I like the way you think. Color outside the box? What box! A technology such as this could have many positive applications as well. Need to learn how to fly a helicopter in an emergency? Flash. Done. It is a good question whether skills can be evoked in the same manner these experimenters have activated memories.
Assuming the analysis is correct and these games are NP-hard, then what is interesting is not that some of us failed miserably at the games but so very many people did quite well. The human brain is a special-purpose computer that excels at solving problems critical to the species' survival. This suggests to me that reformulating problems of interest into a form that the brain can process (e.g., video games) might be an excellent way to tap the computational power of the brain. Wouldn't it be interesting if the millions of brains playing games were actually solving major problems in physics, biochemistry, etc.? Call it "crowd-sourced computation".
Space combat, to the extent that weapons would need to be brought within relatively short distance to a target and positioned, might be somewhat like combat between the great sailing ships. Instead of the wind, a ship would need to work with -- and against -- gravity.
Changing orbits requires a lot of energy to apply well calibrated force in a given direction. This speeds up the ship, slows it down, etc. It takes lots more energy to change an orbit out of the plane of the Solar ecliptic. We typically refer to these energy requirements in terms of "delta-V" which means just what you think it does. Knowing how to wisely spend the energy on board to bring your ship into firing position would be a fine art of combat in space. Skillful energy management means knowing how to navigate by using single and multi-body gravity to your advantage because that can give you essential free delta-V (e.g., like the various "slingshot" maneuvers deep spacecraft now use to get to the outer planets). The Lagrange points around every massive body (there are 5) are points of gravitational equilibrium. Something positioned there doesn't move (much) relative to the nearby mass bodies. L points can also be orbited in various ways. The lowest energy trajectories in the Solar System are between Lagrange points -- but that can take a long time. Fast, more direct routes take much more energy. How long can you accelerate? How long should you coast? Interplanetary navigation is extremely hard and not many people in the world today can do it well.
Combat would be a chess game of picking trajectories, changes in orbits, keeping options open as long as possible so not to tip your hand to the enemy, and feints to mislead them about your intentions. Once committed, it is likely that many engagements would be very high speed passes. So fast that human reaction time would be far too slow. That means the ballet of space combat would be worked out well in advance and handled in real-time by computers, along with any contingent actions requiring speed.
Another key point is that with the distance between ships in deep space necessarily come light-time delays. Two ships separated by a distance on par with Earth and Jupiter would experience a one-way light time delay of around 9 hours. That means they are seeing what the enemy did 9 hours ago! So predicting an enemy's moves is very important -- and very hard. Firing ballistic kinetic weapons at a distance would be EXTREMELY problematic, although if you could predict where a ship would be a kinetic weapon would do massive damage due to the relative velocity involved. Energy weapons might very well deplete your total energy for maneuvering, so that is another tradeoff to manage.
So I agree with other posters -- space combat would be mostly very boring for everyone apart from the planning of the engagement and the actual firing of weapons -- possibly being on the receiving end of weapon effects.
Great topic!
This kind of thing has been around a long time in the diplomatic community. I'm familiar with one company in California that provides these in various styles to governments world-wide. The briefcases carried by most high profile State Dept. employees are armored and they are taught to cover their torso with them if a shooting incident unfolds. Clipboards are a great idea. Maybe we should give them also to teachers, convenience store clerks, etc. I'll wage that some OWS protestors in Oakland and elsewhere could have used the armor too! I say armor power-ups for everyone.
When I first read this headline I saw, "Robot with mind controls man with quadriplegia". Now that would be real news. Imagine my disappointment. Brains controlling robot arms is OLD. O. L. D.
If this happened to me I would make a big scene, refuse to turn over the camera and also charge anyone who tried to take away my camera with assault and theft. If the mall guards detained me I would arrest them for false imprisonment.
People cannot go like sheep. You must fight back with barred teeth.
This is an excellent strategy to confuse the algorithm, but I wouldn't be too random with it or it could be detected. Only tag people who somewhat resemble you. It should help both of you!
I AM SPARTACUS!!
A better strategy might be to start tagging strangers who sorta resemble you with your name. In essence, you would be "blurring" out distinguishing features from the algorithm.
If you want to get an idea of what the black world has in the way of technology, do a reasonable extrapolation of what you see now to 10 years in the future. You will miss the truly breakthrough stuff, but you will catch everything that requires incremental change.
"I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good master cobweb... If I cut my finger, I shall make bold of you."
- The character Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
"After injecting spider genes into a goat, a silk-like material, dubbed BioSteel®, is extracted from the goat's milk. Because of its compatibility with the human body, BioSteel appears to have some remarkable real-life applications (artificial limbs, tendons and ligaments). It is stronger than steel with a breaking strength of 300,000 pounds per square inch."
