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The March of Technology


deanb
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http://hosted.ap.org...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

http://www.reuters.c...E78L4FH20110922]

 

In case you haven't heard CERN reckons it's found neutrinos travelling faster than c. They're getting the international scientific community to check it all over just in case, but they seem fairly confident.

 

Now folks are jumping to "time travel!!" but I don't think that'll happen, at least for humans or anything as big as us. Nor would it be feasible, or have any practical purpose, to send messages back in time since it's taken them a year to check their findings and it's only faster by a few nanoseconds.

 

Though it is reckoned that electrons and positrons time travel, though given that's a quantum event and electrons are already a pain to check out as it is we're not certain.

 

If electrons can travel through time though... that does mean one thing to me... Computers that will have done shit before you tell them to already did it!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/276700,ibm-eyes-brain-like-computing.aspx

 

So IBM are predicting the end of the "programmable computing" era. Going off from the success of Watson (which has commercial applications in healthcare so not just a one trick pony for Jeopardy) they're now heading off into wanting to develop a human brain facsimile in the next decade. Just to pull the numbers for those not reading the article:

Blue Gene/P has 147K cores and 144TB of RAM. It was built two years ago and simulates 764million neurons (i.e a cat brain). A human brain has 20billion neurons. They've got a fair way to go. Also needing to learn how a brain works with programming compared to a computer. (Human brains cheat. An awful lot. Computers are stupid comparatively. A computer needs to know what every single cup in existence looks like in order to identify it as a cup. We only need to see one and able to apply that to every other cup we see to know it's a cup. )

 

So yeah IBM is now kinda moving on from regular old computers to....well I guess AI. Dunno if they'll manage within a decade though, but neuroscience is a vastly expanding field and they have Moore's Law on their side.

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Yeah except in all probability it will. You remember the whole "context aware fill", turns out it worked as shown. So I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Not like they're charging a few grand a pop for this tech or anything.

 

In further news: http://www.theage.co...1016-1lrm5.html

Drugs that could extend life to 150.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8857154/Worlds-most-powerful-laser-to-tear-apart-the-vacuum-of-space.html

 

And then you remember that sci-fi film from the 70s with that space station with a giant laser operated by Brits.

 

Thing is parts of this, well the prototype, will be housed in three countries. How big is this going to be exactly?

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Well it's obviously pre-programmed to a degree, still a computer and I don't think it learns to walk on it's own. But I think they just kinda tell it where to go n what to do. A lot of its purpose is with movement, hence them showing it hopping about, something simple for us but you try making an 8 stone robot hop on one foot. So to that degree it's AI is pretty simple, mainly object recognition, depth perception etc. It's all ran from the PC in it's back, no giant server rack like Watson to take advantage of. If you gave it a thermos of a different size it should be able to figure it out, but it still needs to be pre-programmed with that info beforehand.

 

It's a helper bot more than a thinking bot. Something Japan sorely needs, and making it look like a cute kid in an astronaut outfit helps miles too.

 

Compared to ASIMOs granddads that is:

Honda_P1_Fan_Fun_Lab.jpg

 

"Please put down your weapon, you have 30 seconds to comply"

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What I mean is, for that particular demo, did everything have to be in place like, if someone moved the trolley on foot to the left or right, would the whole thing have not worked. Or is Asimo aware of its surroundings?

 

I know it's programmed, I'm not a total nincompoop, but I'm not sure where on the scale it is from something like a big-trax in that it would do the same movements irrespective of context up to something completely autonomous that can be told to find a trolley and bring it over and pour a drink.

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Is it actually running? I can't tell. It kind of looks like it's just walking really fast.

 

(difference between walking and running: in running both/all feet are off the ground at the same time, in walking at least one foot is always on the ground)

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-science-meat-f-idUSTRE7AA30020111111

 

They're growing meat. Doing it all proper too, exercising it and such. I wonder if vegetarians will eat it. I guess it depends if you're against the death of the animal or the idea/taste of meat itself.

 

Shame all it can really do will be stuff like sausages n mince. Oh n supposedly tastes pretty crappy.

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