With the advances in computer vision these days there's a pretty good chance that your car will be able to see that deer or the idiot 2 cars up much quicker than you can.
I hear what you're saying about people who like to drive and I think there will always be people who feel that way. If I drop $400,000 on a new Porsche there's no way I'm letting a computer do all the driving.
However, the sad reality these days is that in most major metropolitan freeways you'd most likely be crawling along at 20 mph in the fast lane no matter how much you like driving. That's why I think having hybrid robot cars that can commute automatically and then drive manually on the side streets is a good solution.
The real problem, as I see it, would be how you transition from a system of millions of non-robot cars to a system where all the cars drive themselves.
I've always imagined that there should be something analogous to the carpool lane except that it would be for robot cars. A driver would be able to manually pull up beside the "robot lane" and request to join it. Then the other cars would automatically open up a spot and he would be automatically merged into the robot lane.
Once you have a convoy of vehicles that can automatically drive within a safe stopping distance of each other you can ramp up the speed of the robot lane so that everyone gets to work much faster and they can even read the paper on the way there.
The Semantic Web isn't about data, its about metadata. Metadata is often automatically extracted from the data itself and made available without any interaction from the user. So its not that fact that your data is published on the web that makes it a security risk, its the fact that a bunch of automatically generated metadata was added to it, possibly without your knowledge. Think of all the trouble that has come from Word document metadata being put on the web.
The problem is that no one is willing to manually annotate their data because time required usually outweighs the benefits so the only way to make the Semantic Web work is with tools that automatically annotate data as its processed.
And the stuff they've produced is still academic level. The average high school kid isn't going to be hacking OWL into his web pages.
The average high school kid has an RSS feed on their blog.
The average high school kid listens to MP3s tagged with IDV3 metadata.
The average high school kid annotates thier photos on Flickr with semantic metadata.
The average web user may not know what the Semantic Web is but that doesn't mean they're not using it.
You're absolutely right that metadata is far from being the silver bullet that some people have claimed it is espcially with respect to web searches. The problem of how to annotate 'everything' with metadata is also far from being a solved problem. I think most people (except maybe MS) have realised by now that users aren't going to annoatate every single file by hand so there's a lot of research into automatically tagging files. For example the excellent service MusicBrainz.
I really suggest you take a look at the microformats site to see some examples of how semantic annoatations are being worked into existing standards.
To my understanding, the semantic web doesn't attempt to map everything onto one global ontology. I see no reason why people wouldn't be able to publish multiple definitions of "chair" without somehow breaking the semantic web. There are features is most modern metedata formats to define relationships between similar objects so that a company in the US could define their version of a chair but link it to another definition of a chair at a museum in China simply by stating that the two object are similar. Obviously the company and the museum would have a different perspective on what makes a chair but in most cases there would be at least some overlap.
The beauty of having the entire framwork built on top of XML is that it allows you to parse through documents that your application may only partially understand and still manage to extract some relevant data. This means that if your ChairBot application is crawling around the semantic web and comes across several overlapping definitions of a chair it may not be able to recognize every single property of every single chair but its still much better than blindly following HTML hyperlinks around and trying to guess if something is a chair or not.
Could this be the start of mainstream Open Source robotics? I know this isn't the first DIY robot kit, nor will it be the last but if this really catches on I could see an open source community developing around it.
Also, I can definately see people developing their own components for these things. Paying $9.99 for a phototransistor is a little ridiculous if you know how to set one up on your own.
In the large multicultural cities its common to find all sorts of little subcommunities arranged by culture. So people in China Town or Little Italy or some other community can get by speaking only their mother tongue. Of course everyone has to know at least some English to read traffic signs etc. but for things like legal advice or medical attention I think they would be more at ease in their native language.
This system is developed here in Canada. In Canada we have public health care so we don't have Chinese people going to Chinese clinics and English people going to English clinic, the majority of people go to the English/French hospitals which are free for everyone. In large multi-cultural cities like Toronto and Montreal this would be very useful.