This research was being done by a company called "Nexia Technologies", which unfortunately went bankrupt. One might ask what happened to the goats. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research took an interest and rescued them. There is an interesting story associated with that at The Story of the Transgenic Goats (continued).
This is guaranteed to have many applications from the useful to the beautiful to the absurd. Combine this with recent research on direct neuro-electronic interfaces (see for example multiple papers at link below) and you now have interesting possibilities for sending and receiving signals to/from devices on the skin -- or across the room. Directly stimulating cells in the skin responsible for detecting pressure, heat and so forth might enable more compelling virtual or augmented realities. Combine with LED technology and you could have moving full-color tattoos. Amazing and exciting!
I've been getting the print version of ScienceNews (bi-weekly) for 40 years. The online version http://www.sciencenews.org/ is just as good. There are many other good sites out there of course. This is one I can vouch for as a scientist without hesitation.
Agreed 100%. As an undergrad I majored in psychology and did a CS major on the side. Psychology has been huge for me as far as developing user interfaces, understanding reasonable assignment of function to human vs. computer in larger systems, and most importantly for my research in artificial intelligence. My philosophy classes as an undergraduate, especially those focusing on formal logic, automata theory and epistemology have been very useful. I could go on and on.
If you want to be a technician, a computer programmer, then you don't need a CS degree. If you want to really understand WHY you do what you do when you design, develop, and deploy systems, then a broader grounding in sciences and humanities is required. Frankly, there is more to having a Bachelor degree than simply qualifying for a job -- it means you have a certain breadth of education to enable you to go on to further study, and more importantly, it educates you as a citizen of the world to a level you are very unlikely to reach in any other way.
That said, if college is not right for you, don't do it. Too many people go to college thinking that is what they have to do. Most undergraduate programs are crappy and far too many people drop out of school. Go to school only if you have a hunger to learn.
It sure isn't going to use that fancy new heat shield to enter Mars atmosphere either, much less land with parachutes! That PR picture of it in Mars orbit is really one of NASA's more egregious lies.
So here is the story: inside NASA, "Deep Space" used to mean (prior to 2003) anything beyond the orbit of the Moon. This was intended to be the domain of work for science and telecommunications ops of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an FFRDC operated by Caltech as a NASA center. Inside the Moon's orbit was the domain of scientific work for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This included Earth observing science and telecom as well as astrophysics spacecraft. During the Constellation program, when simply returning to the Moon was not enough justification for the program and seeking a way to justify control of the design of deep space telecom for manned spaceflight, the Constellation Program Office at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and NASA GSFC sought to redefine deep space as anything beyond HEO. This was also an attempt by GSFC to put JPL's Deep Space Interplanetary Network (aka "DSN) on the sideline of the design process for Constellation deep space telecom. (Furthermore, GSFC at the time was lobbying to get new Earth orbiting telecom spacecraft launched and needed additional justification, ergo "they are good for Constellation"). I don't think the issue was every resolved one way or another as far as "official" definitions go and in the end, not much changed before Constellation was cancelled. The lesson is this: Words like "deep space" can mean a lot when government research centers are fighting to protect their charters and business base. I'm glad I'm out of that biz!
This is simply a rebranded Orion capsule. I worked on Constellation (from inside NASA) for years and helped the program get started. There is no rocket to launch the capsule. There is no mission for it. Nothing on the books, nothing remotely near ready for approval.
Just how "deep" into space will it go with a mission time of 21 days? Hint: The Moon is not "deep space". Mars is deep space. Mars is at least 6 months away - one direction. Finally, how many times (altogether now) have we heard "advanced avionics"? That means they are up to Web 0.42 now, maybe.
Bottom line: This is pure pork for Lockheed-Martin (Lockheed HQ is in Maryland; Dem. Senator Mikulski is on the Appropriation Committee). It is a multiple billion dollar gift. It will never fly. Ever. I'll bet a fair share of the related jobs go to Houston and to Huntsville, AL (Rep. Sen. Shelby, also on the Appropriations committee).
No they won't. g-mod organisms, stem cell research, cloning, synthetic biology, ethical treatment of robots... none of these issue will ever be something that comes before voters. No decisions by voters matter. Scientific advance and technological engineering HAPPENS. All this will simply be part of the emerging future. The tragedy is the danger of a populace ill equipped to deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the way you think. Color outside the box? What box! A technology such as this could have many positive applications as well. Need to learn how to fly a helicopter in an emergency? Flash. Done. It is a good question whether skills can be evoked in the same manner these experimenters have activated memories.
