Believe it or not, some people just like doing certain things, regardless of monetary reward.
That is not what this is about. Some people, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, etc. believe that AI is a potential danger to humanity. Although capitalism is great at maximizing profits, it is not so great at collective moral responsibility. So they think a non-profit is a better vehicle for ethical AI.
Personally, I think they are being silly. Real human-level AI is still a ways off, and corporate AI is focused on solving practical problems rather than creating Skynet. Besides, AI is not something you can keep bottled up. Anyone with a GPU can do it.
If Apple can fix ZWave, Insteon, Zigbee, etc, I'll be happy.
If Apple makes a big move in home automation, I don't think they will use any of these crappy proprietary "standards". They will most likely design their own protocol.
It's more like Tesla having control of maintenance of battery etc.
No it isn't. The battery is part of the car. The hub and the bulbs are separate devices, that are supposed to work together using a standard interface, Z-Wave. But Z-Wave is a crappy standard, with a lot of holes in the specs, so things don't work well together. Philips should be working with other manufacturers to iron out those problems, rather than fragmenting the market even more, and making Z-Wave even more worthless than it already is.
Disclaimer: I have a Z-Wave home automation hub, and I am a very dissatisfied customer. If these companies don't work together to get these problems fixed, Z-Wave is going to fail just like X-10 did. This is potentially a huge market, and they are blowing it. If Z-Wave fails, then Apple will come along with iHome and take over the market.
How about we only require remote controlled aircraft large enough to carry a weapon to be registered...
The problem is not "weapons" but collisions. If a drone collides with a manned aircraft, it doesn't matter if it is carrying a weapon or not. Of course, a 250 gm drone is not going to fly high enough or be big enough to be a problem. This law is fine in principle, but is a big overreach in going after toys.
That is conjecture. Many scientists that have studied the issue believe that the deep ocean oxygen depletion will be minor (and your source actually says that). It will probably be better than more oceanic CO2. Iron fertilization of the oceans is something that has enormous potential, and should be researched much more aggressively.
Which is surprising since Trump is probably the least likely leader for social conservatives ever.
There is plenty of precedent. Reagan was their last hero, despite being a divorcee, almost never attending church, and having a pornographer for a son.
The Chinese do, and so do that Indians. They matter far more than America and Europe.
How many [carbon sinks] do we have to create?
One big one would be enough: Just sprinkle some iron sulfate on the surface of the ocean. The plankton bloom would not only suck up all the excess CO2, but would also cause a surge in fish stocks that could meet the world's need for protein.
FWIW the GS economists (who have a decent record predicting such things) expect it to stabilize around $45 a barrel
OPEC no longer has any control over oil prices. The world's swing producers are now American frackers. The cost per barrel of fracking has gone way down and is continuing to fall. It may temporarily plateau at $45, but then it should continue to creep downward as new innovations are implemented.
All we have to do is put the right people into office.
No way. That doesn't even work with HOAs, which are democracy on the smallest scale imaginable. I have never met anyone that likes their HOA, or feels they represent their interests. So how can it possibly work with a national government of 330 million people? The solution is not "the right people", because that will never happen, but the right systems, including checks and balances, and an adversarial relationship between bureaucrats and their legislative overseers. The first sign that we are on the right path, will be when we start treating whistleblowers as heroes rather than traitors.
More likely the usage of liquid manure from cows or pigs as fertilizer.
No. Farmers may spread cow/pig poop on a cornfield, but they do not, and cannot legally, spread fresh manure on produce that is eaten raw. They can use manure that is thoroughly composted, but by then the e-coli is long gone.
If they actually cooked the food properly instead of leaving it luke-warm, this wouldn't be a problem.
This has nothing to do with cooking. This is raw produce picked by farmworkers that didn't wash their hands after taking a dump. The solution is better field sanitation and better enforcement. The farmworkers need to have clean toilets, and they need to wash their hands in chlorinated water, and that hand washing needs to be mandatory and observed, with penalties for violations.
The republican position says that small government is the American ideal - except with regard to...
Also ethanol subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies, farm subsidies, massive funding for the military industrial complex, massive funding for the War on Drugs, etc. In other words, they don't actually support small government at all. That makes sense, since small government rhetoric wins votes, but small government policies do not.
The republicans should have long ago left the right out in the cold and come center (fiscally conservative, small government, socially progressive), they would've enjoyed a great deal more support than the religious right can provide
Those are the positions of the Libertarian Party, which typically gets less than 1% of the vote. You are vastly overestimating the level of support for small government and personal freedom. The Republican Party currently has their largest congressional majority since before the Great Depression. 2/3rds of governors are Republican, and most state legislatures are also dominated by Republicans. Pandering to social conservatives and authoritarians has been enormously successful.
... give out prizes to industrial leaders in the race to the absolute rock bottom.
Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms, at the expense of big corporate hotel chains. It is silly to say they are a sign of rampant corporate domination. They are the opposite. They are an enabler for the common people.
Disclaimer: I have been both a room renter and a room rentee on Airbnb. It was a good deal in both directions.
