Indeed, thinking of the smart grid, you could probably get the grid down by issuing a command to sufficiently many household appliances to switch on at the very same time. Those will be even less protected than the power stations, because "who would want to attack my dishwasher?"
You can because if the retail rate vastly exceeds the wholesale rate you know that you are being ripped off. Sure, because it costs nothing to maintain the power lines...
The Big Bang - Because the universe appears to be expanding now, it must have been expanding always, since the beginning.
Wrong. Observations show that the universe is expanding since the time it got transparent (we can't see what happened before). We know from our observations that the universe was much smaller back then.
Moreover when the big bang theory was first hypothesized, they just took the most successful theory of the large scale structure of the universe, General Relativity, and looked at what it said. It said that there must have been a singularity at the beginning.
However that's not exactly what we consider as the big bang theory nowadays. That's because we have observations which are not well explained with the original model, and we are fairly certain that General Relativity will break down before we reach the singularity.
The first point is that the universe is much more homogeneous than could be explained by a simple GR expansion model. The hypothesis (which is generally accepted, but is far less certain than what happened later) is that there was a phase of accelerated expansion ("inflation") close to the beginning of the universe, driven by a "inflaton field". It is this inflationatory phase which would create the many universes (well, there are several different theories predicting several universes, but the others are not connected with big bang, and still very controversal).
The second point is reflected in that big bang theory as we understand it today only explains what happened as soon as General Relativiy was valid. What happened before is a subject of Quantum Gravitation, of which we don't yet have an established theory. Some theories for example say that the big bang was actually a "big bounce", that is, a collapsing universe had its collapse halted by quantum effects, which caused the contraction to reverse into an expansion.
However, the big bang is still generally considered the beginning of time, however now in the sense that the whole concept of "time" breaks down when quantum gravity effects dominate (that is, time is hypothesised as not being a fundamental property of our world, but an emergent one).
Interestingly, when the word "mulltiverse" was coined (I forget by whom), the terms "universe" and "multiverse" were used just in reverse to how we use it today: The word "universe" named the one thing which contained many "multiverses" like ours.
However, I guess using the word "universe" for "all the stuff we can observe" was too ingrained. Anyway, the meanings of the words were swapped when they came into wider usage.
And what, please, is the problem with handing all your evidence to a court that can then decide to order the registrar to delete the domain? Given a court order, the registrar certainly doesn't have a "my hands are tied" excuse to do nothing. Quite the contrary, he has a "my hands are tied" excuse against the domain owner, that is, he has protection against being sued by the domain owner because of the deletion.
No, you should not. Once a domain name is involved in actual criminal activity you should lose all rights to it. Same as physical property is seized when its used for physical criminal activities.
So you think it should be allowed to seize your stuff without a court order? As in, the police claims you did something illegal, and then can legally take your possessions away?
I certainly don't want to live in such a country. There always has to be a judge in the loop if your fundamental rights are concerned.
If quantum suicide is right, then if the LHC is producing black holes, you'd better stay on Earth: On earth, you'd always be in the branch where no black holes are produced, while on Mars you'd see Earth disappear in a black hole and know that the very moment something goes wrong on Mars, you've got no hope to get any help from Earth.
Well, thinking more about it, maybe your best bet is to make your decision based on a quantum random experiment.
From the Wikipedia page it sounds like a remote-controlled device without much internal control. The page may be misleading (it wouldn't be the first Wikipedia page to be), but if not, it's by far not as impressive as the Boston Dynamics robots.
You are missing a fundamental flaw in the reasoning.
No. But you are opbviously missing the entire second paragraph of my post.
Technology (in this case "robots") is as good as the human that designed it.
That's your fundamental assumption. It is by no way a proven general statement. Indeed, even the term "as good as the human that designed it" isn't really well-defined. It certainly cannot mean "cannot do the task it was designed for better than the designer", because that claim would already be disproved by chess computers. So what should it mean?
There will always be work in researching, designing and building new and more efficient technology.
That rests on quite a few assumptions:
Assumption 1: There will never be a point reached where we don't have the desire for more technology because the technology we have already does everything we want. Granted, up to now it looks like that. But we cannot know that this will always be true. The only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.
Assumption 2: Robots/Computers will never be able to invent new things, or be better in it than humans. Which may be the case, but again, we cannot tell. As before, the only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.
The assumption that we humans will be able to develop AI that can then create new and better technology is a logical fallacy.
If it were a logical fallacy, you could logically(!) disprove it. I'm hearing.
For this the AI must become sentient, or can only optimize existing processes and technology, but never create new one.
That's an unproven assumption.
If the AI is sentient, I doubt it will cooperate for long.
That depends on what the AI wants. A sentient AI would not necessarily be human-like. It would be more reasonable to build it in a way that it cannot do other than admire humans. The ideally designed sentient AI would love humans, and the highest pleasure for that AI would be to help humans in any conceivable way. That AI would suffer when it sees humans suffer, and enjoy seeing humans enjoying themselves.
Given the attitude of many people, I guess you could just search for a message in which she says that she has her period. There will be one, almost certainly.
The implicit assumption is that at one point, robots will be better than humans on any possible task. Then, whatever work has to be done, it would be an uneconomical decision to employ a human instead of getting a robot.
Whether this point will ever be reached is, of course, another question. But that's not an economic question, but a question on what is possible with robotics.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, thinking of the smart grid, you could probably get the grid down by issuing a command to sufficiently many household appliances to switch on at the very same time. Those will be even less protected than the power stations, because "who would want to attack my dishwasher?"
