Fusion drive is not the only technology we need. We need a lot more technology to live in space. The problems of radiation, bone-loss due to low gravity, recycling air, water and food all need a lot more work.
As for what we would invent, the thing about research is if we knew what we would invent, we would already have it. Research is a surprise. It always has been and always will be.
Einstein did not know he was inventing GPS, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc. etc. when he figured out relativity. Tesla had no idea he would invent, well, basically our entire electrical world.
If you fund it, we will INVENT. If we don't fund it, we don't invent.
When I was born Mankind had not set foot on the moon.
By the time I was five, we had been there, done that and decided to never go back again.
If aliens do exist, they are sitting back saying "What the f?ck man, you want to meet us but don't have the energy to get off the couch and answer the door?"
Mankind does not deserve space travel. We had our chance and refused to take it.
We spend less than 5% of our national budget on space travel. Whoops, sorry make that less than 0.5%. It is a joke.
Science and technology have funded our industry for hundreds of years - yet we refuse to spend more on space industry than we do on our aircraft carrier program (old Nimitz class cost about 4.5 billion - and we have 11 of them).
25 billion? Double that and make it a real scientific program. 50 Billion is a reasonable price to pay. Not the paltry less than 20 we currently pay
1) The effect varies tremendously at different speeds. At really high speeds it does nothing.
2)The aircraft itself is designed to carefully redirect the air in a very specific manner to create lift, not to reduce drag. The dimples,. even if they were helpful on lift (which is not discussed at all here), would make this far more complicated. Maybe someday someone will do the research to figure out if they help lift, but we don't know that yet.
Bull. It does not look ugly. It looks strange to you only because you have never seen it before. Let them start making it and all the young kids will say how cool it looks. (Look at what the silly things like in music!)
As for your argument about 11%, you are a very ignorant. It is not about replacing your car, but about making the NEXT car you buy 11% more fuel efficient.
It is easy to block porn and adult content. Simple - see cable going to your PC from your ISP? Cut it.
There! You blocked porn and adult content.
The problem is not 'finding a filter that works'. It is finding a filter that works AND lets in in 'unobjectionable content'. Which is what my entire post is about. There is NO way to define 'porn and adult content' that everyone can agree on - because those things are NOT bad for kids. Which is what my entire argument is about.
Kids on a farm grow up watching animals having sex. It doesn't harm them.
Your personal beliefs are just that - yours. They are not based on reason and logic. They are not 'real'. They are old wives tales told to you that you believe.
If you were correct that some kind of porn and adult content is bad for kids, then we could make a good definition and then we could make a good filter.
The very fact that you can't find a good filter to stop what you dislike let allow in what you do like is proof that you personally are wrong about what you personally are afraid your kids will watch.
The reasons why no one likes these things is exactly why they should not even be considered - even if they worked.
That is, the concept of 'objectionable content'' is itself objectionable. There is NO SUCH THING! That is why certain countries have things called freedom of the press.
What happens is quite simple - certain people (Group A) dislike something. They don't want to see it or hear it. They falsely and incorrectly believe that even seeing said things is damaging - despite zero scientific evidence to it (instead they make up badly designed studies that talk about tendencies and thoughts as if they are actions).
Other people (Group B) do want to see it. This makes group A angry. So they try to make a law against letting anyone see it. But the people making the law argue about what exactly is objectionable. They quickly find out that Group A(a) wants to stop people from seeing things that most of Group A thinks is fine. Or they quickly realize that their 'objectionable' content has valid reasons to be seen - such as medicinal and political discourse.
They get angry and try to work out a logical way of differentiating between what is really objectionable and what isn't. The problem is their original hypothesis is totally illogical. There was no real problem with what they thought was objectionable so as soon as they try to apply logic they find it doesn't work.
You can't use logic to decide something when logic says your base assumption is wrong.
Mission Creep is when the mission changes to something new. That is a bad thing.
But people use that term whenever a government program expands.
Often missions start small and grow big. That is because 1) The scope of the problem was not realized when the program started.
2) The program's scope was realized and they correctly decided to start small (which they may or may not have informed everyone ) and make sure they got it right before then went big. Often people doing this intentionally do not mention this to their enemies - as the enemies will use it as an excuse to not do the work. Why should we save the entire environment? Why should we get rid of ALL of polio? Those things cost too much!!!
The worse case is when the people against the original program complain about 'mission creep' when the plan to save the few people who lived to 65 from abject poverty suddenly becomes saving all the many many people that live to 65.
