PakledHostage

To be fair (I say this again), even the police admit that he never said it was a bomb. Nor was the bomb squad called and nor was the school evacuated. He could be one of us: But I agree with Kerbart. This may be one of the best things that ever happens to him.

Right, but as was pointed out in the article, they didn't actually think it was a bomb. They didn't evacuate the school or call the bomb squad or anything. Even the police admitted that Ahmed never said it was anything other than a clock, but they chose to rough him up anyway - while Ahmed was wearing his NASA t-shirt. Hence the outpouring of support from the space community.

I like this story: Texas teen handcuffed, arrested for bringing homemade clock to school Not for the turkeys who pass for teachers and police in the Texas city, but for the huge outpouring of support: President Obama! Bobak Fredowski!! Chris Hadfield!!! Good job, kid. Nice clock. I hope you also play KSP. P.S. Please refrain from politics if you choose to respond to this thread.

I think we're being a bit hard on Jas1126. Maybe Kerbal will be a catalyst for him/her to begin to make some changes in his/her life? My wife and I both work in environments where we're surrounded by people with very impressive credentials. We have commented to each other that it is clear that being smart alone isn't enough. You've also got to be determined and you have to have a bit of luck. But to some degree we make our own luck with determination. If Jas1126 is determined enough, I am sure he/she can begin to turn things around.

Well if a disease is too far fetched for people to accept, then why not a newly discovered comet? We had about 1.5 years between when comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring was discovered and its closest approach to Mars. For a brief period, it was thought that it would hit Mars. Why not imagine that a larger comet is discovered only 3 years before it would impact Earth? There's likely nothing we could do to stop something closing at 50 km/s with only three year's notice (Siding Spring was in a retrograde orbit, giving it a 50 km/s speed relative to Mars). Its impact would almost certainly end civilization. Some people would be able to dig in in the hopes of surviving to rebuild afterwards, but the vast majority would be left to fend for themselves.

Well, a mockup of the ISS anyway:

I am happy to see the poll results where they currently stand (13 to 0 in favour of the good old "diesel 10") The DC-10s detractors like to forget that the "design flaw" that lead to the cabin floor collapsing when the cargo door opened over Detroit and France also affected Boeing, Lockheed and Airbus aircraft. That same design flaw was addressed on all widebody types in the same airworthiness directive. It didn't show up on those other aircraft types because they didn't suffer a cargo hold depressurization, but it would have if they ever did. And with regard to the Turkish Airlines accident, their maintenance personell had made a maitenance error in accomplishing an alert service bulletin (I don't recall whether or not it was mandated by an AD) that came came about as a result of the Detroit accident. Had they not made that maintenance error, the Paris crash very likely wouldn't have happened because it wouldn't have been possible to close the cargo door latch incorrectly. The Chicago crash was also as a result of a maintenance error. American Airlines was cutting corners while performing an inspection of the engine pylon and they cracked the pylon's aft bulkead in the process. The crack caused the pylon to fail and damage the leading edge slats as the pylon and engine departed the aircraft. Really, the DC-10's early bad reputation was a result of simple minded belifs stemming from sensationalist reporting. But since when have the media or the simple minded ever let the facts get in the way of a good story?

But what? We both liked The Martian before it was cool. Pass me another PBR...

That was my fault... Sorry. I started it with my response to sp1989. I should have foreseen that the mere mention of those two movies could derail this thread. Yeah, I am going to hold off on watching anything more than the official trailers before I see the film. It is less than a month away; I have enough to keep me busy until then.

We've had these discissions before on this forum and I respect your opinion. But that doesn't change the fact that those two movies are highly polarizing. Some people really like them while plenty of others immediately think of them when the tooic of movies that are visually stunning but otherwise flawed is raised. I am looking forward to hearing what others think about The Martian when it is released. Hopefully it manages to live up to our high expectations.

