1) Humans are the only super devices currently on the planet. A device that can do more will cost more. A humanoid torso with stair-climbing could be teleoperated by remote human operators. That would be the cheapest way to get a robot to be a general purpose device. It would cost more than an ASIMO, which is at least $100,000.
2) It isn't PR. It's reality. Talk to any roboticist. We are decades away from autonomous general purpose robotics. A few folks are working on the tele-op problem in #1. I just watched a presentation on the Robonaut yesterday. http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/
What plenty of people don't understand is that building a prototype is not the same thing as building a product.
Some issues that aren't even on MythBuster's radar: Making something work as close to 100% of the time as possible. Making the system robust to almost all situation. Making the system hardened so that dropping it doesn't matter, for example. Making it so the marginal cost of product is far lower than the prototyping cost.
There are hundreds of serious university homegrown robot that can do some great things. Hobbiests make thousands more. How many companies have robots robust enough for the military to use? A dozen or so...
Video on demand over the internet will be HUGE. The time-to-DVD for hollywood films can go down to zero, if there is a world wide release in theaters and homes. Piracy would be greatly diminished if people could watch any movie without needing to store them for a small price.
As much as I am starting to dislike the editorial filter that Slashdot has and Digg avoids, let me just say in response:
Proof of warming does not equate to proof Kyoto is a good idea.
Even the planners agree that all countries participating for a century would do almost nothing for the projected warming. Recently, the non-Kyoto-signer US has had higher economic growth and greater improvements on GHGs than the Kyoto signers of the EU. Do you need any more proof that it's the wrong approach?
Perhaps instead of a half-ass non-solution, we should fund more research for true, viable alternatives. I want bettery batteries, solar, and fusion to all be so cheap that any GHG emitting methods of energy generation and storage aren't used because of their economic cost.
Arbitrarily trying to limit carbon emissions, when billions of people who embrace modernity need energy and don't have alternatives, is a bad idea. Here is a good article by Bjorn Lomborg on the The relative unimportance of global warming, with better policy suggestions.
This is a very good idea. The cost of roads has nothing to do with what fuel your car uses, but gasoline taxes are currently the best way to get drivers to pay for roads.
Having intelligent streets that can automatically charge you for your share of the driving makes plenty of sense. Further, it might finally spawn the use of private roads, where companies would compete with the government on a per-mile cost of maintenance.
Note that this needn't be a GPS system. The most expensive roads could just have toll gates.
This, along with all public surveillance, should have a great deal of oversight.
Some economists are proposing legislation that would create a cabinet level post whose entire job is to act as watch-dog to any group doing domestic public surveillance. You can read a bit about it here
why would the EU and the UN want to grab control, when that control right now is only being used for laissez faire? Because they want to/stop/ the laissez faire!
China wants to take down Tibetan and Falun Gong sites. Germany wants to ban neonazis from the internet. The arab nations would want to kick off Israel until it "fulfils its international obligations". Etc etc. This is nothing less than an attempt to stuff the information genie back into its bottle.
At all costs, they must be prevented from claiming the spurious moral high ground! Confront them with the question: what would you change? And, why not go through process at ICANN? What would you want to do,
that they would refuse? And why?
Using a disposable fuel tank, like the shuttle, isn't a bad idea. NOT using one you have is.
I recall hearing a critic ask "why didn't you send each fuel tank into orbit? There could have been a huge array of 120+ tanks used as a base for a mega-space-station."
Considering it would only take a small ammount of energy to go that extra step, that thousands of engineers didn't think of it, or worse were not listened to, is a disgrace.
Taxes being high elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't high in MA. [note, I live there, not PA]
Revenue is also high because MA is rich.
Ideally, schools, firemen, law making & enforcement bodies could be funded with a single low property tax, which shouldn't be tax deductible on a federal level.
There are huge, unneeded program currently. I don't think I'm much of a nazi for saying that, but I forgot that this was slashdot.
Yah, I know a few groups doing the grand challenge, most from CMU, who will likely win this year.
Open standards will do little in that field, where your average Joe doesn't have $50K+ to drop on everything needed. This is my first point about the cost of semi-adequate sensors.
I'm pretty certain the grand challenge this year will mark a turning point in robotics, when a fairly complicated task was mastered.