This is not mission creep. This is simply maintaining the original program and making sure it worked, even though the problem is now a lot bigger.
Studies have shown that:fat is addictive. Worse than tobacco.
Specifically, it is harder to lose 30 lbs than to quit smoking. That is why people call it a disease, it acts like one.
If you want to lose more than 30 lbs, you have three choices:
1) Get a gastric bypass. This works over 95% of the time.
2) Hire a personal trainer AND a personal chef to cook most of your meals. This works most of the time - and is the method that Hollywood stars use, not whatever they claim on the advertisements for weightloss products.
3) Give yourself a severe psychological complex. Basically you have to drive yourself insane where you obsess about eating and exercising.
Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, etc. can work for short term periods - but they fail over 99% of the time when talking about years, rather than months.
That works well for people. But if a corporation gets a 100 year registration, they are practically guaranteed to forget to renew it.
Remember the guy that said "Why do we need 4 digit dates, a 100 years is good enough for me."
I know - same thing with B&N's nook. The only zoom functionality increase font size.
Worse, they always size things so the entire graphic fits on the screen, never splitting into multiple pages.
They really need the ability to zoom on a picture. Or include all pictures in a book separately as a zoomable file.
My statements are dependent upon me being a rational human being that does not waist money. If that doesn't apply then this service makes no sense. Your complaints all assume I am an idiot that spends money on a service then does not use it.
If it doesn't save me money, then why would anyone use it? See additional problems I mentioned. If I kept buying paper books at my current rate, then it would not save me money.
Similarly, it makes zero sense to buy an ebook from B&N if it is available through this program. So it does mean I am effectively locked into Amazon.
Doesn't the US have a law that makes it illegal for a criminal to profit from their crimes in this manner? I know serial killers can't sell their life story rights for a movie or a book.
I am 100% sure that the cars will not be programmed to so much as guess about the age of people, nor the number in a vehicle.
They will be programmed to avoid accidents, and most likely will drive at slower speeds than normal -35-40 mph vs 55+.
They will of course be programmed to consider their own safety FIRST, as the assumption is that any other vehicle's actions can not be predicted - it might be driven by a person. As such, attempting to save someone else's life/vehicle could make the issue worse.
As for your concern about cases where the automatic car holding an 80 year old accidentally kills a 4 year old - those cases will be outnumbered by the total absence of drunk driving, 80 year olds running into farmer's markets etc. etc. etc.
It's a numbers game, and the very rare cases you are excessively concerned about do not even come into consideration.
Many of you say "the crooks will over-ride those safety precautions.
We can easily hire the best programmers to create reasonable security. Even then, a properly programed device will not be unhackable. But it will be difficult to hack.
People with the skills to hack such security features will not be common. More importantly, the far majority of them will be in such demand that they won't be hacking cars. If they motivated by money, they will be making it. If they are criminal in nature, they will be hacking other things - such as banks.
I am not saying it won't happen at all. But it will be far easier for a criminal to commit other crimes of mass destruction and the lives saved by ending drunk driving and ending accidents will far exceed the relatively few lives cost by criminals hacking driverless cars.
Any person seeking perfect safety should build a concrete and steel survival shelter and never leave it. But for the rest of us, driverless cars with proper safety and security protocols will reduce crime and death, not increase it
But it would also mean I would have to give up paper and switch entirely to my e-reader, which I currently use for about 1/2 to 1/3 my purchasers. There are a lot of advantages still for paper books- charts, graphs and pictures for example do not show up well on ereaders. Nor do I worry about taking a paperback anyplace. I can take them on a camping/rafting trip.
It would also mean I would end up being locked into Amazon, not a good thing. I don't trust them as much as I trust Barnes and Nobles, as they have done vile things before (Hatchet, pulling back books people purchased)
When some site, like say slashdot, uses passwords not for real security, but instead to identify it's users, then only an idiot wastes their memory creating a 'good password' for it.
Better to use the same crappy password for web sites that do involve real financial risk.
Of course, if you use that same password for a bank account, or anything that knows a credit card number, SS#, or similar information, you need to have your head examined.
If you don't feel like saying "I am moving out of your service area." there are two other ways to other ways to handle it.
1) "Because every time I call you guys, you try to get me to change. You give me a run around and refuse to provide the service requested.
2) "Because whenever I turn on the TV, it tells me to carve up people that don't do what I tell them to do. So my psychiatrist told me to stop watching television."
