened when you retire. If the tax money is not there when you retire, you and everyone that looks like you is screwed.
PS, sorry to reply to you twice, but that is true of all savings, and of money in general. There is no way to really save what you really need - food, shelter, medical care and other services - for retirement. Instead you can only save money, which is a promise of entitlement for later. But if there is nobody around to keep that promise, then it can't be kept (e.g. the currency must lose its value if the underlying economy takes a dump). SS isn't really any more or less guaranteed than a number stored on a computer representing a savings account balance somewhere.
The problem with SS is that too many people have a straw in it. And it the boomers are going to make it all worse because the working population won't be large enough to support these whiners.
I agree, except I see the strain on SS as a symptom rather than a cause. The cause, as you allude to, is the aging populace. And that was unavoidable, since the population pyramid scheme cannot continue forever. A lower ratio of producers to consumers means lower average economic output, there is no way around it. But that also means if we were allowed to put all our money into the stock market instead of SS, we couldn't expect "historical returns" for our retirement, because slowing population growth will slow economic growth. If we all dumped that much money into the markets, returns would become negligible, little different than SS. Already, it was a surplus of investments that caused the bubble, as all the huge pension funds etc. sought decent returns, but nobody needed their money.
"On December 23, 2002, an Iraqi MiG-25 shot down a U.S. Air Force unmanned MQ-1 Predator drone, which was performing armed reconnaissance over Iraq. This was the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat. Predators had been armed with AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, and were being used to "bait" Iraqi fighter planes, then run. In this incident, the Predator did not run, but instead fired one of the Stingers, which missed, while the MiG's missile did not."
...an interesting case of somebody putting their life on the line vs somebody fighting from a distance; of an American missile that missed vs a Russian missile that scored a hit; and particularly interesting given the F22 and T50 might be the last of their breed with the onslaught of UAVs.
You assume that because they need it, they should get it... if there's only one dollar out there, and the old guy wants it, versus the child, I'd say, give it to the child, and let the old guy die.
"They" is "you." Think over the whole course of your life. Did you read my whole post? It wasn't about redistribution. My point was that unless you personally, as a rational, self-sufficient person, plan on killing yourself instead of retiring, you have to plan for the future. Social security and medicare taxes are one way to do that. Another system could be the traditional one; you support your elders directly. Another system could be everybody just saves lots of money in banks or gambles on the stock market.
One way or the other, you have to provide for yourself. Simply not paying SS and keeping all the money to spend now is NOT economically feasible, unless as I say, you are planning on dying as soon as your net economic output goes negative.
Yes, there is some amount of re-distribution built into the welfare entitlements, so my argument doesn't entirely hold. But it's not as if all the money you're paying in taxes is going into a bonfire or spent on irresponsible welfare mothers either (though people love to dwell on those cases). Mostly, you can think of it as a payment from yourself now, to yourself later.
Entitlements don't bankrupt us at all. Old people do need money to eat and get health care. If if not for social security, medicare, etc, people would just have to redirect what they now pay in taxes towards savings for retirement, or spend more on supporting their elderly parents, etc. It's not like all that money people are now using to put food on the table, keep their homes warm, and get medical treatment would magically be available to build super-weapons instead.
The more I read your comment, the less I can tell whether you're mocking a silly conspiracy or trying to create one. But either way, even with a successful ignition tomorrow, I'm sure it would still take 15 years or more to get electricity from it onto the grid. Even building a fission reactor with a proven design takes about that long in the US. But besides just working, fusion would have to produce more energy than it consumes, it has to be scaled up to a significant output, and then the price has to come way, way down... even as low as simply digging up and burning coal (unless we start accounting for the future costs of doing that which doesn't seem to be happening).
But don't get me wrong, I am amazed at this. And if (earth-bound) fusion becomes a workable energy source, I think it would have the biggest practical impact of any Big Science program, ever.
There are some extremely talented people on SNL. Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen are well worth the $0 price of admission IMHO. (Would I watch it without a PVR for selective viewing, well, no).
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Really? I forsee the day when the soldier doesn't even have to go into harm's way any more, just send the robot.
Beat that with a mule.
Don't get me wrong, Berners-Lee made a very significant contribution, more than most of us ever will, but there were thousands of others too, and simplifying it just to him is less informative than not naming names at all.
But that will be their downfall, too. China's doing great right now, but let's not lose our nerves. All the same arguments about cooperation vs competition, and the efficiency of a powerful executive, were made when the Soviet Union seemed to be 10 feet tall and sweeping the globe.
I'm not saying we Americans shouldn't be changing things; the distribution of wealth has gotten out of whack for one thing. But concentrated power is the power to make huge mistakes, too.
HTTP 1.0 has almost nothing to do with voice (or video) over the Internet.
We are sitting here doing almost nothing "real" about the looming energy crisis. We need more people like this with bold visions.
Interesting speculation, but after reading about Tesla's founder Elon Musk I think you're wrong. He made a fortune on PayPal and could easily have called it quits and retired rich. Instead he doubles down again and again, pouring his own money into Space-X and Tesla. He's an engineer and he what he has accomplished so far, and looks poised to accomplish, is quite amazing.
Seriously, I would love some objective metrics for tastiness. I feel meat and vegetables have been selected for all the wrong things - resistance to herbicides, vibrant color, durability during shipping - because these are what consumers can see through the shinkwrap at the store. If we could put a number on how "zesty" tomatoes taste, then there would be an incentive to sell tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.
I am becoming less skeptical about futuristic technolgies eventually "making it." Look at robots and now lasers taking to the battlefield, after decades of always being "one day."
After perusing this page, a couple thoughts... first, they have 11 in operation and 20 under construction; a small number but a huge growth rate.
