What was he doing, going around saying "Anyone seen my drone?". Why didn't he toss the controller into the water get the hell out of there with a sign off to the class of "Thats what happens when you don't concentrate kids. Now everyone into the bus, fast!"
"Speaking of highways, the only reason people can manage to drive on highways is that the things you're most likely to hit are traveling in the same direction"
You've obviously never driven on highways where there's no median and the opposite lanes are seperated from you by a magical force field generating white line.
"usually on less than ten fifteen miles per hour."
I still use lilo on all 3 of my boxes. I don't need a pre boot "enviroment" or however grub is described, I just want the OS booted and up and running ASAP. If there's a problem with booting I'll just grab a live DVD , I'm not going to wrestle with a load of cryptic bootloader commands to try and solve the problem.
Things fall because of gravity. Thats an explanation. Why does gravity exist is another question entirely. There's probably endless levels of reality to go down through.
"No, if you want "why" or "truth" look into the philosophy department."
Thats a bit defeatist. Science has always been about explaining the "why". Why is the sky blue, why do the planets going around the sun etc.
"Quantum mechanics describes a fucking ton of things"
It doesn't really explain anything. Its a convenient probabilistic bucket to put stuff in that we don't really understand but like to give it a name anyway.
"What" is for engineers. Physicists should always be aiming to answer the "why". Anyone can use equations, explaining why they work and where they come from is should be theoretical physics main goal, even if ultimately there's a level of reality we can't understand or progress beyond. No hand waving philosphers should be required.
A theory is supposed to explain something. Quantum mechanics doesn't explain anything, its more a mathematical description of *what* happens, not *why* it happens. As far as I'm aware the "why" still eludes us as much as it did 100 years ago when Einstein and Bohr were arguing it out.
"I think it's like saying that making a text editor is now easy"
Sure, if you just use the default widgets. Now try and implement something NOT included with them. Syntax highlighting for ANOther language. Oh dear, that means you'll have to write your own lexical analyser and integrate it. Not so easy now is it?
"Fortunately we can understand the processes within real people that lead to their actions. "
Since when? Psychiatrics have been claiming that for years but I see little evidence for it beyond simple actions. Sometimes even the person themselves doesn't understand why they do something if it was subconsious.
But then one day the neural net has a "senior moment" and drives the car off a cliff. And no one can figure out why. At least with a program you'll eventually figure out where the failure is. But I take your point about pre-programmed responses and you're right. I'm not really sure what the solution is - maybe use a neural network but have a normal program acting as a watchdog?
Is that *in theory* you could understand why they come to a particular result, but in practice it could be potentially very hard with a large network for any person to get their head around the processes leading up to the output. This means that unless safety rules are changed we won't be seeing these things driving cars or flying aircraft anytime soon since the software needs to be verifiable and neural networks are not.
"As for being "grateful", they are charging a lot of money to use this tech. If they were providing it for free you might have an argument but they aren't"
No one is forcing you to pay for it. TBH if you can't go a single flight without net access then you probably need therapy.
... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.
I've yet to use any kind of touchpad that can even get close to matching the sensitivity of an ordinary mouse. With a mouse I can move the pointer to individual pixels, with a touchpad I'm lucky if I can even get it on the right icon or menu option half the time.
"I still hate it as much as I did when I was 17 years old, for many of the same reasons."
Well you said you're using for personal stuff so you can't hate it that much. You might not have a choice at work but you do at home.
I agree, linux can be a PITA to install, but once installed its usually damn reliable. Windows OTOH is usually a cinch to install but a PITA from thereafter unless all you want it for is to surf and run Office.
Depends how you define an OS. Many - usually embedded- linux installations have the busybox toolset which has nothing to do with GNU apart from its license.
I know this 32 bit epoch is a running gag, but time_t is 64 bits on 64 bit systems and I doubt there'll be many 32 bit systems left (even embedded) by 2039!
"and this is used to make certain moral and ethical arguments more blatantly obvious."
Not really. Most sci fi is just one of the 7 basic plots set in a universe with more advanced tech. Almost all stories have moral and ethical issues because thats the nature of humanity and hence the stories we tell regardless of the era they're set in.
Slashdot Mirror
What was he doing, going around saying "Anyone seen my drone?". Why didn't he toss the controller into the water get the hell out of there with a sign off to the class of "Thats what happens when you don't concentrate kids. Now everyone into the bus, fast!"
"Speaking of highways, the only reason people can manage to drive on highways is that the things you're most likely to hit are traveling in the same direction"
You've obviously never driven on highways where there's no median and the opposite lanes are seperated from you by a magical force field generating white line.