Assuming the analysis is correct and these games are NP-hard, then what is interesting is not that some of us failed miserably at the games but so very many people did quite well. The human brain is a special-purpose computer that excels at solving problems critical to the species' survival. This suggests to me that reformulating problems of interest into a form that the brain can process (e.g., video games) might be an excellent way to tap the computational power of the brain. Wouldn't it be interesting if the millions of brains playing games were actually solving major problems in physics, biochemistry, etc.? Call it "crowd-sourced computation".
Apart from the energy sources used, the physics of space battles in planetary systems is very well thought out in these books.
Space combat, to the extent that weapons would need to be brought within relatively short distance to a target and positioned, might be somewhat like combat between the great sailing ships. Instead of the wind, a ship would need to work with -- and against -- gravity. Changing orbits requires a lot of energy to apply well calibrated force in a given direction. This speeds up the ship, slows it down, etc. It takes lots more energy to change an orbit out of the plane of the Solar ecliptic. We typically refer to these energy requirements in terms of "delta-V" which means just what you think it does. Knowing how to wisely spend the energy on board to bring your ship into firing position would be a fine art of combat in space. Skillful energy management means knowing how to navigate by using single and multi-body gravity to your advantage because that can give you essential free delta-V (e.g., like the various "slingshot" maneuvers deep spacecraft now use to get to the outer planets). The Lagrange points around every massive body (there are 5) are points of gravitational equilibrium. Something positioned there doesn't move (much) relative to the nearby mass bodies. L points can also be orbited in various ways. The lowest energy trajectories in the Solar System are between Lagrange points -- but that can take a long time. Fast, more direct routes take much more energy. How long can you accelerate? How long should you coast? Interplanetary navigation is extremely hard and not many people in the world today can do it well. Combat would be a chess game of picking trajectories, changes in orbits, keeping options open as long as possible so not to tip your hand to the enemy, and feints to mislead them about your intentions. Once committed, it is likely that many engagements would be very high speed passes. So fast that human reaction time would be far too slow. That means the ballet of space combat would be worked out well in advance and handled in real-time by computers, along with any contingent actions requiring speed. Another key point is that with the distance between ships in deep space necessarily come light-time delays. Two ships separated by a distance on par with Earth and Jupiter would experience a one-way light time delay of around 9 hours. That means they are seeing what the enemy did 9 hours ago! So predicting an enemy's moves is very important -- and very hard. Firing ballistic kinetic weapons at a distance would be EXTREMELY problematic, although if you could predict where a ship would be a kinetic weapon would do massive damage due to the relative velocity involved. Energy weapons might very well deplete your total energy for maneuvering, so that is another tradeoff to manage. So I agree with other posters -- space combat would be mostly very boring for everyone apart from the planning of the engagement and the actual firing of weapons -- possibly being on the receiving end of weapon effects. Great topic!
Put the armor on the back of an iPad. Also works as an area light if turned around.
This kind of thing has been around a long time in the diplomatic community. I'm familiar with one company in California that provides these in various styles to governments world-wide. The briefcases carried by most high profile State Dept. employees are armored and they are taught to cover their torso with them if a shooting incident unfolds. Clipboards are a great idea. Maybe we should give them also to teachers, convenience store clerks, etc. I'll wage that some OWS protestors in Oakland and elsewhere could have used the armor too! I say armor power-ups for everyone.
When I first read this headline I saw, "Robot with mind controls man with quadriplegia". Now that would be real news. Imagine my disappointment. Brains controlling robot arms is OLD. O. L. D.
If this happened to me I would make a big scene, refuse to turn over the camera and also charge anyone who tried to take away my camera with assault and theft. If the mall guards detained me I would arrest them for false imprisonment. People cannot go like sheep. You must fight back with barred teeth.
If you always use the same picture, you are making it VERY easy to aggregate information about you.
This is an excellent strategy to confuse the algorithm, but I wouldn't be too random with it or it could be detected. Only tag people who somewhat resemble you. It should help both of you! I AM SPARTACUS!!
A better strategy might be to start tagging strangers who sorta resemble you with your name. In essence, you would be "blurring" out distinguishing features from the algorithm.
If you want to get an idea of what the black world has in the way of technology, do a reasonable extrapolation of what you see now to 10 years in the future. You will miss the truly breakthrough stuff, but you will catch everything that requires incremental change.
If I resemble my naked sexy pics in 20 years I'll be a very happy man! Yeah, BABY!
Scientists have done this with dragonflies: Giant Dragonflies.
