large uncontrolled budget, with unlimited spending increases, and zero common fiscal sense.
In terms of military budgets, $230M is nothing. We have other boondoggles that have burned through a thousand times that. In fact, this program is such a trivial amount, I suspect it is being emphasized to distract people from the real waste. The F35 program burns through $230M every three days.
A typical republican budget plan.
This program was proposed by the Obama administration, and passed by congress with plenty of votes from both parties.
In a country who's infrastructure is crumbling; roads, bridges, fresh/waste water systems, electrical grid - failure to fix public works projects IS a threat to our security
The scaremongering about our "crumbling infrastructure" comes mostly from ASCE, construction companies, and politicians trying to get pork for their district. These are all special interest groups with their snout in the trough. There is little evidence that our infrastructure is actually getting worse. On a per capita basis, infrastructure failures such as bridge collapses, are less common than they were a generation ago.
It would be really sad if all we had were the 326 grams of lunar soil returned by the Luna missions.
For the cost of Apollo, we could have sent hundreds of robotic missions. The human missions were just a few days each. The robots can continue to work for years.
Not sure why you need more than one cycle, named "Dirty". What other kinds of dishes would you wash??
My OCD wife pre-washes the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. So the dishwasher just needs to rinse the detergent off them. So, of course, she uses the "heavy duty" cycle to do that.
Maybe doorknobs would use fingerprint recognition so that doors could only be opened or closed by chosen people at chosen times.
Face recognition would be a better way to achieve that. Fingerprint recognition won't work if the user is wearing gloves, and you would still have all the old drawbacks of doorknobs, including spreading disease, difficult to open when carrying things, difficult to use if in a wheelchair or using crutches, etc.
It is BS because there is no reason to connect a doorknob to the Internet. Once a door is smart enough, it can open itself, and there won't be a doorknob. I was once with a friend who missed his bus. He said he wished he had a Star Trek transporter... so he could beam himself to the next bus stop. Wishing for a "smart doorknob" is the same sort of small minded thinking.
It's a "big social issue" in the sense that there is a lot of press coverage
The social media is driving the press coverage, not the other way around. Laquan McDonald was killed a year ago, but nobody heard about it until two weeks ago, when the video was posted on YouTube.
not in the sense that it actually affects the daily lives of a lot of people.
The Holocaust didn't affect the lives of most Germans. Some of us actually care about living in a fair and just society.
Those who want change, act, Those who want to talk about change, post.
Even talking about change is better than just doing nothing and ignoring the issue. A big social issue in America today is abusive policing, with an anti-black bias. Violent cops are going to jail, police chiefs are getting fired, body cameras are being deployed. The situation isn't changing because of a few vocal activists, but because of broad awareness of the issue, mainly through Youtube and Facebook.
When you see millions views on a video of a black kid being gunned down, it is silly to say that is bad because those viewers aren't marching in the street. Instead, you should say that it is good, because those millions of people are finally aware of an issue that has long been ignored. On election day, perhaps they will have second thoughts about voting for the district attorney that is endorsed by the police union.
The whole point of doing computing in the cloud is to handle variable demand. I spend 98% of my time writing and debugging code, and only 2% running the final model. But when I run it, I want to do it at scale. On AWS I can rent a dozen K80 GPUs for a few hours a week. There is no way it would make sense to own them, even if I could afford to do that.
So the military wants a device that violates the conditions and implied license associated with the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz ISM bands eh?
The problem with drones is not the frequency that they transmit, but that they fly where they aren't supposed to be. My cellphone's WiFi also uses 2.4GHz. That doesn't mean I can legally rob a bank while carrying it.
They haven't been able to point to a single instance where the TSA has prevented an attack.
The TSA's goal is not to catch terrorists in the act, but to deter them from even trying. I am not saying that the TSA is effective, I am just pointing out that the absence of attempts is not a negative indicator of the TSA's effectiveness.
There are many flavors of nerdism. You can be a software nerd without being a hardware nerd. I remember buying books by Forrest Mimms from Radio Shack when I was a teenager, and those books got me started in electronics. But quite a few software oriented people don't even own a soldering iron, and have no idea what to do with an oscilloscope. They are still nerds.
you are counting on Slashdot to do your graduate project for you?
No, the submitter is just asking for ideas. 99% of the work is the implementation, and the submitter is not asking for any help with that.
My 2 cents: The two problems to avoid are: 1) Groupthink, where dissenting opinion are drowned out or ignored. 2) Onerous or arbitrary rules that drive away experts, so you are left with only clueless idiots commiserating with each other (example: answers.yahoo.com).
How can you know that about a technology that isn't even built yet?
Because it is built, and has already been tested over millions of miles of driving. Many of the specific technologies, like adaptive cruise control, and automatic lane following, are already installed in millions of cars.
