"Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains"
Cars and houses sure, but bodies and brains? Speak for yourself there pal, I'm not having anything electronic inside me unless its absolutely necessary such as a pacemaker. There's no way I'd have the kind of trivial consumer tech implants so beloved of sci fi writers. It might be some peoples fantasy to be a cyborg but its not mine.
You had me until you spouted this cut-n-paste piece left wing rubbish:
" Perhaps, when we have destroyed the concept of copyright as a tool of corporate greed"
Copyright is the only way small musicians and authors can hope to make money on their work. How about you spend a year of your life creating something then find you get f*ck all for it because - hey , its free! RIght? Art doesn't just appear out of nowhere, people have to put time and effort into it just like they do any other endeavour. And similarly they should be rewarded for it - not have the reward decided by a bunch of tight fisted kids who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
There are plenty of bad drivers around but when I go out on the road myself I'm willing to take that risk. I do NOT want that option taken away from me just because a bunch of health and safety obsessives who probably wet the bed until they were teenagers don't like it.
>This makes not sense at all. Why would they increase insurance for humans?
They already increase the risk for certain demographics. Why do you think they would refrain when the demographic is the entire human race?
>This makes not sense at all. Why would they increase insurance for humans?
Plenty of insurance companies don't offer insurance where others wood. Its a matter of cost. You're not going to bother spending money maintaining re-insurance cover if you can't recover your costs.
> then as a society, we would prefer a fully automated transportation system.
Really? So how come MANY people drive to their destination even though they have perfectly good public transport as an option? You're making the usual flawed assumption that what you want is what everyone wants.
>The question is would you still drive if you have a faster and less stressful, even maybe a more productive way of getting to point B?
Plenty do. As for productivity - please. A few paranoid and stressed out execs may work on the train/bus , but most people just surf, read a paper or sleep.
>It might even become a hipster thing.
Your average hipster wouldn't recognise a car if it ran him over. Which they frequently do when they're riding those silly fixie bikes.
>I find that quote meaningless
Thats your problem. Everyone else I've ever met understands it perfectly.
There's a level in risk in life that most people are willing to accept in order to live life the way they want. Just because some people are happy wrapped up on cotton wool and kept away from any possible harm doesn't mean that sort of life should be inflicted on the entire population.
Take self driving cars for example. Once they're good enough to be on the road safely, insurance companies will notice that their accident statistics are lower than human drivers. So first of all they'll lower the insurance for them. Somewhat later they'll put up insurance for human drivers. Then after that some companies will refuse insurance for any manually driven car. Then they all will. And not long after that governments will ban human driven vehicles entirely from public roads.. I reckon this time frame will be about 30-50 years.
Now this might come as a surprise to some of the technokids out there - but some of us actually *like* driving and don't want a computer doing it for us.
As fas as building AI goes, this famous quote is very valid - just because they can doesn't mean they should.
The liquid only appear at the poles even though the entire moon is covered with liquid carved features, so I'm wondering if Titan is an even more frigid version of Mars with all the liquid slowly evaporating away over the eons and escaping from the atmosphere, and maybe in another few hundred million years or so will be bone dry.
A memory chip that can only be written to could be quite secure. And before you laugh obviously there would have to be another way to retrieve the data - perhaps plugging it into a special board with completely different voltages or even taking the lid off - that the machine its sitting in would be able to do. I could see a use for this sort of thing in espionage. Store the data on this chip and send it off but if its intercepted the enemy can't figure out how to get the data out of it since any read operation they try simply fails.
If he actually threw money at these stunts it might help, but everything he does is on a - relatively - shoestring budget. Branson is really nothing more than a publicity seeker. If something works he gets all the kudos while the people who did the actual work you never hear about. And if it doesn't , well he'll just smile than kilowatt smile and do the whole humble awww-shucks-can't-win-em-all schtick and quietly steer the media onto his next stunt. Its getting really tedious.
Branson has a track record of seriously underestimating the difficulty of the challenges he picks. Plus he seems to believe he can replicate serious engineering achievements - eg space flight - on a shoestring budget. Well sorry, but you can't. And I suspect the same goes for his submersible. Diving down 7 miles takes some seriously well thought out and strong engineering, not just some recreational sub with a few extra inches thickness of hill.