If you're looking for applications outside of Canada, think of the Red Cross and thier emergency relief efforts. If an earthquake happens in Pakistan would you only send people who speak Punjabi or whould you prefer to send anyone who has medical expertise?
The semantic web expects everyone to agree on one ontological framework (one master ontology)..
The Semantic Web does not expect everyone to agree on one ontological framework. At the core of the Semantic Web Architecture is the concept of XML namespaces which allow you to differentiate overlapping ontologies. In other words, the Semantic Web is designed to take into account different views of the same domains and provides mechanisms to map between these different views.
The problem is that this process puts far far far too much responsiblity on the web page author. First, they must be aware of this obsecure project. Second, they must understand ontologies and markup their pages honestly. Third, they must maintain this knowledge against shifting ontologies, and the drift of human language both geographically and over time.
The problem of effeciently creating, managing and maintaining semantic metadata is a valid concern but I believe it is something that can eventually be solved. There are already many examples of technology which can automatically extract metadata from webpages, mp3s and other forms of media. Even ontology creation can be automated to some degree.
I think your biggest misconception is that you see the Semantic Web as something which is suppose to replace the existing web with some kind of magical AI. The Semantic Web is merely suppose to opperate in parallel to the existing web structure much the same way RSS feeds or bittorrents do. Some site might contain metadata, others won't. Some ontologies will overlap, some domains won't be covered by any ontology. The point is not to store all human knowledge in one large, machine-readable file, it's to create a set of tools which researchers can use to express _some_ of the complex relationships between concepts within a specific domain.
Quit pimping the semantic web. It only makes you look ignorate in the eyes of the AI community.
While I agree that the Semantic Web has been 'pimped' a little more than it should have I know that semantic reasoning and knowledge-based systems are far from being viewed as "ignorate" concepts in the eyes of the AI community.
So how would that be any different than if MS released their patches immediately and then corporations that choose to could wait it out and deploy the patches on their own regular intervals? While the rest of the world could actually secure their computers in a timely fashion.
The only advantage is that this method lets MS slack off for a month and IT departments can artificially inflate their 'metrics'. Neither of which improve security for anyone.
If if Daimler-Chrysler was caught road-testing a 2003 PT Cruiser painted grey with glaring, visible defects, they'd probably be pulling the same stunt.
Ok then, how about we take this one step further. In order to provide productive learning environments free of 'inherant negativity' you should consider having seperate school boards for American children who's parent's support the Republicans and those who support the Democrats.
Of course, the schools for Democrat children might not get the same sort of funding the Republican schools would get, but thats normal right? You can't expect the government to provide for 'those that would have us kicked out of town'.
Now tell me what education has to do with politics. Then explain how telecommunications relates to politics.
Nobody, but then where's the RSS feed for Family Guy? And how long do you think it will take to download a movie trailer at whatever blazing-fast internet connection phones come with these days.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that TV on a cellphone will change the world, but it makes more sense than than say slapping a 2 megapixel camera on the back (and we've all seen how well those are doing).
This could be another great way to stream localised data to cellphones via low power transmitters.
For example, you could have a subway scheduals when your in the subway, movie trailers when your waiting in line at the theatre etc.
In other words, if the safe where you keep all your money is secured with two keys, you don't mind to allow one of these keys to be secretly duplicated?
Pretty much, yeah. Since the safe can only be opened with both keys present, having one of the keys gives you absolutely no more access than having no keys at all.Public-key cryptographic systems (like PGP) are based around thses types of concepts.
Why is this a "Big Brother" scheme? It seems pretty obvious to me that no one in their right mind would actually store all the information (name, date, picture etc.) ON THE CARD.
All that they would store on the card would be some sort of unique ID which could query your information from a secure DMV database
So if someone were to sniff my RFID driver's license and find out that I'm "00983a02f0724e902c83b704"....big deal, it's not like they can create fake ID without access to the secure database on which all the data would be stored.
In my opinion, unless Diebold is bidding on this contract, there doesn't really seem to be that much of a risk to you and me.
"..scientists are reporting that the Sun seems to have originated in the Utah desert."