So when will they be able to handle round-abouts and unmarked lanes?
I don't know about roundabouts, but Tesla Autopilot, can already handle unmarked lanes. Tesla collects GPS data while you are driving. So if you drive down a street with unmarked lanes, it just follows the same path as other Teslas that have driven down the same street. My street has no lane markings, and my wife's Tesla can drive it on Autopilot with no problems. So this is a solved problem, and the solution is already in use by consumers.
The question is do you throw it all out because of the bad things, then let the teachers work for near poverty wages?
All or nothing are not the only options. You can allow collective bargaining for wages, without allowing union interference in other areas, such as testing and classroom management. This is how it is done in several states, including Wisconsin.
Schools without unions are private, meaning they get lots more money than public schools
Charter schools are seldom unionized. They are publicly funded, and often receive less per student than public schools. They also are not allowed to select their students, and must take anyone who applies, ether on a first-applied-first-admitted basis, or by lottery.
Private school teachers are paid more than public school teachers
Nonsense. Most private school teachers are paid significantly less than public school teachers.
Family emphasis on scholastics outweigh anything else.
Several studies, described in Freakonomics and elsewhere, found that this is not true. Parental attitudes make surprisingly little difference. Who the parents are, makes far more difference that what the parents do. Family income, and the IQ of the biological parents (but not adoptive parents) makes much more difference than reading to your kids, helping them with homework, etc.
The TV is just always on while they're home and doing other things.
I was listening to NPR, and the interviewee mentioned that her research showed that for 40% of American children, the TV was on, and visible, during all three meals.
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
I had an aunt that married an ex-wehrmacht soldier. When I was a kid, he used to tell us some fascinating stories about the war. He said that the German tanks were ten times better than the American tanks... but the Americans always had that 11th tank. Sometimes quantity matters more than quality.
Yes they are. I will buy one as soon as they are available, because I would much rather read, sleep, or just daydream, rather than stare at the back bumper of the car ahead of me. So will many others, including millions of elderly, blind, and handicapped people.
Slashdot Mirror
large uncontrolled budget, with unlimited spending increases, and zero common fiscal sense.
In terms of military budgets, $230M is nothing. We have other boondoggles that have burned through a thousand times that. In fact, this program is such a trivial amount, I suspect it is being emphasized to distract people from the real waste. The F35 program burns through $230M every three days.
A typical republican budget plan.
This program was proposed by the Obama administration, and passed by congress with plenty of votes from both parties.
In a country who's infrastructure is crumbling; roads, bridges, fresh/waste water systems, electrical grid - failure to fix public works projects IS a threat to our security
The scaremongering about our "crumbling infrastructure" comes mostly from ASCE, construction companies, and politicians trying to get pork for their district. These are all special interest groups with their snout in the trough. There is little evidence that our infrastructure is actually getting worse. On a per capita basis, infrastructure failures such as bridge collapses, are less common than they were a generation ago.
It would be really sad if all we had were the 326 grams of lunar soil returned by the Luna missions.
For the cost of Apollo, we could have sent hundreds of robotic missions. The human missions were just a few days each. The robots can continue to work for years.
Not sure why you need more than one cycle, named "Dirty". What other kinds of dishes would you wash??
My OCD wife pre-washes the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. So the dishwasher just needs to rinse the detergent off them. So, of course, she uses the "heavy duty" cycle to do that.
Maybe doorknobs would use fingerprint recognition so that doors could only be opened or closed by chosen people at chosen times.
Face recognition would be a better way to achieve that. Fingerprint recognition won't work if the user is wearing gloves, and you would still have all the old drawbacks of doorknobs, including spreading disease, difficult to open when carrying things, difficult to use if in a wheelchair or using crutches, etc.
It is BS because there is no reason to connect a doorknob to the Internet. Once a door is smart enough, it can open itself, and there won't be a doorknob. I was once with a friend who missed his bus. He said he wished he had a Star Trek transporter ... so he could beam himself to the next bus stop. Wishing for a "smart doorknob" is the same sort of small minded thinking.
It's a "big social issue" in the sense that there is a lot of press coverage
The social media is driving the press coverage, not the other way around. Laquan McDonald was killed a year ago, but nobody heard about it until two weeks ago, when the video was posted on YouTube.
not in the sense that it actually affects the daily lives of a lot of people.
The Holocaust didn't affect the lives of most Germans. Some of us actually care about living in a fair and just society.
Those who want change, act, Those who want to talk about change, post.
Even talking about change is better than just doing nothing and ignoring the issue. A big social issue in America today is abusive policing, with an anti-black bias. Violent cops are going to jail, police chiefs are getting fired, body cameras are being deployed. The situation isn't changing because of a few vocal activists, but because of broad awareness of the issue, mainly through Youtube and Facebook.