Unfortunately like Dawkins you have little understanding of human nature. What may be logically the correct approach falls apart when you start dealing with human beings.
Sadly true. While I agree with most of what he says wrt evolution the way he says it really gets up my nose. He doesn't seem to understand that you don't get people on side by calling them idiots and trashing their entire belief system. That just gets their backs up and sends them off in the opposite direction to what you intended.
I suggest you google and find out exactly what he does then you try doing as much just using a small muscle near your eye.
Though since you're clearly just another sad pathetic little teenager trying - and failing - to look all grown up and smart I doubt you'd even get close. Plus wouldn't recognise intelligence if it kicked you up the backside.
You made the assertion pal - you back it up. But then given you're the moron who thinks hawking is only kept on because of his disability I think its safe for say your so full of it its coming out both ends.
Except theres no reason for it to have lost much at all during the moons formation. Most of the water would have remained in orbit as ice or locked up in orbiting solidified rock.
Water is pretty heavy. The collision would certainly have vapourised all water on the surface and underneath and even converted a lot of it to H2 + O2 , but the rest would simply have hung around in orbit as ice and rained back down eventually.
Though for "digital natives" (or whatever people under 25 are called this week) anything you do via an iToy app is good regardless. Hailing a taxi or making a phone call to a taxi firm? Thats just soooo 20th century! Click click click like a lab rat is where its at!
"Well, because there isn't one at the language level. "The array syntax using square brackets is only a syntactic sugar for pointer arithmetic, nothing more"
If its too dangerous for humans, who do you think is going to write all the compiler/interpreter and low level OS interfaces of whatever alternative language of your choice is? At some point someone has to get their hands dirty down at the metal whether its in C or assembler. If you're not up to that then fine, but please spare us the poor workman blaming his tools excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
+1
HTML was never intended as an application delivery platform. Its been stretched to breaking point and then some.
"Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains"
Cars and houses sure, but bodies and brains? Speak for yourself there pal, I'm not having anything electronic inside me unless its absolutely necessary such as a pacemaker. There's no way I'd have the kind of trivial consumer tech implants so beloved of sci fi writers. It might be some peoples fantasy to be a cyborg but its not mine.
You had me until you spouted this cut-n-paste piece left wing rubbish:
" Perhaps, when we have destroyed the concept of copyright as a tool of corporate greed"
Copyright is the only way small musicians and authors can hope to make money on their work. How about you spend a year of your life creating something then find you get f*ck all for it because - hey , its free! RIght? Art doesn't just appear out of nowhere, people have to put time and effort into it just like they do any other endeavour. And similarly they should be rewarded for it - not have the reward decided by a bunch of tight fisted kids who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
I suggest you change your bedsheets.
Most large european cities have fantastic public transport yet millions still prefer to drive.
Anyway , even in the US , Boston has a pretty good subway system and chicago isn't far behind.
There are plenty of bad drivers around but when I go out on the road myself I'm willing to take that risk. I do NOT want that option taken away from me just because a bunch of health and safety obsessives who probably wet the bed until they were teenagers don't like it.
>This makes not sense at all. Why would they increase insurance for humans?
They already increase the risk for certain demographics. Why do you think they would refrain when the demographic is the entire human race?
>This makes not sense at all. Why would they increase insurance for humans?
Plenty of insurance companies don't offer insurance where others wood. Its a matter of cost. You're not going to bother spending money maintaining re-insurance cover if you can't recover your costs.
> then as a society, we would prefer a fully automated transportation system.
Really? So how come MANY people drive to their destination even though they have perfectly good public transport as an option? You're making the usual flawed assumption that what you want is what everyone wants.
>The question is would you still drive if you have a faster and less stressful, even maybe a more productive way of getting to point B?
Plenty do. As for productivity - please. A few paranoid and stressed out execs may work on the train/bus , but most people just surf, read a paper or sleep.
>It might even become a hipster thing.
Your average hipster wouldn't recognise a car if it ran him over. Which they frequently do when they're riding those silly fixie bikes.
>I find that quote meaningless
Thats your problem. Everyone else I've ever met understands it perfectly.
There's a level in risk in life that most people are willing to accept in order to live life the way they want. Just because some people are happy wrapped up on cotton wool and kept away from any possible harm doesn't mean that sort of life should be inflicted on the entire population.
