so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
When I was young I had this idea that would be cooler than flying cars, something much more realistic. You know, cars that could travel in more directions then reverse and forward. A car that could strafe and rotate its side using wheels that are spheres.
so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
We just need to skip the whole "flying car" idea and go straight to organic teleportation. That would completely solve all transportation problems. Forever.
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Waka LakaRiding the stuffed UnicornIf ya know what I mean.Registered Userregular
We just need to skip the whole "flying car" idea and go straight to organic teleportation. That would completely solve all transportation problems. Forever.
We just need to skip the whole "flying car" idea and go straight to organic teleportation. That would completely solve all transportation problems. Forever.
"Hey Doc... about that cat..."
Yeah, I'd rather take a clunky ass car than risk being mutated through a time span of 40 years through 6 alternate dimensions just because I wanted to take a shortcut on my way to pickup some star bucks coffee.
We just need to skip the whole "flying car" idea and go straight to organic teleportation. That would completely solve all transportation problems. Forever.
"Hey Doc... about that cat..."
Yeah, I'd rather take a clunky ass car than risk being mutated through a time span of 40 years through 6 alternate dimensions just because I wanted to take a shortcut on my way to pickup some star bucks coffee.
If we had the ability to completely disassemble and then re-assemble a person's molecules, teleportation is one of the lamest things we could do. At that point we could almost anything, like turn air into gold or terraform Venus. Teleportation is a lot more impossible than flying cars!
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Goose!That's me, honeyShow me the way home, honeyRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
WiTricity causing cancer would probably be received in the same way cell phones causing cancer has been.
What's even more amazing is the tech that is now mundane. Cloning? Meh. Cars that drive themselves? Old news. Laser guns, robots, robots with laser guns, video phones, and all the other sci-fi staples wouldn't even make front page news anymore.
so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
I'm pretty sure that the general public will be out of the loop at that point. You would just tell the machine where you want to go.
so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
I'm pretty sure that the general public will be out of the loop at that point. You would just tell the machine where you want to go.
That's true, but there's got to be a way to manually override the computer in an emergency. Either way, I think the amount of deaths per year caused by vehicles would increase.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
I'm pretty sure that the general public will be out of the loop at that point. You would just tell the machine where you want to go.
That's true, but there's got to be a way to manually override the computer in an emergency. Either way, I think the amount of deaths per year caused by vehicles would increase.
Regarding manual overrides, I'm not so sure about that. If something is too complicated for normal people, an override makes no sense (and could even be potentially dangerous). For example, there aren't "manual overrides" for lots of electronic equipment. If the cable box screws up, there's no override for me to tell the TV which exact frequency to tune to, or whatever. It just doesn't work. I'm sure someone can come up with a better analogy.
They're already working on automation that controls ground-based vehicles. You can gain a lot of extra efficiency (meaning less traffic and fewer accidents) if you can have an algorithm/computer determining where all the cars on the road go, how fast they are, etc. On one hand, having a manual override makes sense, in case something goes wrong. On the other hand, it also opens the door for abusers (say a drunkard or someone suicidal) to override the system and cause an an even greater chance of destruction.
Instead of overrides, you'd have to built plenty of safeguards into the whole system. So if system A fails, it falls to system B to safely pilot the car/flying-vehicle to an emergency area. Of course if that system fails, then you're probably just fucked. (Or maybe in that case, then yeah it would turn the controls over to you ... good luck figuring out to fly though)
I wouldn't ride inside of a vehicle I had no control over, would you?
Why, I fly in airplanes all the time, don't you?
Seriously, if everyone in the plane vanished, including the pilot, I'd be screwed. Just because I've played Flight Sim a few times, certainly doesn't give me any qualifications to fly a plane. I'd be much more likely to hope that the auto-pilot is still working and is capable of landing the plane.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
I'm pretty sure that the general public will be out of the loop at that point. You would just tell the machine where you want to go.
That's true, but there's got to be a way to manually override the computer in an emergency. Either way, I think the amount of deaths per year caused by vehicles would increase.
Regarding manual overrides, I'm not so sure about that. If something is too complicated for normal people, an override makes no sense (and could even be potentially dangerous). For example, there aren't "manual overrides" for lots of electronic equipment. If the cable box screws up, there's no override for me to tell the TV which exact frequency to tune to, or whatever. It just doesn't work. I'm sure someone can come up with a better analogy.
They're already working on automation that controls ground-based vehicles. You can gain a lot of extra efficiency (meaning less traffic and fewer accidents) if you can have an algorithm/computer determining where all the cars on the road go, how fast they are, etc. On one hand, having a manual override makes sense, in case something goes wrong. On the other hand, it also opens the door for abusers (say a drunkard or someone suicidal) to override the system and cause an an even greater chance of destruction.