Oh great, that's all we need. Now SCO will be claiming they own the sun. Expect to see LightSource licenses selling in the $699 ball-park within the next couple of months.
once those leaks are sealed and only authorized eyes see these documents, you can bet that whistleblowing on nefarious activities will come to a halt.
Okay, so is it on odd numbered days that we're against security? I always thought it was the even ones...or does mentioning M$ trump the whole scheme?
Seriously though, you can't actually ask for insecure software so that whistleblowers can save us all from the evils of the world. No whistles would ever have needed to have been blown had the State done it's homework and invested in a secure and auditable system.
... also, Mike Rowe is looking to relocate his software company to www.---.com. However, a representative from Dash, a leading launndry detergent company, has said that they will agressively protect their copyright at all cost.
Are you trying to say that the army developed this game to encourage thier soldiers to be more violent by making them play violent video games? I think thats quite a stretch.
Really, I think they have much easier ways of weeding out the pacifists (if there are any?).
In my opinion, these games act mostly as marketing tools to show how "fun" it is to be a soldier. In the end, one 'leet soldier will still have no trouble taking out 10 'leet gamers trained on these games.
(If the parent was meant to be sarcastic I apologize, at the time of my response it is modded Insightful)
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With the advances in computer vision these days there's a pretty good chance that your car will be able to see that deer or the idiot 2 cars up much quicker than you can.
I hear what you're saying about people who like to drive and I think there will always be people who feel that way. If I drop $400,000 on a new Porsche there's no way I'm letting a computer do all the driving.
However, the sad reality these days is that in most major metropolitan freeways you'd most likely be crawling along at 20 mph in the fast lane no matter how much you like driving. That's why I think having hybrid robot cars that can commute automatically and then drive manually on the side streets is a good solution.
The real problem, as I see it, would be how you transition from a system of millions of non-robot cars to a system where all the cars drive themselves.
I've always imagined that there should be something analogous to the carpool lane except that it would be for robot cars. A driver would be able to manually pull up beside the "robot lane" and request to join it. Then the other cars would automatically open up a spot and he would be automatically merged into the robot lane.
Once you have a convoy of vehicles that can automatically drive within a safe stopping distance of each other you can ramp up the speed of the robot lane so that everyone gets to work much faster and they can even read the paper on the way there.
The problem is that no one is willing to manually annotate their data because time required usually outweighs the benefits so the only way to make the Semantic Web work is with tools that automatically annotate data as its processed.
It's free as in the t-shirt that comes with the 2-4 of beer.
And the stuff they've produced is still academic level. The average high school kid isn't going to be hacking OWL into his web pages.
The average high school kid has an RSS feed on their blog.
The average high school kid listens to MP3s tagged with IDV3 metadata.
The average high school kid annotates thier photos on Flickr with semantic metadata.
The average web user may not know what the Semantic Web is but that doesn't mean they're not using it.
I really suggest you take a look at the microformats site to see some examples of how semantic annoatations are being worked into existing standards.
The beauty of having the entire framwork built on top of XML is that it allows you to parse through documents that your application may only partially understand and still manage to extract some relevant data. This means that if your ChairBot application is crawling around the semantic web and comes across several overlapping definitions of a chair it may not be able to recognize every single property of every single chair but its still much better than blindly following HTML hyperlinks around and trying to guess if something is a chair or not.
Also, I can definately see people developing their own components for these things. Paying $9.99 for a phototransistor is a little ridiculous if you know how to set one up on your own.
In the large multicultural cities its common to find all sorts of little subcommunities arranged by culture. So people in China Town or Little Italy or some other community can get by speaking only their mother tongue. Of course everyone has to know at least some English to read traffic signs etc. but for things like legal advice or medical attention I think they would be more at ease in their native language.
If you're looking for applications outside of Canada, think of the Red Cross and thier emergency relief efforts. If an earthquake happens in Pakistan would you only send people who speak Punjabi or whould you prefer to send anyone who has medical expertise?