"usually on less than ten fifteen miles per hour."
Try 140mph for the above scenario.
I'm waiting for Firefox 69 - Porn Edition to be released. The way their version numbers are going up that'll be around this time next year.
I still use lilo on all 3 of my boxes. I don't need a pre boot "enviroment" or however grub is described, I just want the OS booted and up and running ASAP. If there's a problem with booting I'll just grab a live DVD , I'm not going to wrestle with a load of cryptic bootloader commands to try and solve the problem.
Its just a load of data. Illegal copying sure, but stealing?
It doesnt. Hence "sudo rm /usr/bin/pkexec" is always a good idea on a newly installed system.
Things fall because of gravity. Thats an explanation. Why does gravity exist is another question entirely. There's probably endless levels of reality to go down through.
"No, if you want "why" or "truth" look into the philosophy department."
Thats a bit defeatist. Science has always been about explaining the "why". Why is the sky blue, why do the planets going around the sun etc.
"Quantum mechanics describes a fucking ton of things"
It doesn't really explain anything. Its a convenient probabilistic bucket to put stuff in that we don't really understand but like to give it a name anyway.
"What" is for engineers. Physicists should always be aiming to answer the "why". Anyone can use equations, explaining why they work and where they come from is should be theoretical physics main goal, even if ultimately there's a level of reality we can't understand or progress beyond. No hand waving philosphers should be required.
"No number of cannonballs dropped off of towers will tell you why they fall."
Umm, gravity.
A theory is supposed to explain something. Quantum mechanics doesn't explain anything, its more a mathematical description of *what* happens, not *why* it happens. As far as I'm aware the "why" still eludes us as much as it did 100 years ago when Einstein and Bohr were arguing it out.
"I think it's like saying that making a text editor is now easy"
Sure, if you just use the default widgets. Now try and implement something NOT included with them. Syntax highlighting for ANOther language. Oh dear, that means you'll have to write your own lexical analyser and integrate it. Not so easy now is it?
"I find it trivial to do major apps these days."
You'll be able to give us a link to some of them then won't you.
And your alternative would be what? Not have allowed anyone to drive in the last 100 years?
"Fortunately we can understand the processes within real people that lead to their actions. "
Since when? Psychiatrics have been claiming that for years but I see little evidence for it beyond simple actions. Sometimes even the person themselves doesn't understand why they do something if it was subconsious.
But then one day the neural net has a "senior moment" and drives the car off a cliff. And no one can figure out why. At least with a program you'll eventually figure out where the failure is. But I take your point about pre-programmed responses and you're right. I'm not really sure what the solution is - maybe use a neural network but have a normal program acting as a watchdog?
Is that *in theory* you could understand why they come to a particular result, but in practice it could be potentially very hard with a large network for any person to get their head around the processes leading up to the output. This means that unless safety rules are changed we won't be seeing these things driving cars or flying aircraft anytime soon since the software needs to be verifiable and neural networks are not.
Go buy yourself a clue sonny.
"As for being "grateful", they are charging a lot of money to use this tech. If they were providing it for free you might have an argument but they aren't"
No one is forcing you to pay for it. TBH if you can't go a single flight without net access then you probably need therapy.
I took it as sentitivity in general. The Z direction is a pretty minor piece of functionality. X,Y is far more important to most people.
"If you want it to be more sensitive in x and y, you have to poke at it with something with a finer tip than your finger."
Even that won't work a lot of the time because the granularity of the pad is less than that of the screen.
... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.
I've yet to use any kind of touchpad that can even get close to matching the sensitivity of an ordinary mouse. With a mouse I can move the pointer to individual pixels, with a touchpad I'm lucky if I can even get it on the right icon or menu option half the time.
"I still hate it as much as I did when I was 17 years old, for many of the same reasons."
Well you said you're using for personal stuff so you can't hate it that much. You might not have a choice at work but you do at home.
I agree, linux can be a PITA to install, but once installed its usually damn reliable. Windows OTOH is usually a cinch to install but a PITA from thereafter unless all you want it for is to surf and run Office.
Depends how you define an OS. Many - usually embedded- linux installations have the busybox toolset which has nothing to do with GNU apart from its license.
I know this 32 bit epoch is a running gag, but time_t is 64 bits on 64 bit systems and I doubt there'll be many 32 bit systems left (even embedded) by 2039!
"and this is used to make certain moral and ethical arguments more blatantly obvious."
Not really. Most sci fi is just one of the 7 basic plots set in a universe with more advanced tech. Almost all stories have moral and ethical issues because thats the nature of humanity and hence the stories we tell regardless of the era they're set in.