As a veteran cyclist who bikes to work every day, this really scares me. I've been increasingly aware of drivers talking on their phones - it's not as easy though to see people who are texting or otherwise using their smartphones.
So I keep a sharp eye on my rear view mirror (I have one on each of my bikes).
I bike to work. It's only ~ 2.5 hilly miles, but it's enough. Plus often I'll do errands on the way home.
At work, several times a day I'll walk up around one side of our building going up stairs three or four flights, then come down, go outside, and walk around the other side of the building. It's short, but it gets the blood flowing, especially in the cooler weather, and gives my mind a break.
It's been said before but it bears repetition, the TSA is security theater, that's all. And all paid for with our tax dollars. We are a nation of sheep.
This happened to a friend of mine. His system was totally hijacked. Couldn't run any.exe.
I finally got into the registry and disabled the malware, and things were seemingly back to normal. But we re-imaged the machine and restored his backed-up data. It was a pain, but it didn't take that long.
But it was a similar thing, I think. Firefox crashing - go try IE, and bang.
Thanks for some comments from a European perspective. We Americans don't listen to others' views of us enough.
Your English is good enough, and, as you say, much better than my German (I wish I could speak and read your language).
What I'm not optimistic about are the prospects of its happening soon enough or in ways that are not extremely painful for all of us.
My pessimism on this score arises from consideration of the following issues:
1) World overpopulation and its current growth rate
2) Climate change
3) Imminence of peak oil and peak natural gas (or to state it another way, the end of cheap energy supplies)
4) Global economic structural imbalances
5) Political institutions unable to respond rationally to the above
Kurt Vonnegut at one point made a remark to the effect that homo sapiens is a maladaptive species.
The way I would re-state this is that homo sapiens is very clever, and has created wonderful things, but we are not clever enough to avoid doing what all other species do: multiply to the point where they overload the sustainable carrying capacity of where they live (for humans it's planet earth).
We humans have not been clever enough to avoid creating the conditions of our own self-destruction. Cf. OVERSHOOT: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, by William R. Catton, Jr. (1980) Also worth watching is http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461/, a lecture by retired physicist Albert Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, in which he states that the biggest failure of the human race is its inability to understand the exponential function.
I am optimistic about the really long-term prospects for planet earth, since it's been through lots of cycles of life and death over billions of years, but I think the time-frame implied in the question is somewhat shorter than this.
I almost just bought a Roomba, but decided against it because it only cleans the _floor_! Better than nothing, I know, but if I still have to go around cleaning all the other surfaces in my house and office, I may as well wait for the robot that will clean those as well.
A great application of nanotechnology and robotics would be to create bots which would sift through the landfills and separate out all the different substances: 'chew' the stuff and spit out the various components.
But I fear it's too late... the world's economy is going to tank before we have time to develop such a thing.
"I love my tech as much as the next geek, but I'm a believer in the right amount of tech for the job at hand. Sometimes, paper and pen are all that's needed, and the tech just gets cumbersome or disracting."
I completely agree. This is appropriate technology.
Just as a computer program won't work correctly without correct spelling and syntax, so the meaning of a paragraph or document written in a natural language depends on the spelling, punctuation and syntax used in it.
Slashdot Mirror
What a great return on investment: from the cost of the copper wire when it was originally installed to its price now on the scrap market.
We humans are so acutely clever ... if only we could keep ourselves from doing such stupid things!
Oh dear! What's to become of us?
I'm 68, and I've never owned a car, but an all electric truck would be very tempting.
As a veteran cyclist who bikes to work every day, this really scares me. I've been increasingly aware of drivers talking on their phones - it's not as easy though to see people who are texting or otherwise using their smartphones. So I keep a sharp eye on my rear view mirror (I have one on each of my bikes).
I bike to work. It's only ~ 2.5 hilly miles, but it's enough. Plus often I'll do errands on the way home. At work, several times a day I'll walk up around one side of our building going up stairs three or four flights, then come down, go outside, and walk around the other side of the building. It's short, but it gets the blood flowing, especially in the cooler weather, and gives my mind a break.
Yeah, we do this to "them" but they'll never do the same thing to us.
I agree with this. What's unknown is the timeline ... when this is going to begin being felt.
How long could a robot like this run - and how fast - if it did not have an external power supply?
Good point. I agree with you.
It's been said before but it bears repetition, the TSA is security theater, that's all. And all paid for with our tax dollars. We are a nation of sheep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ8pjOG4pXI
Yeah, but the private sector owns the gov't.
Yeah ... I pretty much agree with this ... except it may come sooner than 10 years from now ... if things aren't bad enough already.
This happened to a friend of mine. His system was totally hijacked. Couldn't run any .exe.
I finally got into the registry and disabled the malware, and things were seemingly back to normal. But we re-imaged the machine and restored his backed-up data. It was a pain, but it didn't take that long.
But it was a similar thing, I think. Firefox crashing - go try IE, and bang.
Thanks for some comments from a European perspective. We Americans don't listen to others' views of us enough. Your English is good enough, and, as you say, much better than my German (I wish I could speak and read your language).
What am I optimistic about?
Zero human population growth is going to happen.
What I'm not optimistic about are the prospects of its happening soon enough or in ways that are not extremely painful for all of us.
My pessimism on this score arises from consideration of the following issues:
1) World overpopulation and its current growth rate
2) Climate change
3) Imminence of peak oil and peak natural gas (or to state it another way, the end of cheap energy supplies)
4) Global economic structural imbalances
5) Political institutions unable to respond rationally to the above
Kurt Vonnegut at one point made a remark to the effect that homo sapiens is a maladaptive species.
The way I would re-state this is that homo sapiens is very clever, and has created wonderful things, but we are not clever enough to avoid doing what all other species do: multiply to the point where they overload the sustainable carrying capacity of where they live (for humans it's planet earth).
We humans have not been clever enough to avoid creating the conditions of our own self-destruction. Cf. OVERSHOOT: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, by William R. Catton, Jr. (1980) Also worth watching is http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461/, a lecture by retired physicist Albert Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, in which he states that the biggest failure of the human race is its inability to understand the exponential function.
I am optimistic about the really long-term prospects for planet earth, since it's been through lots of cycles of life and death over billions of years, but I think the time-frame implied in the question is somewhat shorter than this.
I almost just bought a Roomba, but decided against it because it only cleans the _floor_! Better than nothing, I know, but if I still have to go around cleaning all the other surfaces in my house and office, I may as well wait for the robot that will clean those as well.
A great application of nanotechnology and robotics would be to create bots which would sift through the landfills and separate out all the different substances: 'chew' the stuff and spit out the various components. But I fear it's too late ... the world's economy is going to tank before we have time to develop such a thing.
"I love my tech as much as the next geek, but I'm a believer in the right amount of tech for the job at hand. Sometimes, paper and pen are all that's needed, and the tech just gets cumbersome or disracting."
I completely agree. This is appropriate technology.
I get along just fine without a car in Charlottesville, Virginia. I bike to work, shopping, etc.
If I really need a car for carrying very heavy items, I can use one of a friend's.
Car-sharing, ride-sharing: a wave in our future.
Just as a computer program won't work correctly without correct spelling and syntax, so the meaning of a paragraph or document written in a natural language depends on the spelling, punctuation and syntax used in it.