I look forward to an ASIMO butler taking my dirty dishes away without breaking them, and a robotic paintball teammate. Unfortunately, I'll need to be forward looking for quite some time....
"When's the last time you saw a human drive a car in all conditions? Or drive a car well in the same daily condition? You must not live in an area with heavy traffic."
Think about the throughput. It only seems like driving in traffic is more dangerous because there are so many more cars, and pretty much proportionally more accidents. Driving in worse conditions is a bigger cause of accidents, in my understanding. Someone could reply with some numbers.
"Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"
No, you won't.
Unless you manage to provide the $5K+ (each) sensors needed to detect all exceptional cases, you have any breakthroughs.
Detecting a pedestrian in the street with 99.999% reliability needed is HARD. Not mowing over a golf club in you back yard is HARD. Not falling over or running into things is HARD.
As soon as people realize that autonomous hardware needs to react in real time to a dynamic, complex real world, the efforts to compare PCs to robots will stop.
Think about it this way: humans use sensors that are hundreds of times higher resolution, and processors that are thousands of times faster. What makes you think you can do it on the cheap?. And don't start talking about ants or bees! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW ANYTHING BUT A HUMAN DRIVE A CAR IN ALL CONDITIONS?
Open standards are fine, but don't believe the exponential growth potential for anything but software.
Epi I's stress on Maul can be redeemed if the droid General Grievous is actually darth Maul saved from death.
He has biological looking eyes, and otherwise it would make no sense to have a droid that can use the force. Why not make the entire droid army have force powers?
I guess making 0 sense hasn't stopped Lucas in the past.
"...SIMULATIONS SUGGEST that over the NEXT HUNDRED YEARS we COULD see AVERAGE rise temperatures of UP TO 11K"::Simulations are not reality.::Suggestions are not difinitive.::100 years is a great deal of time to extend a simulation over.::Potential outcomes are not a certain path.::Averages mask information.::Upper bounds are misleading.
Serious, too often ignored, questions: 1) Is it serious, i.e. causes big problems? 2) Is it caused by humans? 3) Is the cost of stopping negative effects lower than the cost of the negative effects? 4) Is there an alternative?
What is known now: 1) Who knows... worst case forecasts trumped up to guarantee continued funding for one's research projects are over-excited at best and morally bankrupt at worst. 2) Who knows... could be natural cycles or the sun. 3) Probably not...Kyoto would cost America $200-300B/yr for decades, and save little compared with money spent on research into alternative fuels or space energy mining. 4) Growth & Wealth
The real protection against nature is the wealth that arises from free societies. The third world would not only pollute less if they entered the first world, but they would also be much better prepared to handle any possible problems.
Compare the earthquakes in Iran last year to those in California. Or the system to prevent casualties from tsunamis in Japan to the non-existent system in nations recently affected.
The body count from the recent tsunamis is close to 300,000. Who are environmentalists kidding themselves to say potential global warming is a greater threat than other natural disasters, malaria, and poverty in general?
I highly recommend their very specific and highly justified yearly recommendations to Congress. It is rare to have a group with such a consistent world view. Find it online here.
Cato is not a news source but is openly for free societies. I knew they run Socialsecurity.org, and have extensively read about SS from a large number of perspectives. I agree with their assessment that it is unfair to have such a low rate of return with the current arrangement and democratizing to have private accounts make every American join the investor class.
Also, just because they are the source does not invalidate the volumes of argumentation presented there.
I highly recommend their very specific and highly justified yearly recommendations to Congress. It is rare to have a group with such a consistent world view. Find it online here.
Would you rather have a $10K or $7K raise?
You would work harder for the $10K right? Higher marginal tax rates suppress growth.
Would you hire an accountant if he could get you that extra $3K if you only got the $7K? Would you accept $2k in benefits over nothing? High tax rates cause avoidance of taxes. Low tax rates make the cost of avoidance higher than the benefit
Would you be more likely to start a business if you knew that you would be taxed on revenue even before you made a profit, making it a more risky venture? High marginal tax rates suppress growth. Look at Belgium if you're curious about tax evasion.
Slashdot Mirror
More robots are linux based.
A robot is a set of custom communicating processes and threads, with sensor and motor drivers.
What other OS has the level of control needed to get this done, while having a large user base?
