Comment Re:The message has been clear (Score 1) 435
Exactly.
It's reassuring that the decision-makers in that process consider alternative ideas; basing the goal on 'human-like' sight would leave a lot of room for error
It's true, but using 3D laser mapping feels a little bit like cheating - after all, human drivers don't need nearly that much information. A successful computer vision approach would be a lot more impressive, even if it was too dangerous for the highway.
You better hope your car is not just taking one single still image and performing actions based on that.
In fact, most of them don't use computer vision much at all. Google's self-driving car for example uses a rotating IR laser to directly measure its surrounds.
As for the "magic" straw man, not worthy of a response.
It's not a straw man at all. You explicitly claimed that the US government's collection of smart people have almost obtained a polynomial prime factoring algorithm while the vastly larger collection of non-US-government smart people has not. You have no argument other than bald assertion why that should be the case.
And the numbers given in the article correspond suspiciously well to an inverse-distance relationship.
Why did you make the parent comment specifically stating the opposite?
The parent's question was, would the same people who support ending the embargo now, have supported engagement with South Africa over sanctions? My answer is that those "left of center folks" who supported the punitive sanctions against SA might have moderated their stance if 50 years into the sanctions, the apartheid regime still existed.
I get what you're saying - the embargo has had some demonstrable effects. But achieving the policy goal (end of Castro regime / communism in Cuba) is not one of them.
I wonder where these numbers come from.
Different magnetic fields strengths and atmospheres (or lack thereof). The values themselves are probably empirical data from the previous unmanned probes (as opposed to theoretical calculations assuming a location just outside the magnetic field).
People had known the earth was round for hundreds if not thousands of years before Columbus.
Definitely thousands. (Like 1.8 thousands).
So would the same people that support this move also say we should have continued with "constructive engagement" vis a vis South Africa during apartheid rather than imposing the punitive sanctions that were demanded by many left-of-center folks?
Maybe, if after 50 years no demonstrable progress had been made.
near total trade embargo
To be fair, it's only a unilateral embargo...
What makes you think they don't hire, and utilize, some of the most powerful math-heads out there?
They do - and they still haven't solved Kryptos, let alone polynomial prime factoring. Hard problems don't magically become easy because "it's the government."
Do you let random people walk into your home any time of the day or night without knowing who they are?
Classic fallacy of composition. You need to provide arguments, not bald assertions about incommensurables like large nation states and individuals.
Seth Polansky, Cellcrypt's vice president for North America, disputes the idea that building technology to allow wiretapping is a security risk. "It's only creating a weakness for government agencies," he says. "Just because a government access option exists, it doesn't mean other companies can access it."
I doubt it will be very long before third parties apart from government figure out how to access their backdoor.
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
