Or at least, it's just as real as a piece of music, or a movie, or a book.
They all have it in common that they do not have an intrinsic physical embodiment and they could conceivably be copied endlessly without losing use value for the owner of a copy.
Stealing a virtual sword is if anything a lot worse than making a copy of a record. It's more akin to stealing the actual CD from someone, or making a copy and deleting the original, since you deprive the owner from use of the item.
4500 acres of solar collectors? This must throw hardcore environmentalists into a infinite loop.
This makes sense to have in dry, hot areas (where you have lots of dependable, strong sun). Much better than using the same land to grow wheat, corn or rice - a monoculture is no better than this, and the use of scarce water is much less with the solar array than with crops.
Just a small note (and I say this as a happy DSLR owner): the "cheap DSLRs" you are talkng about cost as much or more than a pro body does for film. And for all the noise about the perceived smallness of bodies like the 350D, they are still quite a bit larger than most film SLRs.
They are cheap and compact only in comparison to earlier digital models. On the other hand, you don't need to shoot all that much film before you recoup the cost.
Please explain why it's stupid to try to protect something that has value to you.
Shooting things down is not to protect it. It's easier to kill/destroy stuff than to protect it from harm; it has always been. Once the political genie is out (the technical issues aren't the stumbling block here) the one nation that depends the most on satellites, and the one with the most and the juciest targets is the US.
In an "asymmetrical conflict" - war between, say, US and a middle eastern nation, US will have just about zero use for the ability to kill satellites. The opponent will have lots of use for it.
And this goes to a lesser or greater degree for any conflict scenario you can imagine. If killing satellites becomes part of war, US will be the largest loser. Introducing that capability is a net loss for the US.
All you need to do is take a look at what country or countries would lose the most if space-based communication and localization functions were lost during a crisis. Actively working to increase the risk of such a scenario is self-defeating and shortsighted (I would like to use the expression "utterly stupid" but people may take offence).
So, you can make stuff of much higher quality than is possible with run-of-the-mill people. So what? If your customers/clients are focused on price and feature bullet points, it's a waste of time and resources to make it high quality. In fact, it's counterproductive - a high-quality system raises expectations and creates as much (or more) maintenance work as the normally crappy app the clients expected anyway.
You should never overdo anything. If you're constructing a walk bridge, making it strong enough to handle a freight train isn't good workmanship, it's just foolish. If you're making buttons and handles used in industrial automation panels, it's a waste to make them in a gold-plated titanium alloy. If you're making a drill that's expected to be run for 50 hours over the lifetime of the tool (fairly typical for home use), you would just be pissing away resources by making it last for 500 hours.
Same thing goes for software design and quality. You should not write _too_ crappy software, of course (where "too crappy" is situation-dependent) - but spending a lot of manpower, money and time on quality levels, features or extendability that will never be appreciated or used is just as foolish as the examples above.
The critical parameter is "upper limit". Hard real-time systems are fairly slow; what they have is that they _guarantee_ a response within some time limit. Every time. Soft real-time systems would typically have one limit stating the maximum allowable average response rate, and a second, higher limit stating the maximum allowable ever. "real time" implies that the system won't let the world "get ahead"; things will not get queued further and further afield without limit.
Nothing in the concept of "real-time" does it say the response has to be fast. Consistent, yes, but not fast. If you have a system guaranteeing a response within ten seconds, every time, that is real-time.
In this case, what's the difference, really? If you go "there" in person, you're still looking out through a thick glass window (or, more likely, at a monitor), and manipulating the world around you with buttons, joysticks and other remote controls.
The difference really is, when you're there in person you're only in control of one (large, cumbersome) exploring unit, you can explore for a lot shorter time (since so much resources is spent on keeping you alive), and you waste hours just traveling down, then up again. Oh, and due to safety reasons and a far larger, more fragile craft, you won't be able to take the same risks or all the same observations you can remotely.
Much of science hasn't been "hands on" for years or decades. Mostly, it's not a loss. It may be romantic to freeze your ass off on some mountain top with a telescope, but there is again little point when all your observations and data analysis is done off-site anyway. And it's not only in exploratory science either; just check out the state of automation in a chemistry lab today. Then check out the life expectancy of an experimental organic chemist and you'll see a reason automation is a good thing.
Unless you enjoy what he has to say, stop feeding money to this guy.
But I do enjoy what he has to say. The subjects he brings up are usually relevant and interesting. His chosen links and commentary is, to me, accurate, evenhanded and to the point.