This proves it: Vegetarism damages your humour. ;-)
Maybe they refer to this Bond?
Thanks to climate change, we are bound to getting more wind. ;-)
Actually I thought we were already past the age of steam machines, and all those steam punk stories were science fiction. ;-)
Wrong. Observations show that the universe is expanding since the time it got transparent (we can't see what happened before). We know from our observations that the universe was much smaller back then.
Moreover when the big bang theory was first hypothesized, they just took the most successful theory of the large scale structure of the universe, General Relativity, and looked at what it said. It said that there must have been a singularity at the beginning.
However that's not exactly what we consider as the big bang theory nowadays. That's because we have observations which are not well explained with the original model, and we are fairly certain that General Relativity will break down before we reach the singularity.
The first point is that the universe is much more homogeneous than could be explained by a simple GR expansion model. The hypothesis (which is generally accepted, but is far less certain than what happened later) is that there was a phase of accelerated expansion ("inflation") close to the beginning of the universe, driven by a "inflaton field". It is this inflationatory phase which would create the many universes (well, there are several different theories predicting several universes, but the others are not connected with big bang, and still very controversal).
The second point is reflected in that big bang theory as we understand it today only explains what happened as soon as General Relativiy was valid. What happened before is a subject of Quantum Gravitation, of which we don't yet have an established theory. Some theories for example say that the big bang was actually a "big bounce", that is, a collapsing universe had its collapse halted by quantum effects, which caused the contraction to reverse into an expansion.
However, the big bang is still generally considered the beginning of time, however now in the sense that the whole concept of "time" breaks down when quantum gravity effects dominate (that is, time is hypothesised as not being a fundamental property of our world, but an emergent one).
Interestingly, when the word "mulltiverse" was coined (I forget by whom), the terms "universe" and "multiverse" were used just in reverse to how we use it today: The word "universe" named the one thing which contained many "multiverses" like ours.
However, I guess using the word "universe" for "all the stuff we can observe" was too ingrained. Anyway, the meanings of the words were swapped when they came into wider usage.
There exists an universe where they are written by Douglas Adams.
Stealing teeth does not violate the laws of physics. And calling the thief "tooth fairy" obviously doesn't, either.
But which of the infinities is greater?
Please hand in your geek card.
Did you notice that shark image on the story?
And winners always claim that their win is solely their own achievement, and in no way related to luck.
And what, please, is the problem with handing all your evidence to a court that can then decide to order the registrar to delete the domain? Given a court order, the registrar certainly doesn't have a "my hands are tied" excuse to do nothing. Quite the contrary, he has a "my hands are tied" excuse against the domain owner, that is, he has protection against being sued by the domain owner because of the deletion.
So you think it should be allowed to seize your stuff without a court order? As in, the police claims you did something illegal, and then can legally take your possessions away?
I certainly don't want to live in such a country. There always has to be a judge in the loop if your fundamental rights are concerned.
If quantum suicide is right, then if the LHC is producing black holes, you'd better stay on Earth: On earth, you'd always be in the branch where no black holes are produced, while on Mars you'd see Earth disappear in a black hole and know that the very moment something goes wrong on Mars, you've got no hope to get any help from Earth.
Well, thinking more about it, maybe your best bet is to make your decision based on a quantum random experiment.
This sentence is quite incomplete.
Have you tried looking at the wiki? 1-click installs for all the blobs
Doesn't that violate an Amazon patent? ;-)
Indeed, my first thought also was "did Intel put their chip designs under GPL, or what?"
From the Wikipedia page it sounds like a remote-controlled device without much internal control. The page may be misleading (it wouldn't be the first Wikipedia page to be), but if not, it's by far not as impressive as the Boston Dynamics robots.
No. But you are opbviously missing the entire second paragraph of my post.
That's your fundamental assumption. It is by no way a proven general statement. Indeed, even the term "as good as the human that designed it" isn't really well-defined. It certainly cannot mean "cannot do the task it was designed for better than the designer", because that claim would already be disproved by chess computers. So what should it mean?
That rests on quite a few assumptions:
Assumption 1: There will never be a point reached where we don't have the desire for more technology because the technology we have already does everything we want. Granted, up to now it looks like that. But we cannot know that this will always be true. The only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.
Assumption 2: Robots/Computers will never be able to invent new things, or be better in it than humans. Which may be the case, but again, we cannot tell. As before, the only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.
If it were a logical fallacy, you could logically(!) disprove it. I'm hearing.
That's an unproven assumption.
That depends on what the AI wants. A sentient AI would not necessarily be human-like. It would be more reasonable to build it in a way that it cannot do other than admire humans. The ideally designed sentient AI would love humans, and the highest pleasure for that AI would be to help humans in any conceivable way. That AI would suffer when it sees humans suffer, and enjoy seeing humans enjoying themselves.
Obviously Google knows that knowledge you can put into new products in the future is more important than a finished product now.
Does iRobot have anything even remotely comparable to Boston Dynamics' projects?
Given the attitude of many people, I guess you could just search for a message in which she says that she has her period. There will be one, almost certainly.
The implicit assumption is that at one point, robots will be better than humans on any possible task. Then, whatever work has to be done, it would be an uneconomical decision to employ a human instead of getting a robot.
Whether this point will ever be reached is, of course, another question. But that's not an economic question, but a question on what is possible with robotics.