The problem is that GPL-like terms don't work directly
The GPL is not the only open source license. I agree that Open Hardware is not a way to get rich by restricting who can use your IP. But restricting how people can use it sort of goes against the whole point of being open. When I contribute a design to OpenCores, I consider it a gift to the world, and I am not looking for compensation. If a "big company" or a "Chinese manufacturer" want to use it, that is fine with me.
That being said, I have actually got some job offers and a good contracting gig because someone saw my email address in my design files on OpenCores.
copyright can't be asserted on schematics.
Schematics? Who uses schematics? This is 2015. Can copyright be asserted on a Verilog/VHDL file?
You can't keep them from building the hardware the schematic describes.
So? If you don't want people to build it, then why would you open source it? I read Bruce's slides and they make no sense to me. Basically he seems to be saying that Open Hardware is a problem because it is Open.
Disclaimer: I have contributed several designs to OpenCores.
And prospective employers might decide you're too sick to invest in. Or people might find out you have an STD
I am not sick, and I have never had an STD. I am actually very healthy. So if unhealthy people are harmed by disclosure, then logically, I should benefit if mine are disclosed. I should get better job offers, and women will want to date me. So how do I ensure that my medical records are among the 1/3 that are compromised?
As long as you don't know that there is no problem a mandatory label is what the citizens want.
You cannot prove a negative, so you are demanding the impossible. Can you prove that crops raised by left-handed Methodists do not cause cancer? If you want to avoid GMO, then you are free to buy any of the thousands of products voluntarily labeled "non-GMO". But you have no right to use the force of law to impose your anti-science agenda on others.
There's so many roads with crappy or no road markings or hidden by mud or snow
The way that Tesla handles this, is to collect the GPS data of other Teslas that have driven the same road. If you drive down a road a dozen times, then it has enough data to know where the lane is, regardless of mud or snow. That is a more redundant and reliable algorithm than a human driver has. Please note: this is technology that is already working and available to consumers.
Trump is a private citizen, and despite his current poll numbers, he is NOT going to be elected to anything. Feinstein is a senior senator with powerful committee seats, and a lot of influence over legislation. Her positions actually matter.
As a Californian, I am very ashamed that she is my senator, and I don't understand why anyone would vote for her.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe it or not, some people just like doing certain things, regardless of monetary reward.
That is not what this is about. Some people, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, etc. believe that AI is a potential danger to humanity. Although capitalism is great at maximizing profits, it is not so great at collective moral responsibility. So they think a non-profit is a better vehicle for ethical AI.
Personally, I think they are being silly. Real human-level AI is still a ways off, and corporate AI is focused on solving practical problems rather than creating Skynet. Besides, AI is not something you can keep bottled up. Anyone with a GPU can do it.
If Apple can fix ZWave, Insteon, Zigbee, etc, I'll be happy.
If Apple makes a big move in home automation, I don't think they will use any of these crappy proprietary "standards". They will most likely design their own protocol.
I remember back around Y2K they were burning through capital and had zero profits to show.
Yahoo was an early investor in Alibaba. They have made billions and billions off of that investment. Other than that, they have not done much.
It's more like Tesla having control of maintenance of battery etc.
No it isn't. The battery is part of the car. The hub and the bulbs are separate devices, that are supposed to work together using a standard interface, Z-Wave. But Z-Wave is a crappy standard, with a lot of holes in the specs, so things don't work well together. Philips should be working with other manufacturers to iron out those problems, rather than fragmenting the market even more, and making Z-Wave even more worthless than it already is.
Disclaimer: I have a Z-Wave home automation hub, and I am a very dissatisfied customer. If these companies don't work together to get these problems fixed, Z-Wave is going to fail just like X-10 did. This is potentially a huge market, and they are blowing it. If Z-Wave fails, then Apple will come along with iHome and take over the market.
How about we only require remote controlled aircraft large enough to carry a weapon to be registered...
The problem is not "weapons" but collisions. If a drone collides with a manned aircraft, it doesn't matter if it is carrying a weapon or not. Of course, a 250 gm drone is not going to fly high enough or be big enough to be a problem. This law is fine in principle, but is a big overreach in going after toys.
Now after its ratified ...
It is not going to be ratified. It is an non-binding agreement, not a treaty.
Killing an entire deep-sea ecology?
That is conjecture. Many scientists that have studied the issue believe that the deep ocean oxygen depletion will be minor (and your source actually says that). It will probably be better than more oceanic CO2. Iron fertilization of the oceans is something that has enormous potential, and should be researched much more aggressively.
Which is surprising since Trump is probably the least likely leader for social conservatives ever.
There is plenty of precedent. Reagan was their last hero, despite being a divorcee, almost never attending church, and having a pornographer for a son.
No one wants nuclear.
The Chinese do, and so do that Indians. They matter far more than America and Europe.
How many [carbon sinks] do we have to create?
One big one would be enough: Just sprinkle some iron sulfate on the surface of the ocean. The plankton bloom would not only suck up all the excess CO2, but would also cause a surge in fish stocks that could meet the world's need for protein.