The Semantic Web does not expect everyone to agree on one ontological framework. At the core of the Semantic Web Architecture is the concept of XML namespaces which allow you to differentiate overlapping ontologies. In other words, the Semantic Web is designed to take into account different views of the same domains and provides mechanisms to map between these different views.
The problem of effeciently creating, managing and maintaining semantic metadata is a valid concern but I believe it is something that can eventually be solved. There are already many examples of technology which can automatically extract metadata from webpages, mp3s and other forms of media. Even ontology creation can be automated to some degree.
I think your biggest misconception is that you see the Semantic Web as something which is suppose to replace the existing web with some kind of magical AI. The Semantic Web is merely suppose to opperate in parallel to the existing web structure much the same way RSS feeds or bittorrents do. Some site might contain metadata, others won't. Some ontologies will overlap, some domains won't be covered by any ontology. The point is not to store all human knowledge in one large, machine-readable file, it's to create a set of tools which researchers can use to express _some_ of the complex relationships between concepts within a specific domain.
While I agree that the Semantic Web has been 'pimped' a little more than it should have I know that semantic reasoning and knowledge-based systems are far from being viewed as "ignorate" concepts in the eyes of the AI community.
The only advantage is that this method lets MS slack off for a month and IT departments can artificially inflate their 'metrics'. Neither of which improve security for anyone.
If if Daimler-Chrysler was caught road-testing a 2003 PT Cruiser painted grey with glaring, visible defects, they'd probably be pulling the same stunt.
Ok then, how about we take this one step further. In order to provide productive learning environments free of 'inherant negativity' you should consider having seperate school boards for American children who's parent's support the Republicans and those who support the Democrats.
Of course, the schools for Democrat children might not get the same sort of funding the Republican schools would get, but thats normal right? You can't expect the government to provide for 'those that would have us kicked out of town'.
Now tell me what education has to do with politics. Then explain how telecommunications relates to politics.
Either way, its still some pretty cool tech.
Nobody, but then where's the RSS feed for Family Guy? And how long do you think it will take to download a movie trailer at whatever blazing-fast internet connection phones come with these days.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that TV on a cellphone will change the world, but it makes more sense than than say slapping a 2 megapixel camera on the back (and we've all seen how well those are doing).
This could be another great way to stream localised data to cellphones via low power transmitters.
For example, you could have a subway scheduals when your in the subway, movie trailers when your waiting in line at the theatre etc.
Last I heard, the turd-shaped mac was doing pretty well. =P
Pretty much, yeah. Since the safe can only be opened with both keys present, having one of the keys gives you absolutely no more access than having no keys at all.Public-key cryptographic systems (like PGP) are based around thses types of concepts.
All that they would store on the card would be some sort of unique ID which could query your information from a secure DMV database
So if someone were to sniff my RFID driver's license and find out that I'm "00983a02f0724e902c83b704"....big deal, it's not like they can create fake ID without access to the secure database on which all the data would be stored.
In my opinion, unless Diebold is bidding on this contract, there doesn't really seem to be that much of a risk to you and me.
Oh great, that's all we need. Now SCO will be claiming they own the sun. Expect to see LightSource licenses selling in the $699 ball-park within the next couple of months.
Okay, so is it on odd numbered days that we're against security? I always thought it was the even ones...or does mentioning M$ trump the whole scheme?
Seriously though, you can't actually ask for insecure software so that whistleblowers can save us all from the evils of the world.
No whistles would ever have needed to have been blown had the State done it's homework and invested in a secure and auditable system.
I'm sure there are plenty of Russian hackers working on the Firefox project as well.
You see, not all hackers are bad, even the Russian ones. =P
... also, Mike Rowe is looking to relocate his software company to www.---.com. However, a representative from Dash, a leading launndry detergent company, has said that they will agressively protect their copyright at all cost.
Really, I think they have much easier ways of weeding out the pacifists (if there are any?).
In my opinion, these games act mostly as marketing tools to show how "fun" it is to be a soldier. In the end, one 'leet soldier will still have no trouble taking out 10 'leet gamers trained on these games.
(If the parent was meant to be sarcastic I apologize, at the time of my response it is modded Insightful)