If he has found a way to make a bit of money doing this, more power to him.
Is it possible the study is right? Well, yes, we do know radiation causes biological changes, and depending on the frequency can do so at fairly low intensity levels, so it's at least certainly possible.
Is it a large risk? Very unlikely. If there wasa substantial risk of damage, we'd seen epidemological alarms spring up already. If there is a risk, it's small.
Do we need to actually care in practice? No.
Why? Because we always, at every turn, balance risks with benefits. Probably the single most dangerous activity we all do is move in automobile traffic. There are many, many well-known health risks - from accidents to the exposure of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals to hearing loss - but we decide that the very substantial benefits outweigh the risks.
Arguably, mobile communications are not quite as beneficial as car transportation - though I could certainly see a case for disputing that - but then the risk downsides are also very very much smaller, this study or not.
However, you imply that any critizism of Israeli politics or policy, or politics or policy connected to Israel, would be anti-semitic. That is BS. Israel is another sovereign state, and one that is democratic no less, and should be subject the same amount of scrutiny as, say, French, American, Russian or Japanese politics and policies. There is no perfect country and no perfect state anywhere in the world, and none that comes even close. But screaming "anti-semitism!" whenever shortcomings are pointed out certainly doesn't encourage discussion and doesn't help anyone redress them.
How about designing a really good glove solving all the current issues, patent every aspect of the design to h*ll and back, and then sell the exclusive patent rights to a Chinese conglomerate for at least ten times those $250k?
Hey, if the patent system wasn't meant to be used in that way, it wouldn't have been designed to allow it, right?
It's nice that they have maps here now. Just be aware that the maps use the local Tokyo coordinate system, not WGS84 (which GPS units, for example, use), and if you just enter WGS84 coordinates you will be off by quite a bit (on the order of a hundred meters).
well that and the insane amounts they have to spend on workers salaries and benefits when compared to the rest of the world.
Other companies around the world do pay for pensions and health care as well. Not by setting up their own insurance funds, but by paying higher salaries (to compensate for the higher income taxes on those salaries) and by paying sometimes quite high employer fees. The difference is really that in state-run system everybody shares the cost, while for the US carmakers they are stuck with the bill for a lot of workers all by themselves.
[Note: I wrote about this just a day ago here; I'm paraphrasing and shortening it below]
I just bought myself a wireless router, for the price of 5100 yen (about $45). Of course, it's a real, full single-board computer that happens to have excellent connectivity to everything. Add storage ability and interfaces through USB2 and you can start thinking up some really interesting uses for this kind of gear.
With the kind of price we're starting to see, there's no reason to have only one. How about having two, three or more of them at home, in different rooms to get good wireless coverage anywhere? They could present themselves as being one single friendly system to its users, transparently talking to each other wirelessly and move data to where it's needed.
The units with hard disks could be hidden away in closets or workrooms where the noise doesn't bother anyone, while the ones out in the livingroom or bedrooms would would be small and quiet and have extra communications abilities like being able to play music or show movies stored anywhere in the home network. They would act as an external redundant storage (more convenient and much safer than backing up on CD:s or DVD:s), as backup, as household web, mail and IP telephone server, climate controller and general communications forwarder (whether you are at home, using your cellphone, or being on some conference trip halfway around the world, you can get to your email, voice mail and IM in the same way).
You need more storage or some new hardware functionality? Just get another unit. When powered on it'll join the rest of them and suddenly your home has a bit of added capacity it didn't have before.
When highly capable hardware like this is coming down into the sub-10000yen range, a whole new range of uses is becoming feasible.
Every year, in every country, laws change. New laws are added, old ones revoked. A lot of changes affect businesses in various ways. And those changes more often than not need to be reflected in the IT systems of said businesses. That's not only about tax rates or VAT application, but also things like what data you need to save, what kind of reporting you need to support, what info to make available (or not) to what employees.
IT systems need to change to reflect this changing environment every year (90% of all software development is 'in house' or client specific; this kind of thing accounts for a lot of it). Changing the start and end date of daylight savings is one pretty minor one among all the others.
Of course, it's more fun to hyperventilate about an issue than think it through:)
When talking about subsidies of rail and mass transit, it's easy to forget the extent to which automobile transport (and aircraft) are subidized as well. You do not pay the full cost of using your car yourself, anymore than you pay the full cost of using a subway.