1) Humans are the only super devices currently on the planet. A device that can do more will cost more. A humanoid torso with stair-climbing could be teleoperated by remote human operators. That would be the cheapest way to get a robot to be a general purpose device. It would cost more than an ASIMO, which is at least $100,000.
2) It isn't PR. It's reality. Talk to any roboticist. We are decades away from autonomous general purpose robotics. A few folks are working on the tele-op problem in #1. I just watched a presentation on the Robonaut yesterday.
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/
What plenty of people don't understand is that building a prototype is not the same thing as building a product.
Some issues that aren't even on MythBuster's radar:
Making something work as close to 100% of the time as possible.
Making the system robust to almost all situation.
Making the system hardened so that dropping it doesn't matter, for example.
Making it so the marginal cost of product is far lower than the prototyping cost.
There are hundreds of serious university homegrown robot that can do some great things. Hobbiests make thousands more. How many companies have robots robust enough for the military to use? A dozen or so...
Streaming Video
Video on demand over the internet will be HUGE. The time-to-DVD for hollywood films can go down to zero, if there is a world wide release in theaters and homes. Piracy would be greatly diminished if people could watch any movie without needing to store them for a small price.
Alternative answer: both.
"seriously-do-you-need-more-proof?"
As much as I am starting to dislike the editorial filter that Slashdot has and Digg avoids, let me just say in response:
Proof of warming does not equate to proof Kyoto is a good idea.
Even the planners agree that all countries participating for a century would do almost nothing for the projected warming. Recently, the non-Kyoto-signer US has had higher economic growth and greater improvements on GHGs than the Kyoto signers of the EU. Do you need any more proof that it's the wrong approach?
Perhaps instead of a half-ass non-solution, we should fund more research for true, viable alternatives. I want bettery batteries, solar, and fusion to all be so cheap that any GHG emitting methods of energy generation and storage aren't used because of their economic cost.
Arbitrarily trying to limit carbon emissions, when billions of people who embrace modernity need energy and don't have alternatives, is a bad idea. Here is a good article by Bjorn Lomborg on the The relative unimportance of global warming, with better policy suggestions.
This is a very good idea. The cost of roads has nothing to do with what fuel your car uses, but gasoline taxes are currently the best way to get drivers to pay for roads.
Having intelligent streets that can automatically charge you for your share of the driving makes plenty of sense. Further, it might finally spawn the use of private roads, where companies would compete with the government on a per-mile cost of maintenance.
Note that this needn't be a GPS system. The most expensive roads could just have toll gates.
This, along with all public surveillance, should have a great deal of oversight.
Some economists are proposing legislation that would create a cabinet level post whose entire job is to act as watch-dog to any group doing domestic public surveillance. You can read a bit about it here
Ok, trekkies, a challenge: Why in God's name did the storage for the whales need to be transparent?
is gonna kick Stanley's ass like Mrs. Roper on a bad shawl day! w00-w00t
Using a disposable fuel tank, like the shuttle, isn't a bad idea. NOT using one you have is.
I recall hearing a critic ask "why didn't you send each fuel tank into orbit? There could have been a huge array of 120+ tanks used as a base for a mega-space-station."
Considering it would only take a small ammount of energy to go that extra step, that thousands of engineers didn't think of it, or worse were not listened to, is a disgrace.
wow, this is beyond parody http://gprime.net/video.php/ipodflea
Taxes being high elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't high in MA. [note, I live there, not PA]
Revenue is also high because MA is rich.
Ideally, schools, firemen, law making & enforcement bodies could be funded with a single low property tax, which shouldn't be tax deductible on a federal level.
There are huge, unneeded program currently. I don't think I'm much of a nazi for saying that, but I forgot that this was slashdot.
How funny that the site once used to protest a 3% tax is now a tax nightmare.
Maybe these people should be protesting the high income tax, or property tax, or sales tax, or high usage fees, or excessive regulation.
Microsoft is the least of their worries.
This is an opinion piece. I happen to agree with it, but calling it a 'story' has different implications about the intended objectivity of the writer.
Yah, I know a few groups doing the grand challenge, most from CMU, who will likely win this year.
Open standards will do little in that field, where your average Joe doesn't have $50K+ to drop on everything needed. This is my first point about the cost of semi-adequate sensors.
I'm pretty certain the grand challenge this year will mark a turning point in robotics, when a fairly complicated task was mastered.