But why the continued big plans for coal? A major second factor is they do not yet have self-sufficiency in reactor design, construction, or fuel processing. Relying on foreigners for their energy supply would be a huge national security risk (just like the US and oil, look how many entanglements that has caused). Building a new industry from scratch takes a while, even in China. But they are planning to get from virtually nothing today to 16% of electricity generation by 2030.
After watching Avatar in 3d, I am delaying my next TV purchase to when 3d settles out. If in the end I can get a 3d-capable TV for an extra $100 or so, which also works perfectly well in 2d mode, I wouldn't mind donning the glasses for make-popcorn-sit-down-and-turn-out-the-lights movie watching.
As you say, I would not want to include deaths of intruders. On the other hand, it's too easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "well I don't need to worry about children shooting each other either... other kids do it but I'm such a good parent and my little Johnny is so responsible!"
I ride motorcycles and see this sort of thing all the time, whenever a group of motorcyclists hear about somebody dying in an accident, they always start saying how dumb the person was, implying that could never happen to them; it's only other people who make mistakes like getting distracted or losing their temper.
At least the Kindle is really good at one important thing, reading books. What is the iPad really good at? I've long thought tablets were useless; just laptops without keyboards. And now Apple gives us another tablet which, moreover, is limited to the applications available only through Apple, and that's what's supposed to make tablets finally work!?
Well, that sounds nice. But what are the statistics regarding homicides by neighbors vs homocides by Senators?
I am about fed up with all "arguments" that sounds suspiciously like plotlines of "24", or any Mel Gibson revenge flick. At the same time, like all guys I occasionally fantasize about protecting my family by gunning down the evil bad guys.
Does somebody have some hard data on fatalities in households with vs without guns in them, where households are compared to others in the same neighborhood?
It would be nice if this could become a deterrent to gun theft, but I can't imagine it's too hard to circumvent with tools and time.
When your supplier pulls a 50% price increase on you, that's a pretty big provocation!
But is it more functional? Personally, I think the backlit LCD screen is the achilles heel of the iPad as a e-book reader. Being readable outdoors, and consuming no power at all unless turning pages, is what virtually defines the usefulness of an ebook. But I look at how color screens ruined the mp3 player market by pushing out B&W LCD screens that were sunlight visible and had great battery life, with color screens that were in no way superior for an mp3 player, and I fear the same for e-paper.
CNN is running an iPad vs Kindle fluff piece thought experiment this morning and give virtually no weight to the utility of e-paper vs. the pizzazz of color, and unfortunately I expect the same from most consumers.
Only if it can do what people want. I would love to have such a cheap option for my kids, but they'll only use it they can play flash games and watch video on the web, and do their homework on it. But you can't run flash on there, and OpenOffice wouldn't run well with 128 MB RAM. Getting closer though!
Sheesh, RTA. It shows ATT's slide for exactly two cities: NYC, and SF.
PS, sorry to reply to you twice, but that is true of all savings, and of money in general. There is no way to really save what you really need - food, shelter, medical care and other services - for retirement. Instead you can only save money, which is a promise of entitlement for later. But if there is nobody around to keep that promise, then it can't be kept (e.g. the currency must lose its value if the underlying economy takes a dump). SS isn't really any more or less guaranteed than a number stored on a computer representing a savings account balance somewhere.
I agree, except I see the strain on SS as a symptom rather than a cause. The cause, as you allude to, is the aging populace. And that was unavoidable, since the population pyramid scheme cannot continue forever. A lower ratio of producers to consumers means lower average economic output, there is no way around it. But that also means if we were allowed to put all our money into the stock market instead of SS, we couldn't expect "historical returns" for our retirement, because slowing population growth will slow economic growth. If we all dumped that much money into the markets, returns would become negligible, little different than SS. Already, it was a surplus of investments that caused the bubble, as all the huge pension funds etc. sought decent returns, but nobody needed their money.
"On December 23, 2002, an Iraqi MiG-25 shot down a U.S. Air Force unmanned MQ-1 Predator drone, which was performing armed reconnaissance over Iraq. This was the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat. Predators had been armed with AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, and were being used to "bait" Iraqi fighter planes, then run. In this incident, the Predator did not run, but instead fired one of the Stingers, which missed, while the MiG's missile did not."
"They" is "you." Think over the whole course of your life. Did you read my whole post? It wasn't about redistribution. My point was that unless you personally, as a rational, self-sufficient person, plan on killing yourself instead of retiring, you have to plan for the future. Social security and medicare taxes are one way to do that. Another system could be the traditional one; you support your elders directly. Another system could be everybody just saves lots of money in banks or gambles on the stock market.
One way or the other, you have to provide for yourself. Simply not paying SS and keeping all the money to spend now is NOT economically feasible, unless as I say, you are planning on dying as soon as your net economic output goes negative.
Yes, there is some amount of re-distribution built into the welfare entitlements, so my argument doesn't entirely hold. But it's not as if all the money you're paying in taxes is going into a bonfire or spent on irresponsible welfare mothers either (though people love to dwell on those cases). Mostly, you can think of it as a payment from yourself now, to yourself later.
Entitlements don't bankrupt us at all. Old people do need money to eat and get health care. If if not for social security, medicare, etc, people would just have to redirect what they now pay in taxes towards savings for retirement, or spend more on supporting their elderly parents, etc. It's not like all that money people are now using to put food on the table, keep their homes warm, and get medical treatment would magically be available to build super-weapons instead.
But don't get me wrong, I am amazed at this. And if (earth-bound) fusion becomes a workable energy source, I think it would have the biggest practical impact of any Big Science program, ever.
There are some extremely talented people on SNL. Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen are well worth the $0 price of admission IMHO. (Would I watch it without a PVR for selective viewing, well, no).