Which is fine, of course; reliable, efficient transportation is hugely important to society, too important to leave to the vagaries of the market. And it's important to have a combination of sysetms, so you're not putting all your transportation eggs in one basket either.
To make it clear, when I wrote "go to it", I wasn't being facetious. This is likely an excellent time to get into robotics as a practical product. If you feel you know how to make something with practical utility that can be sold affordably, there is probably no better time to do it. And if you don't have the skills, it's still a great time to start a company and hire people who do. Or, for that matter, just putting money into startups that seem to agree with your ideas on what will be a hit in the market.
Real progress will be made only after people stop trying to build a human from machine parts and focus more on usefull applications.
Hard to build useful applications before you know how to make it walk safely, consistently and energy efficiently on at least a reasonable subset of human-constructed terrain types.
I'm always astounded by all the backseat drivers of the world who always know so much better what people should do, without ever feeling the need to do it themselves. Since you want useful applications, go to it. Nothing is stopping you. If you're right that applications is the best focus, you'll undoubtedly eclipse these pitiful, wasteful efforts.
In seriousness, is there a reason for trying to build a bipedal, humanoid, robot? I mean, this looks cool and all, but what are the advantages (or conversely, disadvantages) to such a design (IANSC [I Am Not Susan Calvin])?
We have buit our entire environment for bipedal movement. Just ask anybody with a walker or wheelchair just how inconvenient (and, without help, occasionally impossible) it is to get around when you're no longer bipedal.
Also, the question of just how we manage to walk, run, climb and so on is interesting in itself. And there's no better way to test ideas than to try them out in reality.
Suing over employee "poaching" is pretty common business practice in some countries. If he had a one-year non-compete clause in the contract, and if it is valid, then it seems reasonable.
The question is of course what the legal standing is of such a clause in China. In many countries such an employment clause is normally non-enforceable, since you always have a right to do your trade. There you would rather have some monetary incentive, like paid salary during theyear and a bonus payout at the end, which, all considered, probably is a better idea all around (people are much more likely to actually comply with something they see as a positive).
Slashdot Mirror
Or at least, it's just as real as a piece of music, or a movie, or a book.
They all have it in common that they do not have an intrinsic physical embodiment and they could conceivably be copied endlessly without losing use value for the owner of a copy.
Stealing a virtual sword is if anything a lot worse than making a copy of a record. It's more akin to stealing the actual CD from someone, or making a copy and deleting the original, since you deprive the owner from use of the item.
Sure, I'll spot you Gustavus Adolphus up through maybe Charles XII. But what has Sweden done for me lately?
I'd say not going to war for the past few hundred years is a pretty good thing, espceially considering the previous history.
4500 acres of solar collectors? This must throw hardcore environmentalists into a infinite loop.
This makes sense to have in dry, hot areas (where you have lots of dependable, strong sun). Much better than using the same land to grow wheat, corn or rice - a monoculture is no better than this, and the use of scarce water is much less with the solar array than with crops.
Stirling engines certainly aren't forgotten or neglected. Swedish submarines use Stirling engines for propulsion, for instance.
This is complete B.S. (no offense).
Take a look at any Leica.
Just a small note (and I say this as a happy DSLR owner): the "cheap DSLRs" you are talkng about cost as much or more than a pro body does for film. And for all the noise about the perceived smallness of bodies like the 350D, they are still quite a bit larger than most film SLRs.
They are cheap and compact only in comparison to earlier digital models. On the other hand, you don't need to shoot all that much film before you recoup the cost.
Please explain why it's stupid to try to protect something that has value to
you.
Shooting things down is not to protect it. It's easier to kill/destroy stuff than to protect it from harm; it has always been. Once the political genie is out (the technical issues aren't the stumbling block here) the one nation that depends the most on satellites, and the one with the most and the juciest targets is the US.
In an "asymmetrical conflict" - war between, say, US and a middle eastern nation, US will have just about zero use for the ability to kill satellites. The opponent will have lots of use for it.
And this goes to a lesser or greater degree for any conflict scenario you can imagine. If killing satellites becomes part of war, US will be the largest loser. Introducing that capability is a net loss for the US.
All you need to do is take a look at what country or countries would lose the most if space-based communication and localization functions were lost during a crisis. Actively working to increase the risk of such a scenario is self-defeating and shortsighted (I would like to use the expression "utterly stupid" but people may take offence).
So, you can make stuff of much higher quality than is possible with run-of-the-mill people. So what? If your customers/clients are focused on price and feature bullet points, it's a waste of time and resources to make it high quality. In fact, it's counterproductive - a high-quality system raises expectations and creates as much (or more) maintenance work as the normally crappy app the clients expected anyway.