FWIW the GS economists (who have a decent record predicting such things) expect it to stabilize around $45 a barrel
OPEC no longer has any control over oil prices. The world's swing producers are now American frackers. The cost per barrel of fracking has gone way down and is continuing to fall. It may temporarily plateau at $45, but then it should continue to creep downward as new innovations are implemented.
All we have to do is put the right people into office.
No way. That doesn't even work with HOAs, which are democracy on the smallest scale imaginable. I have never met anyone that likes their HOA, or feels they represent their interests. So how can it possibly work with a national government of 330 million people? The solution is not "the right people", because that will never happen, but the right systems, including checks and balances, and an adversarial relationship between bureaucrats and their legislative overseers. The first sign that we are on the right path, will be when we start treating whistleblowers as heroes rather than traitors.
More likely the usage of liquid manure from cows or pigs as fertilizer.
No. Farmers may spread cow/pig poop on a cornfield, but they do not, and cannot legally, spread fresh manure on produce that is eaten raw. They can use manure that is thoroughly composted, but by then the e-coli is long gone.
If they actually cooked the food properly instead of leaving it luke-warm, this wouldn't be a problem.
This has nothing to do with cooking. This is raw produce picked by farmworkers that didn't wash their hands after taking a dump. The solution is better field sanitation and better enforcement. The farmworkers need to have clean toilets, and they need to wash their hands in chlorinated water, and that hand washing needs to be mandatory and observed, with penalties for violations.
The republican position says that small government is the American ideal - except with regard to ...
Also ethanol subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies, farm subsidies, massive funding for the military industrial complex, massive funding for the War on Drugs, etc. In other words, they don't actually support small government at all. That makes sense, since small government rhetoric wins votes, but small government policies do not.
The republicans should have long ago left the right out in the cold and come center (fiscally conservative, small government, socially progressive), they would've enjoyed a great deal more support than the religious right can provide
Those are the positions of the Libertarian Party, which typically gets less than 1% of the vote. You are vastly overestimating the level of support for small government and personal freedom. The Republican Party currently has their largest congressional majority since before the Great Depression. 2/3rds of governors are Republican, and most state legislatures are also dominated by Republicans. Pandering to social conservatives and authoritarians has been enormously successful.
The entire business model of companies like Airbnb and Uber are based on exploiting people who are desperate for work.
Giving work to willing workers is not "exploitation". I don't feel exploited when the Airbnb rental income hits my bank account.
Sounds ripe for a typical heat pump system using the liquid helium as the refrigerant.
Yup. All you need is a 2K heat sink, and you are good to go.
... give out prizes to industrial leaders in the race to the absolute rock bottom.
Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms, at the expense of big corporate hotel chains. It is silly to say they are a sign of rampant corporate domination. They are the opposite. They are an enabler for the common people.
Disclaimer: I have been both a room renter and a room rentee on Airbnb. It was a good deal in both directions.
The problem is that GPL-like terms don't work directly
The GPL is not the only open source license. I agree that Open Hardware is not a way to get rich by restricting who can use your IP. But restricting how people can use it sort of goes against the whole point of being open. When I contribute a design to OpenCores, I consider it a gift to the world, and I am not looking for compensation. If a "big company" or a "Chinese manufacturer" want to use it, that is fine with me.
That being said, I have actually got some job offers and a good contracting gig because someone saw my email address in my design files on OpenCores.
copyright can't be asserted on schematics.
Schematics? Who uses schematics? This is 2015. Can copyright be asserted on a Verilog/VHDL file?
You can't keep them from building the hardware the schematic describes.
So? If you don't want people to build it, then why would you open source it? I read Bruce's slides and they make no sense to me. Basically he seems to be saying that Open Hardware is a problem because it is Open.
Disclaimer: I have contributed several designs to OpenCores.
And prospective employers might decide you're too sick to invest in. Or people might find out you have an STD
I am not sick, and I have never had an STD. I am actually very healthy. So if unhealthy people are harmed by disclosure, then logically, I should benefit if mine are disclosed. I should get better job offers, and women will want to date me. So how do I ensure that my medical records are among the 1/3 that are compromised?
As long as you don't know that there is no problem a mandatory label is what the citizens want.
You cannot prove a negative, so you are demanding the impossible. Can you prove that crops raised by left-handed Methodists do not cause cancer? If you want to avoid GMO, then you are free to buy any of the thousands of products voluntarily labeled "non-GMO". But you have no right to use the force of law to impose your anti-science agenda on others.
There's so many roads with crappy or no road markings or hidden by mud or snow
The way that Tesla handles this, is to collect the GPS data of other Teslas that have driven the same road. If you drive down a road a dozen times, then it has enough data to know where the lane is, regardless of mud or snow. That is a more redundant and reliable algorithm than a human driver has. Please note: this is technology that is already working and available to consumers.
But there are many places where it falls behind
I know, right? If I am spending a whole $5 on a computer, it shouldn't have any limitations.
Trump takes it 100000000 times further
Trump is a private citizen, and despite his current poll numbers, he is NOT going to be elected to anything. Feinstein is a senior senator with powerful committee seats, and a lot of influence over legislation. Her positions actually matter.
As a Californian, I am very ashamed that she is my senator, and I don't understand why anyone would vote for her.