See also my post below about the adventures of the transgenic goats before they got to Wyoming, original at Transgenic goats
Here you go!
Arachnicillin
"I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good master cobweb... If I cut my finger, I shall make bold of you."
- The character Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
This research was being done by a company called "Nexia Technologies", which unfortunately went bankrupt. One might ask what happened to the goats. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research took an interest and rescued them. There is an interesting story associated with that at The Story of the Transgenic Goats (continued).
This is guaranteed to have many applications from the useful to the beautiful to the absurd. Combine this with recent research on direct neuro-electronic interfaces (see for example multiple papers at link below) and you now have interesting possibilities for sending and receiving signals to/from devices on the skin -- or across the room. Directly stimulating cells in the skin responsible for detecting pressure, heat and so forth might enable more compelling virtual or augmented realities. Combine with LED technology and you could have moving full-color tattoos. Amazing and exciting!
Neural Engineering (NER), 2011 5th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on
I've been getting the print version of ScienceNews (bi-weekly) for 40 years. The online version http://www.sciencenews.org/ is just as good. There are many other good sites out there of course. This is one I can vouch for as a scientist without hesitation.
Agreed 100%. As an undergrad I majored in psychology and did a CS major on the side. Psychology has been huge for me as far as developing user interfaces, understanding reasonable assignment of function to human vs. computer in larger systems, and most importantly for my research in artificial intelligence. My philosophy classes as an undergraduate, especially those focusing on formal logic, automata theory and epistemology have been very useful. I could go on and on. If you want to be a technician, a computer programmer, then you don't need a CS degree. If you want to really understand WHY you do what you do when you design, develop, and deploy systems, then a broader grounding in sciences and humanities is required. Frankly, there is more to having a Bachelor degree than simply qualifying for a job -- it means you have a certain breadth of education to enable you to go on to further study, and more importantly, it educates you as a citizen of the world to a level you are very unlikely to reach in any other way. That said, if college is not right for you, don't do it. Too many people go to college thinking that is what they have to do. Most undergraduate programs are crappy and far too many people drop out of school. Go to school only if you have a hunger to learn.
It sure isn't going to use that fancy new heat shield to enter Mars atmosphere either, much less land with parachutes! That PR picture of it in Mars orbit is really one of NASA's more egregious lies.
So here is the story: inside NASA, "Deep Space" used to mean (prior to 2003) anything beyond the orbit of the Moon. This was intended to be the domain of work for science and telecommunications ops of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an FFRDC operated by Caltech as a NASA center. Inside the Moon's orbit was the domain of scientific work for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This included Earth observing science and telecom as well as astrophysics spacecraft. During the Constellation program, when simply returning to the Moon was not enough justification for the program and seeking a way to justify control of the design of deep space telecom for manned spaceflight, the Constellation Program Office at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and NASA GSFC sought to redefine deep space as anything beyond HEO. This was also an attempt by GSFC to put JPL's Deep Space Interplanetary Network (aka "DSN) on the sideline of the design process for Constellation deep space telecom. (Furthermore, GSFC at the time was lobbying to get new Earth orbiting telecom spacecraft launched and needed additional justification, ergo "they are good for Constellation"). I don't think the issue was every resolved one way or another as far as "official" definitions go and in the end, not much changed before Constellation was cancelled. The lesson is this: Words like "deep space" can mean a lot when government research centers are fighting to protect their charters and business base. I'm glad I'm out of that biz!
This is simply a rebranded Orion capsule. I worked on Constellation (from inside NASA) for years and helped the program get started. There is no rocket to launch the capsule. There is no mission for it. Nothing on the books, nothing remotely near ready for approval. Just how "deep" into space will it go with a mission time of 21 days? Hint: The Moon is not "deep space". Mars is deep space. Mars is at least 6 months away - one direction. Finally, how many times (altogether now) have we heard "advanced avionics"? That means they are up to Web 0.42 now, maybe. Bottom line: This is pure pork for Lockheed-Martin (Lockheed HQ is in Maryland; Dem. Senator Mikulski is on the Appropriation Committee). It is a multiple billion dollar gift. It will never fly. Ever. I'll bet a fair share of the related jobs go to Houston and to Huntsville, AL (Rep. Sen. Shelby, also on the Appropriations committee).
No they won't. g-mod organisms, stem cell research, cloning, synthetic biology, ethical treatment of robots ... none of these issue will ever be something that comes before voters. No decisions by voters matter. Scientific advance and technological engineering HAPPENS. All this will simply be part of the emerging future. The tragedy is the danger of a populace ill equipped to deal with it.
I totally agree. Worse yet, they are actively opposed to it in their ignorance.