You should never overdo anything. If you're constructing a walk bridge, making it strong enough to handle a freight train isn't good workmanship, it's just foolish. If you're making buttons and handles used in industrial automation panels, it's a waste to make them in a gold-plated titanium alloy. If you're making a drill that's expected to be run for 50 hours over the lifetime of the tool (fairly typical for home use), you would just be pissing away resources by making it last for 500 hours.
Same thing goes for software design and quality. You should not write _too_ crappy software, of course (where "too crappy" is situation-dependent) - but spending a lot of manpower, money and time on quality levels, features or extendability that will never be appreciated or used is just as foolish as the examples above.
The critical parameter is "upper limit". Hard real-time systems are fairly slow; what they have is that they _guarantee_ a response within some time limit. Every time. Soft real-time systems would typically have one limit stating the maximum allowable average response rate, and a second, higher limit stating the maximum allowable ever. "real time" implies that the system won't let the world "get ahead"; things will not get queued further and further afield without limit.
Nothing in the concept of "real-time" does it say the response has to be fast. Consistent, yes, but not fast. If you have a system guaranteeing a response within ten seconds, every time, that is real-time.
In this case, what's the difference, really? If you go "there" in person, you're still looking out through a thick glass window (or, more likely, at a monitor), and manipulating the world around you with buttons, joysticks and other remote controls.
The difference really is, when you're there in person you're only in control of one (large, cumbersome) exploring unit, you can explore for a lot shorter time (since so much resources is spent on keeping you alive), and you waste hours just traveling down, then up again. Oh, and due to safety reasons and a far larger, more fragile craft, you won't be able to take the same risks or all the same observations you can remotely.
Much of science hasn't been "hands on" for years or decades. Mostly, it's not a loss. It may be romantic to freeze your ass off on some mountain top with a telescope, but there is again little point when all your observations and data analysis is done off-site anyway. And it's not only in exploratory science either; just check out the state of automation in a chemistry lab today. Then check out the life expectancy of an experimental organic chemist and you'll see a reason automation is a good thing.
Unless you enjoy what he has to say, stop feeding money to this guy.
But I do enjoy what he has to say. The subjects he brings up are usually relevant and interesting. His chosen links and commentary is, to me, accurate, evenhanded and to the point.
If he has found a way to make a bit of money doing this, more power to him.
Is it possible the study is right? Well, yes, we do know radiation causes biological changes, and depending on the frequency can do so at fairly low intensity levels, so it's at least certainly possible.
Is it a large risk? Very unlikely. If there wasa substantial risk of damage, we'd seen epidemological alarms spring up already. If there is a risk, it's small.
Do we need to actually care in practice? No.
Why? Because we always, at every turn, balance risks with benefits. Probably the single most dangerous activity we all do is move in automobile traffic. There are many, many well-known health risks - from accidents to the exposure of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals to hearing loss - but we decide that the very substantial benefits outweigh the risks.
Arguably, mobile communications are not quite as beneficial as car transportation - though I could certainly see a case for disputing that - but then the risk downsides are also very very much smaller, this study or not.
I agree it's off-topic.
However, you imply that any critizism of Israeli politics or policy, or politics or policy connected to Israel, would be anti-semitic. That is BS. Israel is another sovereign state, and one that is democratic no less, and should be subject the same amount of scrutiny as, say, French, American, Russian or Japanese politics and policies. There is no perfect country and no perfect state anywhere in the world, and none that comes even close. But screaming "anti-semitism!" whenever shortcomings are pointed out certainly doesn't encourage discussion and doesn't help anyone redress them.
So the shuttle has a shedding problem. How about a huge, form-fitting hairnet for the entire craft?
How about designing a really good glove solving all the current issues, patent every aspect of the design to h*ll and back, and then sell the exclusive patent rights to a Chinese conglomerate for at least ten times those $250k?
Hey, if the patent system wasn't meant to be used in that way, it wouldn't have been designed to allow it, right?
It's nice that they have maps here now. Just be aware that the maps use the local Tokyo coordinate system, not WGS84 (which GPS units, for example, use), and if you just enter WGS84 coordinates you will be off by quite a bit (on the order of a hundred meters).
well that and the insane amounts they have to spend on workers salaries and benefits when compared to the rest of the world.