Instead of overrides, you'd have to built plenty of safeguards into the whole system. So if system A fails, it falls to system B to safely pilot the car/flying-vehicle to an emergency area. Of course if that system fails, then you're probably just fucked. (Or maybe in that case, then yeah it would turn the controls over to you ... good luck figuring out to fly though)
They have actually already invented a system for personal airtraffic control. I can't seem to find the article I read about it in (Time magazine or something) but I'm pretty sure it involved synthetic vision somehow.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
so.. any time futuristic topics come up, flying cars (or jetpacks) get mentioned.
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
Also, Congress is apparently demanding that NASA turn over the results of a survey they did that shows near-misses in US airspace are a fucking TON more common than the FAA admits.
I wouldn't ride inside of a vehicle no one had control over, would you?
fixed
Yeah, I thought people might be above semantics but...who am I kidding. This is the internet.
If you want to get into semantics, then what does "control" mean? Mechanical/physical control? For example, the steering of many vehicles is still done through things like wheels, gears, yokes, etc. Does it make you feel "safer" that you can control a vehicle through such a means, even if you might not actually know how to actually safely pilot it?
In the far future, we may get to the point where vehicles (spacecraft and the like) don't have mechanical means of controlling them. They'd all be computer based, where we have to trust it to take us where to go. You could argue that some spacecraft may already do this now.
Heck, I've read about prototypes of cars that are computer driven. Or instead of wheels, use "gamepads" and other non-conventional steering devices. They're completely dependent on technology, so yeah if the computer system goes down, you might be hosed. But I would argue, that's definitely the direction of the World of Tomorrow. Not trusting those vehicles would make us look like Luddites to our children, the same way that we laugh at old people that don't understand the Internet or similar technology today.
So, to answer your original question ... yes, I would ride inside a vehicle no person had control over, if it were the hands of a capable and tested computer system. Then again, I'm biased because I'm also a software engineer by trade.
WiTricity causing cancer would probably be received in the same way cell phones causing cancer has been.
i.e.--fuck it.
The article about wireless energy talks about using fields that are almost entirely magnetic, rather than electro-magnetic. Apparently that's better with regards to cancer and whatnot.
Wireless electricity transmission has been around since Tesla. I remember reading about a couple of cases in physics class where farmers leaving coils of wire underneath high voltage power lines would come back to find they had inadvertently made little electric animal traps. The problem has always been that the actual rate of transmission follows the inverse square law- i.e. the power at the source will quickly drop off over distance. I'm wondering if they got around that, or if this wireless power system would eat like 10 times the normal electricity of a household appliance.
Edit: That wireless power article is all breathless pseudo-science. Here is the wikipedia article on electromagnetic induction, which is what they're actually using. All that BS about resonance and tails is... well... it's BS.
I always thought, at least in terms of DNA or Quantum computing, that we would have to completely rewrite our notions of computer processing and language. By this, I mean no longer being binary, yes/no operations, but instead, yes/no/maybe/onlyifthishappens multiple pathway operations.
Wireless electricity transmission has been around since Tesla. I remember reading about a couple of cases in physics class where farmers leaving coils of wire underneath high voltage power lines would come back to find they had inadvertently made little electric animal traps. The problem has always been that the actual rate of transmission follows the inverse square law- i.e. the power at the source will quickly drop off over distance. I'm wondering if they got around that, or if this wireless power system would eat like 10 times the normal electricity of a household appliance.
Edit: That wireless power article is all breathless pseudo-science. Here is the wikipedia article on electromagnetic induction, which is what they're actually using. All that BS about resonance and tails is... well... it's BS.
The areas on modern uses and efficiency are particularly interesting.
This is exactly what I had heard when this most recent story was on NPR. People who had worked on similar projects over the last 30 years called in (if it wasn't NPR, I would have been more skeptical) and they discussed how lighting a lightbulb from across the room is pretty much the wall as far as this was concerned. They could do it but at great energy output and in a way that was not considered safe or useful for military or civilian implementation.
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I don't see "ergonomic" or "comfortable" fitting in with the agenda there.
Tumblr
I dunno about anyone else but The Fury immediately popped into my head.
Isn't OLED sets better then SEDs? Think they're also suppose to start coming out this year too.
Why play games on a flatscreen when you can strap a fucking CRT to your head!
You have to wonder how heavy that thing is, and how much it is killing your back....
OLED? Holy hell that's gotta be mighty pricey. Tell us more about it!
I, for one, dread that day. I mean, good god, aren't the accident rates for 2D movement high enough?
This is one big reason I don't see flying cars happening any time soon. A fender-bender would be lethal at 3,000 ft.
When I was young I had this idea that would be cooler than flying cars, something much more realistic. You know, cars that could travel in more directions then reverse and forward. A car that could strafe and rotate its side using wheels that are spheres.
Then I, Robot came out and stole my fucking idea.
Bastards.
While I agree that an accident is much more likely to be catastrophic, you DO have a lot more "space" to maneuver in. It's like flying ... you never hear about planes hitting each other, even though there are thousands of planes in the skies in any given moment. If coordinated correctly (read: controlled by computers, not error-prone humans), you'd rarely see "fender benders" with flying vehicles.