But an intelligent person will always be in demand, by ensuring that they are always the most knowledgeable and by working in the elite end of the business.
The jobs that get destroyed are typically jobs that require the least amount of intelligence and skill.
Take fashion. Few Americans make a living sewing any more - unless of course you are a fashion designer, rather than a piece worker.
Taxi drivers may not exist in 20 years - but race car drivers will still have jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
As for what we would invent, the thing about research is if we knew what we would invent, we would already have it. Research is a surprise. It always has been and always will be.
Einstein did not know he was inventing GPS, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc. etc. when he figured out relativity. Tesla had no idea he would invent, well, basically our entire electrical world.
If you fund it, we will INVENT. If we don't fund it, we don't invent.
By the time I was five, we had been there, done that and decided to never go back again.
If aliens do exist, they are sitting back saying "What the f?ck man, you want to meet us but don't have the energy to get off the couch and answer the door?"
Mankind does not deserve space travel. We had our chance and refused to take it.
We spend less than 5% of our national budget on space travel. Whoops, sorry make that less than 0.5%. It is a joke.
Science and technology have funded our industry for hundreds of years - yet we refuse to spend more on space industry than we do on our aircraft carrier program (old Nimitz class cost about 4.5 billion - and we have 11 of them).
25 billion? Double that and make it a real scientific program. 50 Billion is a reasonable price to pay. Not the paltry less than 20 we currently pay
2)The aircraft itself is designed to carefully redirect the air in a very specific manner to create lift, not to reduce drag. The dimples,. even if they were helpful on lift (which is not discussed at all here), would make this far more complicated. Maybe someday someone will do the research to figure out if they help lift, but we don't know that yet.
Uninformed. Ever hear of Tesla? They are the definition of electric supercars/
As for your argument about 11%, you are a very ignorant. It is not about replacing your car, but about making the NEXT car you buy 11% more fuel efficient.
There! You blocked porn and adult content.
The problem is not 'finding a filter that works'. It is finding a filter that works AND lets in in 'unobjectionable content'. Which is what my entire post is about. There is NO way to define 'porn and adult content' that everyone can agree on - because those things are NOT bad for kids. Which is what my entire argument is about.
Kids on a farm grow up watching animals having sex. It doesn't harm them.
Your personal beliefs are just that - yours. They are not based on reason and logic. They are not 'real'. They are old wives tales told to you that you believe.
If you were correct that some kind of porn and adult content is bad for kids, then we could make a good definition and then we could make a good filter.
The very fact that you can't find a good filter to stop what you dislike let allow in what you do like is proof that you personally are wrong about what you personally are afraid your kids will watch.
Electronic memory printed on paper - how is that different from a magnetic strip - the same thing we used to call an 'audio tape'.
That is, the concept of 'objectionable content'' is itself objectionable. There is NO SUCH THING! That is why certain countries have things called freedom of the press.
What happens is quite simple - certain people (Group A) dislike something. They don't want to see it or hear it. They falsely and incorrectly believe that even seeing said things is damaging - despite zero scientific evidence to it (instead they make up badly designed studies that talk about tendencies and thoughts as if they are actions). Other people (Group B) do want to see it. This makes group A angry. So they try to make a law against letting anyone see it. But the people making the law argue about what exactly is objectionable. They quickly find out that Group A(a) wants to stop people from seeing things that most of Group A thinks is fine. Or they quickly realize that their 'objectionable' content has valid reasons to be seen - such as medicinal and political discourse.
They get angry and try to work out a logical way of differentiating between what is really objectionable and what isn't. The problem is their original hypothesis is totally illogical. There was no real problem with what they thought was objectionable so as soon as they try to apply logic they find it doesn't work.
You can't use logic to decide something when logic says your base assumption is wrong.
Mission Creep is when the mission changes to something new. That is a bad thing.
But people use that term whenever a government program expands.
Often missions start small and grow big. That is because 1) The scope of the problem was not realized when the program started.
2) The program's scope was realized and they correctly decided to start small (which they may or may not have informed everyone ) and make sure they got it right before then went big. Often people doing this intentionally do not mention this to their enemies - as the enemies will use it as an excuse to not do the work. Why should we save the entire environment? Why should we get rid of ALL of polio? Those things cost too much!!!
The worse case is when the people against the original program complain about 'mission creep' when the plan to save the few people who lived to 65 from abject poverty suddenly becomes saving all the many many people that live to 65.