Other companies around the world do pay for pensions and health care as well. Not by setting up their own insurance funds, but by paying higher salaries (to compensate for the higher income taxes on those salaries) and by paying sometimes quite high employer fees. The difference is really that in state-run system everybody shares the cost, while for the US carmakers they are stuck with the bill for a lot of workers all by themselves.
[Note: I wrote about this just a day ago here; I'm paraphrasing and shortening it below]
I just bought myself a wireless router, for the price of 5100 yen (about $45). Of course, it's a real, full single-board computer that happens to have excellent connectivity to everything. Add storage ability and interfaces through USB2 and you can start thinking up some really interesting uses for this kind of gear.
With the kind of price we're starting to see, there's no reason to have only one. How about having two, three or more of them at home, in different rooms to get good wireless coverage anywhere? They could present themselves as being one single friendly system to its users, transparently talking to each other wirelessly and move data to where it's needed.
The units with hard disks could be hidden away in closets or workrooms where the noise doesn't bother anyone, while the ones out in the livingroom or bedrooms would would be small and quiet and have extra communications abilities like being able to play music or show movies stored anywhere in the home network. They would act as an external redundant storage (more convenient and much safer than backing up on CD:s or DVD:s), as backup, as household web, mail and IP telephone server, climate controller and general communications forwarder (whether you are at home, using your cellphone, or being on some conference trip halfway around the world, you can get to your email, voice mail and IM in the same way).
You need more storage or some new hardware functionality? Just get another unit. When powered on it'll join the rest of them and suddenly your home has a bit of added capacity it didn't have before.
When highly capable hardware like this is coming down into the sub-10000yen range, a whole new range of uses is becoming feasible.
Every year, in every country, laws change. New laws are added, old ones revoked. A lot of changes affect businesses in various ways. And those changes more often than not need to be reflected in the IT systems of said businesses. That's not only about tax rates or VAT application, but also things like what data you need to save, what kind of reporting you need to support, what info to make available (or not) to what employees.
:)
IT systems need to change to reflect this changing environment every year (90% of all software development is 'in house' or client specific; this kind of thing accounts for a lot of it). Changing the start and end date of daylight savings is one pretty minor one among all the others.
Of course, it's more fun to hyperventilate about an issue than think it through
When talking about subsidies of rail and mass transit, it's easy to forget the extent to which automobile transport (and aircraft) are subidized as well. You do not pay the full cost of using your car yourself, anymore than you pay the full cost of using a subway.
Which is fine, of course; reliable, efficient transportation is hugely important to society, too important to leave to the vagaries of the market. And it's important to have a combination of sysetms, so you're not putting all your transportation eggs in one basket either.
To make it clear, when I wrote "go to it", I wasn't being facetious. This is likely an excellent time to get into robotics as a practical product. If you feel you know how to make something with practical utility that can be sold affordably, there is probably no better time to do it. And if you don't have the skills, it's still a great time to start a company and hire people who do. Or, for that matter, just putting money into startups that seem to agree with your ideas on what will be a hit in the market.
Real progress will be made only after people stop trying to build a human from machine parts and focus more on usefull applications.
Hard to build useful applications before you know how to make it walk safely, consistently and energy efficiently on at least a reasonable subset of human-constructed terrain types.
I'm always astounded by all the backseat drivers of the world who always know so much better what people should do, without ever feeling the need to do it themselves. Since you want useful applications, go to it. Nothing is stopping you. If you're right that applications is the best focus, you'll undoubtedly eclipse these pitiful, wasteful efforts.
In seriousness, is there a reason for trying to build a bipedal, humanoid, robot? I mean, this looks cool and all, but what are the advantages (or conversely, disadvantages) to such a design (IANSC [I Am Not Susan Calvin])?
We have buit our entire environment for bipedal movement. Just ask anybody with a walker or wheelchair just how inconvenient (and, without help, occasionally impossible) it is to get around when you're no longer bipedal.
Also, the question of just how we manage to walk, run, climb and so on is interesting in itself. And there's no better way to test ideas than to try them out in reality.
Suing over employee "poaching" is pretty common business practice in some countries. If he had a one-year non-compete clause in the contract, and if it is valid, then it seems reasonable.
The question is of course what the legal standing is of such a clause in China. In many countries such an employment clause is normally non-enforceable, since you always have a right to do your trade. There you would rather have some monetary incentive, like paid salary during theyear and a bonus payout at the end, which, all considered, probably is a better idea all around (people are much more likely to actually comply with something they see as a positive).