Anyway, my big wish for the World of Tomorrow is for that Space Elevator to finally get built so I can fly me to the moon on my retirement money or something.
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
"Hey Doc... about that cat..."
Tumblr
Yeah, I'd rather take a clunky ass car than risk being mutated through a time span of 40 years through 6 alternate dimensions just because I wanted to take a shortcut on my way to pickup some star bucks coffee.
If we had the ability to completely disassemble and then re-assemble a person's molecules, teleportation is one of the lamest things we could do. At that point we could almost anything, like turn air into gold or terraform Venus. Teleportation is a lot more impossible than flying cars!
i.e.--fuck it.
You don't hear about planes hitting eachother because pilots have to fly for hundreds of hours before they get a license. I don't think the government has the time or money to train everyone to fly.
That's true, but there's got to be a way to manually override the computer in an emergency. Either way, I think the amount of deaths per year caused by vehicles would increase.
That is some seriously funny shit right there.
Best part? How in the article it states that this model is SMALLER than previous versions!
Wrong Al but it's close enough to serve my point.
Regarding manual overrides, I'm not so sure about that. If something is too complicated for normal people, an override makes no sense (and could even be potentially dangerous). For example, there aren't "manual overrides" for lots of electronic equipment. If the cable box screws up, there's no override for me to tell the TV which exact frequency to tune to, or whatever. It just doesn't work. I'm sure someone can come up with a better analogy.
They're already working on automation that controls ground-based vehicles. You can gain a lot of extra efficiency (meaning less traffic and fewer accidents) if you can have an algorithm/computer determining where all the cars on the road go, how fast they are, etc. On one hand, having a manual override makes sense, in case something goes wrong. On the other hand, it also opens the door for abusers (say a drunkard or someone suicidal) to override the system and cause an an even greater chance of destruction.
Instead of overrides, you'd have to built plenty of safeguards into the whole system. So if system A fails, it falls to system B to safely pilot the car/flying-vehicle to an emergency area. Of course if that system fails, then you're probably just fucked. (Or maybe in that case, then yeah it would turn the controls over to you ... good luck figuring out to fly though)
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
I like roller-coasters. Do you? ;p
Why, I fly in airplanes all the time, don't you?
Seriously, if everyone in the plane vanished, including the pilot, I'd be screwed. Just because I've played Flight Sim a few times, certainly doesn't give me any qualifications to fly a plane. I'd be much more likely to hope that the auto-pilot is still working and is capable of landing the plane.
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
Ever taken public transportation? Flown? Cruised?
edit: beated.
fixed
They have actually already invented a system for personal airtraffic control. I can't seem to find the article I read about it in (Time magazine or something) but I'm pretty sure it involved synthetic vision somehow.
Also, Congress is apparently demanding that NASA turn over the results of a survey they did that shows near-misses in US airspace are a fucking TON more common than the FAA admits.
Yeah, I thought people might be above semantics but...who am I kidding. This is the internet.
If you want to get into semantics, then what does "control" mean? Mechanical/physical control? For example, the steering of many vehicles is still done through things like wheels, gears, yokes, etc. Does it make you feel "safer" that you can control a vehicle through such a means, even if you might not actually know how to actually safely pilot it?
In the far future, we may get to the point where vehicles (spacecraft and the like) don't have mechanical means of controlling them. They'd all be computer based, where we have to trust it to take us where to go. You could argue that some spacecraft may already do this now.
Heck, I've read about prototypes of cars that are computer driven. Or instead of wheels, use "gamepads" and other non-conventional steering devices. They're completely dependent on technology, so yeah if the computer system goes down, you might be hosed. But I would argue, that's definitely the direction of the World of Tomorrow. Not trusting those vehicles would make us look like Luddites to our children, the same way that we laugh at old people that don't understand the Internet or similar technology today.
So, to answer your original question ... yes, I would ride inside a vehicle no person had control over, if it were the hands of a capable and tested computer system. Then again, I'm biased because I'm also a software engineer by trade.
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
It's all love.
I haven't heard anything about Congress doing that. Link?
I'm assuming you're talking about this article: NASA Won't Disclose Air Safety Survey
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
The article about wireless energy talks about using fields that are almost entirely magnetic, rather than electro-magnetic. Apparently that's better with regards to cancer and whatnot.
Edit: That wireless power article is all breathless pseudo-science. Here is the wikipedia article on electromagnetic induction, which is what they're actually using. All that BS about resonance and tails is... well... it's BS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_electricity#History
The areas on modern uses and efficiency are particularly interesting.
This is exactly what I had heard when this most recent story was on NPR. People who had worked on similar projects over the last 30 years called in (if it wasn't NPR, I would have been more skeptical) and they discussed how lighting a lightbulb from across the room is pretty much the wall as far as this was concerned. They could do it but at great energy output and in a way that was not considered safe or useful for military or civilian implementation.
We won't be using gasoline as fuel when we have flying cars.