I'm tired of movies like Gravity and Interstellar. A movie needs more than just good special effects. It needs a good story. I've read "The Martian" and I have high hopes for the upcoming movie. Why? Because it has a good plot. I think if they don't try to over do it and maybe take a page from recent movies like Europa Report, it could end up being a real classic. In response to the queation, though, I don't so much worry about what they might take out as what they might add in. We don't need explosions, chase scenes and cheezy "power of lurve!" themes to make a movie worth going to see.

I'm inclined to agree with Fishinferno and windows_x_seven... Wake me up when they actually get to market and the bugs are worked out. I've bought two products through one of these pre-order deals: an intervalometer for my camera and a Copenhagen Wheel for my bicycle. Both experiences sucked. The Astro was six months late and didn't run smoothly when I finally did get it, and the Copenhagen Wheel seems to be vapourware (they are over 18 months late with still no ship date in sight). If the Lily drone ever ships and if it actually works as advertised, then I might buy one. Until then, I'm going to hold onto my money.

Yeah, that's my slightly facetious movie rating scale for use on this forum: I can say that I thought a film was better than those two movies without having to start a flame war because I never said how much better than those two movies I thought it was...

I watched it this evening... It is one of those films that, for me at least, will churn in my thoughts for a day or two. I am actually surprised that there isn't already a thread on this forum about it. It would seem to be the type of movie that would appeal to at least some around here. One of the reviews that I read described it as a modern variation on "Frankenstein", which I found interesting. And the film's story almost seemed to be a bit "self-aware" at times, with references to techniques for deception that were also being used by the film's script writer. It had flaws that my friends and I commented on during the movie, but overall it was enjoyable. It also touched on issues with AI that we've discussed over in the Science Labs sub-forum in a way that sent chills down my spine once or twice. That and we noticed a subtle nod to the film "Close Encounters" in a couple of spots. I thought it was better than Gravity and Interstellar... For those who have seen it, what did you think?

It seems that I had some of the details of the Canadian rules wrong. The exemptions from the need to obtain an SFOC from Transport Canada prior to flying aa "drone" are listed here: http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/standards/standards-4179.html But the point still stands: Flying your quad copter in restricted airspace or over people and buildings, etc is already illegal. The authorities just have to want to do something about it. And they probably won't unless you're being a real [diminutive of Richard]...

Irresponsible behavior by users of "drones" has already resulted in regulatory changes. The FAA has issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) which, when passed into law, will give law enforcement the "teeth" to stop people using them in dangerous ways. And in US national parks, UAVs and remote controlled aircraft are already banned outright. In Canada, IIRC, unmanned aerial vehicles (including RC aircraft) are limited to a maximum of 25 kg and must be flown below an altitude of 125 metres AGL and must stay within a 500 metre radius of the operator. These rules even apply to people who ooerate UAVs commercially, so real estate agents can take photos of a property without having to apply for a permit. Beyond those limits and when flying any autonomous flight to pre-programmed waypoints, a Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) is required. The requirements for obtaining an SFOC for a flight beyond the range of unaided vision or for an autonomous flight to waypoints are extremely restrictive and make an SFOC all but impossible to get for the average citizen. If regulators in Canada and soon the USA really wanted to crack down on much of the crap that goes on, they could. They probably just close a blind eye to most of it, though.

Who's post are you responding to? If you're going to lob a barbed comment, can you please at least indicate who it is directed at?

I don't think that we were ever talking exclusively about ANNs, were we? We were talking about recent advances in AI in general. This would obviously include ANNs, but isn't limited to just that approach. Again, I believe that we are discussing recent advances in AI and how these may lead to "the Singularity" [dunt dunt dunnn!]. I don't think anyone who's "in the know" would say that human level AI is imminent. True experts in the field like Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis are still saying that it is likely decades away. Even so, it is pretty clear that there have been significant advances in the past few years that toss out some of our previously held ideas about how to make computers "smarter".

