Posts by John Mangan 394 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2007
it sounds like one way around it would be to have a wrap-around background scene which is essentially static and hi-res and then use AR to put the moving stuff 'on top' of that. Most of your AR view would be transparent reducing the processing overload and should help with head tracking and eliminate the need for eye-tracking.
Not many people with room for a spherical video wall at home unfortunately :-(
..some friends went to see it and weren't complimentary. When I finally saw it I had to permanently downgrade the weighting I put on their views. I like all the versions but I've never gotten around to reading the book which I regret and will amend in the near future.
I've avoided all trailers for the new one and I really can't decide whether to see it or not. Bladreunner was as near perfect as it is possible to get (for me) and I don't want it all tritely answered or spurious add-on concepts and what-nots conjured out of the air to power a franchise into the future.
On the other hand another visit to a marvellously realised universe......
The tidal forces (difference between your head and feet) will always swamp the wave effect so you will be spaghettified well before you could feel the waves.
There's a more mathematical answer elsewhere on this site in the comment related to a previous detection by Ken Strain who actually works in this area.
I confess I'm one of the people who would never have Alexa and its ilk in my house. I hate the idea of an always-on microphone which may not or (most probably) may be processing data unbeknownst to you and monitoring activity that you don't want monitored. I feel the same about cloud-based home automation. The ex-filtrated data, the security and the "we've lost interest now, enjoy your brick" experience.
But, I confess, I hadn't thought of all those people who might (apparently do) find these to be truly enabling technologies.
Thanks.
I apologise for the inexpert hand-waving but in an attempt to answer your question....
I would agree that you can't assume that everything will be the same but life (of any type) does have certain ineradicable qualities to count as life.
- It must be able to sustain and propagate a certain level of complexity
- It must be able to 'metabolise' some form of energy to achieve this.
- It needs some way to pass on this complexity to future generations - unless it is immortal - but then you get the question of how an immortal being arose from nothing and that's a whole other level of metaphysical enquiry.
- There are others but this is enough for this argument.
So Carbon provide s a very good base for a HUGE range of molecules and reactions which make the first requirement achievable. There have been suggestions that Silicon MIGHT be able to do something similar but there are other issues which make people doubtful. I am not a chemist.
Then you will need some sort of solvent to transport and mix these chemicals and here water is the stand-out candidate. There are others but again you run into problems matching your solvent and your silicon-based chemistry in the right conditions in some sustainable way (although imagination may be limited). I am not a chemist.
And finally all of the OMG! WTF? life forms ARE based on exactly the same chemistry and requirements as us.
So, not conclusive but definitely strong pointers in the directions one is most likely to find life......
I hope that helps - - and that other, wiser commentards will forgive the shortcomings in the answer.
I'm going to risk the wrath of the commentards by replying to this.
It shouldn't make any difference if the victim was a ten year old boy or a sixty year old man but it probably would. I think (hope) that most commentards do not find the details of what seems most likely to have occurred in any way amusing but humans do seem to try to dissociate from the horror of a thing by playing around the edges. And punning is probably the least aggressive of these approaches.
I can understand people finding this to be harmless fun and I can understand those who think it isn't. I doubt that anyone would make the same jokes if it had been an acquaintance of theirs that suffered this appalling fate but in that case the tragedy is too close to disarm in this way.
The untimely end of a human life, probably in conditions of fear and isolation, is not funny but language does help push the monster back into the cupboard.
car product development cycles are long whereas software development cycles (and even the hardware it runs on) are very short.
If security is really going to be a priority then there needs to be some way to ensure that devices that can be on the roads for twenty years or more will still get regular security updates for their full lifespan.
That is nothing but an overhead for the manufacturers but the thought of millions of (effectively) 'Windows 95' vehicles still being on the road in the 'Windows 10' era is not comforting from a security point of view.
This, to me, seems a strong reason for fully autonomous vehicles available on demand (cycled regularly by the manufacturers) to replace individual vehicle ownership.
.. and this seems like a good place to ask it with the assembled knowledge.
I've often wondered how a computer cracking an encrypted message knows it has been successful. I mean if a human decrypted a message that said 'Meet next Tuesday at 4:00" then they will recognise that as valid English and conclude that the decryption has been successful. Similarly a human may recognise map co-ordinates or German or whatever. But how does a computer 'know'? And if someone has used ROT13 before employed the full brute force of AES-256 how would the computer recognise the decrypted text as correct?