Take self driving cars for example. Once they're good enough to be on the road safely, insurance companies will notice that their accident statistics are lower than human drivers. So first of all they'll lower the insurance for them. Somewhat later they'll put up insurance for human drivers. Then after that some companies will refuse insurance for any manually driven car. Then they all will. And not long after that governments will ban human driven vehicles entirely from public roads.. I reckon this time frame will be about 30-50 years.
Now this might come as a surprise to some of the technokids out there - but some of us actually *like* driving and don't want a computer doing it for us.
As fas as building AI goes, this famous quote is very valid - just because they can doesn't mean they should.
The liquid only appear at the poles even though the entire moon is covered with liquid carved features, so I'm wondering if Titan is an even more frigid version of Mars with all the liquid slowly evaporating away over the eons and escaping from the atmosphere, and maybe in another few hundred million years or so will be bone dry.
A memory chip that can only be written to could be quite secure. And before you laugh obviously there would have to be another way to retrieve the data - perhaps plugging it into a special board with completely different voltages or even taking the lid off - that the machine its sitting in would be able to do. I could see a use for this sort of thing in espionage. Store the data on this chip and send it off but if its intercepted the enemy can't figure out how to get the data out of it since any read operation they try simply fails.
If he actually threw money at these stunts it might help, but everything he does is on a - relatively - shoestring budget. Branson is really nothing more than a publicity seeker. If something works he gets all the kudos while the people who did the actual work you never hear about. And if it doesn't , well he'll just smile than kilowatt smile and do the whole humble awww-shucks-can't-win-em-all schtick and quietly steer the media onto his next stunt. Its getting really tedious.
Branson has a track record of seriously underestimating the difficulty of the challenges he picks. Plus he seems to believe he can replicate serious engineering achievements - eg space flight - on a shoestring budget. Well sorry, but you can't. And I suspect the same goes for his submersible. Diving down 7 miles takes some seriously well thought out and strong engineering, not just some recreational sub with a few extra inches thickness of hill.
Unfortunately like Dawkins you have little understanding of human nature. What may be logically the correct approach falls apart when you start dealing with human beings.
Sadly true. While I agree with most of what he says wrt evolution the way he says it really gets up my nose. He doesn't seem to understand that you don't get people on side by calling them idiots and trashing their entire belief system. That just gets their backs up and sends them off in the opposite direction to what you intended.
I suggest you google and find out exactly what he does then you try doing as much just using a small muscle near your eye.
Though since you're clearly just another sad pathetic little teenager trying - and failing - to look all grown up and smart I doubt you'd even get close. Plus wouldn't recognise intelligence if it kicked you up the backside.
You made the assertion pal - you back it up. But then given you're the moron who thinks hawking is only kept on because of his disability I think its safe for say your so full of it its coming out both ends.
Except theres no reason for it to have lost much at all during the moons formation. Most of the water would have remained in orbit as ice or locked up in orbiting solidified rock.
Why don't you just point us to the numbers that are agreed upon by all planetary scientists? Clearly you're an expert on this.
Using that logic there would have been no water to start with since the earth was "really really hot for a while" when it formed you dimwit.
Water is pretty heavy. The collision would certainly have vapourised all water on the surface and underneath and even converted a lot of it to H2 + O2 , but the rest would simply have hung around in orbit as ice and rained back down eventually.
Though for "digital natives" (or whatever people under 25 are called this week) anything you do via an iToy app is good regardless. Hailing a taxi or making a phone call to a taxi firm? Thats just soooo 20th century! Click click click like a lab rat is where its at!
Entropy requires time in which to move to a more disordered state.
Time exists because entropy becomes more disordered.
Hmm. Spot the logical flaw there.
"Well, because there isn't one at the language level. "The array syntax using square brackets is only a syntactic sugar for pointer arithmetic, nothing more"
Seriously??
char a[100];
char *b = a;
printf("%d, %d\n",sizeof(a),sizeof(b));
If its too dangerous for humans, who do you think is going to write all the compiler/interpreter and low level OS interfaces of whatever alternative language of your choice is? At some point someone has to get their hands dirty down at the metal whether its in C or assembler. If you're not up to that then fine, but please spare us the poor workman blaming his tools excuse.