The Demis Hassabis video that AngleLestat linked to earlier in this thread already shows his computers doing most, if not all, of those things. Just because an idea was conceived decades before the technology existed to implement it doesn't mean it is a bad idea... Tsiolkovsky and Goddard's foundational work in rocketry was also done decades before Sputnik was launched. I agree with AngleLestat on this one. I think you seriously under-estimate the number of iterations it takes a human child to spot the difference between letters. Why would childish hand writing with backwards B's and S's be such a cliche if this wasn't true? Also, I challenge you to immediately spot the difference in another languages script? How many iterations would it take you to identify the 47 different letters in the devanagari script?

In a perfect world, all of those missions, big and small, would get funded. The world community has the resources and the money gets spent down here, after all. It isn't shovelled into a rocket and fired off into deep space. As a statement of fact, not politics, my own country's government currently muzzles government funded scientists from speaking about their research so I am not holding my breath waiting for them to increase funding for scientific endeavors, but the voters in any democracy have a voice. If enough of them speak up, policies can change. Either when a new government takes power or if the sitting government starts to listen.

Maybe, but maybe not... Is there anyone here who can speak (with some authority) to how much of our brain is used for actually thinking and for creative processes? We've got billions and billions of neurons with tens or even hundreds of thousands of synapses each, but what percentage of those are used for the type of pattern matching that neural nets are already getting good at (like vision systems, voice recognition, etc)? How much of it just controls our bodies systems? How much of it is just used for what classic computer systems are good at - memory? Do we need to be able to simulate the whole blob of grey matter to yeild any sort of intelligence? Or can we get away with building a machine that is only comparable to the "thinking" part of our brains? I can't help but wonder. And to be clear, I have mixed feelings about AI. I am fascinated by some of the recent progress that has been made with neural networks and deep learning algorithms, but I have always been sceptical. I couldn't get through Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near". He struck me as a nut... I guess only time will tell where future advances take us and how soon we manage to develop true AI, but I am increasingly convinced that it will come sooner than even my sceptical self thought possible only a few years ago. We seem to be at the beginning of a new paradigm, where we have stoped trying to put the square peg of intelligence into the round hole of Von Neumann architecture machines and are focusing instead on trying to make it fit into an architecture that more closely models biological computers. So far the results have been impressive and we should be prepared, with our policies, ethics and security, for unexpected breakthroughs.

And why are we still going on about building sized computers? I will quote my own post: If you read a bit more about IBM's neurosynaptic chip, it currently only has 1 million neurons and 256 synapses per neuron (compared to tens or even hundreds of thousands of synapses per neuron for mammalian brains), but IBM's goal is to scale up their existing design to incorporate more neurons and synapses. And given that the current chip is the size of a postage stamp and runs on just 70 mW, I fail to understand where predictions of "building sized computers" is coming from?

. [Citation Needed] Also, arguments about the limitations of computing power on advances in deep learning algorithms typically focus on supercomputers, but IBM's new SyNAPSE neurosynaptic chip is an example of an entirely new computer architecture that is specifically designed around neural networks. To be fair, IBM's new chip pales in comparison to even a mouse's brain, but it runs on a mere 70 mW. That's 70 milliwatts... Improvements are bound to come quickly. We could be, as AngelLestat points out, at the beginning of a new paradigm. We should be both excited and cautious.

For what it is worth, our Earth's slightly elliptical orbit already does affect the length of the seasons a bit. In the northern hemisphere they are as follows (number of days between solstices and equinoxes): Winter: 88.99 days Spring: 92.75 days Summer: 93.65 days Autumn: 89.85 days So the southern hemisphere's summer is about 5 days shorter than the Northern hemisphere's summer because the Earth reaches perihelion (highest orbital angular velocity) on about January 3rd and aphelion (lowest orbital angular velocity) on about July 4th. And because the length of time between the equinoxes and solstices has noting to do with how we record time on our calendars, the length of the seasons is not affected by leap years.