Anyone know.
But even at peak times there are still plenty of cars parked on the road, in drives, in garages so, overall, you will still need fewer cars to meet the actual need than we have now - and they can all be sent off to park out of sight when not in use so streets become open, friendly places again.
"And why do the lights at some junctions have the green light cased in a box so it is almost impossible to see?"
To stop people monitoring the cross-junction lights and jumping the gun - to meet the people who think the first three seconds of red are equivalent to green anyway.
@KorndogDev & @Swarthy
I agree with both of you. I love the idea of getting the car I need (small economical for the commute, People Carrier for the family holiday) when I need it rather than having the drive full of 'best compromise I can afford' lying around idle most of the time.
But, in parallel with that, anonymous people are scum and that will need some social engineering and technical measures to resolve.
As always people are the real problem - nuke from orbit?
I think the perceived problem is there is a valley to cross where cars are not fully automated and need a 'competent' driver aboard until we get to fully automated, autonomous vehicles (which could take 'some time'). But during this time many drivers will never actually drive and so, if called into action, will not be equipped to react correctly. This will be particularly acute for those that have just passed their tests but never actually accumulate the experience or driving 'for real'.
As I mentioned on another thread where such a 'level 3' vehicle had a camera to stop you looking away from the road I predict most journeys will last less than fifteen minutes as the minders repeatedly fall asleep staring at a road with no involvement in proceedings.
...that i could maintain concentration on the road for hour after hour, with nothing else to do and not allowed to look away, just in case the car needs me to take over at a moments notice.
In my view level 3 is worse than useless. You remove all of the effort, concentration, involvement in driving just so you can stare at a road unrolling before you. You can't read, sleep, still have to be sober (if that's a thing for you) and the only option is to die of boredom.
I don't know what 'level' would include automated speed monitoring and lane tracking in case you fell asleep but at least there you would have enough to do stay awake.
Whereas a child may be blissfully unaware of the danger they've put themselves in but the screaming adult on the pavement is fully aware - and you don't think a human would attempt collision avoidance in such a scenario?
I think this discussion here completely validates this research. It's not a straight cut-and-dried answer and therefore needs research and thinking about.
@The First Dave - last week someone at work sent round a video of various dashcam OMGs.
One was taken from a moving van driving at what looked like a responsible speed down a road with closely parked cars on each side of the narrow road when a mother and two children walked straight out from behind a parked van mere feet from the moving vehicle. The mother looked up after clearing the parked van and stepped back, the driver reacted with commendable speed and stopped the van in very short order but the two kids still made contact with the bonnet - although with no obvious damage.
Shit happens. The world is not fully under out control. Idiots are abroad. Machinery fails; brake cables for instance.
I believe the trolley problem is just a vehicle (pun intended) for trying to pry into how humans 'ideally' weight life and danger. It's meant to provide some way of addressing the ethical difficulties that real life can throw up - when someone's brakes fail, a pedestrian is paying more attention to their phone than the road, the cyclist who believes the public highway is the place to practice their wheelies, etc.
I've always wondered if, in the trolley problem, people would really throw the lever. It's one thing to say kill one person rather than five but if it requires a physical act to make that happen would most people actually do that or just stand frozen rather than taking responsibility?
I would hope (yeah, I know) that as automation improves the various sensors and programming will allow improved anticipation of events (and as more and more automated cars appear the erratic human element will decrease) and reduce the need for some of these ethical decisions.
But there will always be edge cases and few people will buy cars that will sacrifice the driver in those cases so working out 'acceptable' resolutions sounds like a good idea.
It reminds me of a post-grad 'Into Business' course I attended where we had a Management Consultant providing part of the experience. Someone asked the obvious question, "So, if you go into a business where a project is running over budget and over time, how do you know you can fix it?". Without a pause the guy replied that somewhere in the organisation there will be a person who understand the issues and knows the solution but (s)he's only paid £x,000/annum. You find him/her and write up the solutions and because you are being paid 10(0)*£x,000/annum the big-wigs will listen to you.
At the time, as a callow youth, I was flabbergasted by the cynicism and effrontery of it. I've learned my lesson in the intervening years.
..putting an always-on panopticon spy device in your house?
Like many other posters on here; no, never.
Sell me a camera with the software and let me run my own server completely independent of the company and I might start thinking about possible uses but otherwise, I'm out!
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