When you see millions views on a video of a black kid being gunned down, it is silly to say that is bad because those viewers aren't marching in the street. Instead, you should say that it is good, because those millions of people are finally aware of an issue that has long been ignored. On election day, perhaps they will have second thoughts about voting for the district attorney that is endorsed by the police union.
Alternative: build your own private cloud
The whole point of doing computing in the cloud is to handle variable demand. I spend 98% of my time writing and debugging code, and only 2% running the final model. But when I run it, I want to do it at scale. On AWS I can rent a dozen K80 GPUs for a few hours a week. There is no way it would make sense to own them, even if I could afford to do that.
So the military wants a device that violates the conditions and implied license associated with the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz ISM bands eh?
The problem with drones is not the frequency that they transmit, but that they fly where they aren't supposed to be. My cellphone's WiFi also uses 2.4GHz. That doesn't mean I can legally rob a bank while carrying it.
They haven't been able to point to a single instance where the TSA has prevented an attack.
The TSA's goal is not to catch terrorists in the act, but to deter them from even trying. I am not saying that the TSA is effective, I am just pointing out that the absence of attempts is not a negative indicator of the TSA's effectiveness.
Hand your nerd card in at the door.
There are many flavors of nerdism. You can be a software nerd without being a hardware nerd. I remember buying books by Forrest Mimms from Radio Shack when I was a teenager, and those books got me started in electronics. But quite a few software oriented people don't even own a soldering iron, and have no idea what to do with an oscilloscope. They are still nerds.
you are counting on Slashdot to do your graduate project for you?
No, the submitter is just asking for ideas. 99% of the work is the implementation, and the submitter is not asking for any help with that.
My 2 cents: The two problems to avoid are: 1) Groupthink, where dissenting opinion are drowned out or ignored. 2) Onerous or arbitrary rules that drive away experts, so you are left with only clueless idiots commiserating with each other (example: answers.yahoo.com).
This is why I try to avoid using LOGO-TURTLE and Code Boogie for mission critical applications.
The problem is that "left" and "right" are ambiguous, unless the reference point is specified. It is better to use the unambiguous port and starboard.
Are technological advances actually necessary, or is it just a matter of gathering a lot more data with testing to refine the logic?
Faster hardware will also help. Most vision and AI algorithms are highly parallel, so more cores helps almost as much as faster cores.
Where would you say were are currently on that list?
Legally, we are at level 2. Technologically, we are at level 3.
What do you think it will take to get to level 4?
Two years.
How can you know that about a technology that isn't even built yet?
Because it is built, and has already been tested over millions of miles of driving. Many of the specific technologies, like adaptive cruise control, and automatic lane following, are already installed in millions of cars.
So when will they be able to handle round-abouts and unmarked lanes?
I don't know about roundabouts, but Tesla Autopilot, can already handle unmarked lanes. Tesla collects GPS data while you are driving. So if you drive down a street with unmarked lanes, it just follows the same path as other Teslas that have driven down the same street. My street has no lane markings, and my wife's Tesla can drive it on Autopilot with no problems. So this is a solved problem, and the solution is already in use by consumers.
The question is do you throw it all out because of the bad things, then let the teachers work for near poverty wages?
All or nothing are not the only options. You can allow collective bargaining for wages, without allowing union interference in other areas, such as testing and classroom management. This is how it is done in several states, including Wisconsin.
Schools without unions are private, meaning they get lots more money than public schools
Charter schools are seldom unionized. They are publicly funded, and often receive less per student than public schools. They also are not allowed to select their students, and must take anyone who applies, ether on a first-applied-first-admitted basis, or by lottery.
Private school teachers are paid more than public school teachers
Nonsense. Most private school teachers are paid significantly less than public school teachers.
Family emphasis on scholastics outweigh anything else.
Several studies, described in Freakonomics and elsewhere, found that this is not true. Parental attitudes make surprisingly little difference. Who the parents are, makes far more difference that what the parents do. Family income, and the IQ of the biological parents (but not adoptive parents) makes much more difference than reading to your kids, helping them with homework, etc.
The TV is just always on while they're home and doing other things.
I was listening to NPR, and the interviewee mentioned that her research showed that for 40% of American children, the TV was on, and visible, during all three meals.
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
Yes, and the Germans were very grateful.
I had an aunt that married an ex-wehrmacht soldier. When I was a kid, he used to tell us some fascinating stories about the war. He said that the German tanks were ten times better than the American tanks ... but the Americans always had that 11th tank. Sometimes quantity matters more than quality.
Self driving cars are not being demanded
Yes they are. I will buy one as soon as they are available, because I would much rather read, sleep, or just daydream, rather than stare at the back bumper of the car ahead of me. So will many others, including millions of elderly, blind, and handicapped people.