I look forward to an ASIMO butler taking my dirty dishes away without breaking them, and a robotic paintball teammate. Unfortunately, I'll need to be forward looking for quite some time....
"When's the last time you saw a human drive a car in all conditions? Or drive a car well in the same daily condition? You must not live in an area with heavy traffic."
Think about the throughput. It only seems like driving in traffic is more dangerous because there are so many more cars, and pretty much proportionally more accidents. Driving in worse conditions is a bigger cause of accidents, in my understanding. Someone could reply with some numbers.
"Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"
No, you won't.
Unless you manage to provide the $5K+ (each) sensors needed to detect all exceptional cases, you have any breakthroughs.
Detecting a pedestrian in the street with 99.999% reliability needed is HARD. Not mowing over a golf club in you back yard is HARD. Not falling over or running into things is HARD.
As soon as people realize that autonomous hardware needs to react in real time to a dynamic, complex real world, the efforts to compare PCs to robots will stop.
Think about it this way: humans use sensors that are hundreds of times higher resolution, and processors that are thousands of times faster. What makes you think you can do it on the cheap?. And don't start talking about ants or bees! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW ANYTHING BUT A HUMAN DRIVE A CAR IN ALL CONDITIONS?
Open standards are fine, but don't believe the exponential growth potential for anything but software.
Epi I's stress on Maul can be redeemed if the droid General Grievous is actually darth Maul saved from death.
He has biological looking eyes, and otherwise it would make no sense to have a droid that can use the force. Why not make the entire droid army have force powers?
I guess making 0 sense hasn't stopped Lucas in the past.
"...SIMULATIONS SUGGEST that over the NEXT HUNDRED YEARS we COULD see AVERAGE rise temperatures of UP TO 11K" ::Simulations are not reality. ::Suggestions are not difinitive. ::100 years is a great deal of time to extend a simulation over. ::Potential outcomes are not a certain path. ::Averages mask information. ::Upper bounds are misleading.
Serious, too often ignored, questions:
1) Is it serious, i.e. causes big problems?
2) Is it caused by humans?
3) Is the cost of stopping negative effects lower than the cost of the negative effects?
4) Is there an alternative?
What is known now:
1) Who knows... worst case forecasts trumped up to guarantee continued funding for one's research projects are over-excited at best and morally bankrupt at worst.
2) Who knows... could be natural cycles or the sun.
3) Probably not...Kyoto would cost America $200-300B/yr for decades, and save little compared with money spent on research into alternative fuels or space energy mining.
4) Growth & Wealth
The real protection against nature is the wealth that arises from free societies. The third world would not only pollute less if they entered the first world, but they would also be much better prepared to handle any possible problems.
Compare the earthquakes in Iran last year to those in California. Or the system to prevent casualties from tsunamis in Japan to the non-existent system in nations recently affected.
The body count from the recent tsunamis is close to 300,000. Who are environmentalists kidding themselves to say potential global warming is a greater threat than other natural disasters, malaria, and poverty in general?
Note that there is a difference between life span and life expectancy. The former is a biological limit, and the latter is s trick of statisticians.
Some animals have infinite life span, like crocodiles. Others, like humans, have anomalies that guarantee death on a long enough time line.
If you want to live forever, just get rid of the anomalies, as de Grey suggests.
Cato is not a news source but is openly for free societies. I knew they run Socialsecurity.org, and have extensively read about SS from a large number of perspectives. I agree with their assessment that it is unfair to have such a low rate of return with the current arrangement and democratizing to have private accounts make every American join the investor class.
Also, just because they are the source does not invalidate the volumes of argumentation presented there.
I highly recommend their very specific and highly justified yearly recommendations to Congress. It is rare to have a group with such a consistent world view. Find it online here.
Would you rather have a $10K or $7K raise?
You would work harder for the $10K right? Higher marginal tax rates suppress growth.
Would you hire an accountant if he could get you that extra $3K if you only got the $7K? Would you accept $2k in benefits over nothing? High tax rates cause avoidance of taxes. Low tax rates make the cost of avoidance higher than the benefit
Would you be more likely to start a business if you knew that you would be taxed on revenue even before you made a profit, making it a more risky venture? High marginal tax rates suppress growth. Look at Belgium if you're curious about tax evasion.
Decreasing taxes increases growth.
Look here for some more intuition.
The problems with the budget today have to do with overspending, and not under-taxing.