This is not mission creep. This is simply maintaining the original program and making sure it worked, even though the problem is now a lot bigger.
Specifically, it is harder to lose 30 lbs than to quit smoking. That is why people call it a disease, it acts like one.
If you want to lose more than 30 lbs, you have three choices:
1) Get a gastric bypass. This works over 95% of the time.
2) Hire a personal trainer AND a personal chef to cook most of your meals. This works most of the time - and is the method that Hollywood stars use, not whatever they claim on the advertisements for weightloss products.
3) Give yourself a severe psychological complex. Basically you have to drive yourself insane where you obsess about eating and exercising.
Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, etc. can work for short term periods - but they fail over 99% of the time when talking about years, rather than months.
Do you know how many regular treadmills people have bought? And not used, of course.
You use it in a VR environment and to move forward, you walk forward on the treadmilll.
This should solve the simulator sickeness issue.
Keys, TV remote control, coins, vials of Ebola,
That works well for people. But if a corporation gets a 100 year registration, they are practically guaranteed to forget to renew it. Remember the guy that said "Why do we need 4 digit dates, a 100 years is good enough for me."
I know - same thing with B&N's nook. The only zoom functionality increase font size. Worse, they always size things so the entire graphic fits on the screen, never splitting into multiple pages. They really need the ability to zoom on a picture. Or include all pictures in a book separately as a zoomable file.
If it doesn't save me money, then why would anyone use it? See additional problems I mentioned. If I kept buying paper books at my current rate, then it would not save me money. Similarly, it makes zero sense to buy an ebook from B&N if it is available through this program. So it does mean I am effectively locked into Amazon.
I stand by my comments.
Doesn't that same law apply here?
You set the time before you leave the car. But the time goes off after you have left the area.
They will be programmed to avoid accidents, and most likely will drive at slower speeds than normal -35-40 mph vs 55+.
They will of course be programmed to consider their own safety FIRST, as the assumption is that any other vehicle's actions can not be predicted - it might be driven by a person. As such, attempting to save someone else's life/vehicle could make the issue worse.
As for your concern about cases where the automatic car holding an 80 year old accidentally kills a 4 year old - those cases will be outnumbered by the total absence of drunk driving, 80 year olds running into farmer's markets etc. etc. etc.
It's a numbers game, and the very rare cases you are excessively concerned about do not even come into consideration.
We can easily hire the best programmers to create reasonable security. Even then, a properly programed device will not be unhackable. But it will be difficult to hack.
People with the skills to hack such security features will not be common. More importantly, the far majority of them will be in such demand that they won't be hacking cars. If they motivated by money, they will be making it. If they are criminal in nature, they will be hacking other things - such as banks.
I am not saying it won't happen at all. But it will be far easier for a criminal to commit other crimes of mass destruction and the lives saved by ending drunk driving and ending accidents will far exceed the relatively few lives cost by criminals hacking driverless cars.
Any person seeking perfect safety should build a concrete and steel survival shelter and never leave it. But for the rest of us, driverless cars with proper safety and security protocols will reduce crime and death, not increase it
But it would also mean I would have to give up paper and switch entirely to my e-reader, which I currently use for about 1/2 to 1/3 my purchasers. There are a lot of advantages still for paper books- charts, graphs and pictures for example do not show up well on ereaders. Nor do I worry about taking a paperback anyplace. I can take them on a camping/rafting trip.
It would also mean I would end up being locked into Amazon, not a good thing. I don't trust them as much as I trust Barnes and Nobles, as they have done vile things before (Hatchet, pulling back books people purchased)
Better to use the same crappy password for web sites that do involve real financial risk.
Of course, if you use that same password for a bank account, or anything that knows a credit card number, SS#, or similar information, you need to have your head examined.
1) "Because every time I call you guys, you try to get me to change. You give me a run around and refuse to provide the service requested.
2) "Because whenever I turn on the TV, it tells me to carve up people that don't do what I tell them to do. So my psychiatrist told me to stop watching television."
But an intelligent person will always be in demand, by ensuring that they are always the most knowledgeable and by working in the elite end of the business.
The jobs that get destroyed are typically jobs that require the least amount of intelligence and skill.
Take fashion. Few Americans make a living sewing any more - unless of course you are a fashion designer, rather than a piece worker.
Taxi drivers may not exist in 20 years - but race car drivers will still have jobs.
Seems like they are more interested in getting a foot in the door to revoke the rule, rather than testing.