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Comment: Re:what about criminal library? (Score 1) 352

by norpy (#43469661) Attached to: Why Self-Driving Cars Are Still a Long Way Down the Road

I'm sure they didn't think about detecting people/barricades that are blocking a street, that NEVER would have crossed my mind when designing a vehicle AI. </sarcasm>

People need to look up the youtube videos displaying the realtime computer vision processing that the google cars use, it will begin to change your mind about these things.

Comment: Re:Great AI (Score 1) 352

by norpy (#43469631) Attached to: Why Self-Driving Cars Are Still a Long Way Down the Road

You obviously didn't think of the fact that the car's computer would record *at least* a few minutes of telemetry before a crash event that could be reviewed in court or by police in teh event of a crash.

In fact in at least a few places they are considering implementing laws to have new cars sold with "black box" recorders in the near future.

Comment: Re:Turbine? (Score 1) 119

by norpy (#43229873) Attached to: Bezos Expeditions Recovers Pieces of Apollo 11 Rockets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SaturnF1EngineDiagram.png
Keeping in mind that this diagram is of something the size of a semi trailer, see that thing labelled "turbine"?

Also you should probably read this; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbojet it will tell you the names of all the major bits of a "jet engine".

Comment: Re:Duh (Score 1) 339

by norpy (#43041765) Attached to: Bitcoin Hits New All-time High of $32

I don't see the problem with deflation. It allows one to save their money and get good future value for their saved money. I think inflation is wrong. Inflation depletes your savings.

Deflation encourages hoarding and reduces the velocity of money - why invest money with risk when i can just hold onto it and increase it's value.

In a deflationary money system, the more people that horde the greater the value of the currency. It's like a catch-22, the more you save the more that people want to save.
Instantly all of people's discretionary spending grinds to a halt and businesses can't get loans because they have to spend a currency that will return in smaller amounts (because everyone else's money will be worth more) and have to pay it back in larger amounts that they may never get. Additionally, if you buy X amount of stock and tomorrow the currency is worth X * 0.9 you have lost money before you started. If it takes you 6 months to get the stock from wholesaler to customer you may never be able to sell it for more than what you paid for it. May as well just keep the money in the bank at 0% interest.

Large amounts of inflation are bad because people can't spend money fast enough for it to be useful, but deflation is worse because it literally stops the economy dead in it's tracks. This is why central banks keep inflation at around 3%, it's not enough to affect day to day prices so business and consumers can plan their budgets but it is enough that people don't keep money under their mattresses. Even putting your cash in an interest bearing account is in everyone's interest because that interest is you being paid to lend your money to businesses or other people to keep the flow of capital going.

People who say deflation is bad should go find a local community college and take Economics 101, it will teach you the basics theories of how this stuff works.

Comment: Re:Hmm (Score 1) 196

by norpy (#43041631) Attached to: New Bill Would Require Patent Trolls To Pay Defendants' Attorneys

Yes, but loser pays isn't a panacea for our problems, the fact is that if you don't win, that's not necessarily because you didn't have a case, if your attorneys weren't as good or you didn't have experts that were as good, you can still lose. Not to mention the times when you just have bad luck.

This is why most countries that have loser pays legal costs don't just automatically award them but it is automatically considered, otherwise a large entity could hire entire law firms and then lose on purpose to bankrupt their opponents.

For example in Australia when AFACT (local puppet for the MPAA) took our 3rd largest ISP to court for encouraging piracy by refusing to forward MPAA nastygrams to customers iinet were only awarded something like 75% of legal costs.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure comes down to how legitimate your case was and how able to wear the costs you are.

Comment: Re:Because he wants to come home again (Score 4, Insightful) 97

by norpy (#42974383) Attached to: Millionaire Plans Mission To Mars In 2018

You forget how deep the gravity well of mars is, It's not like the moon where you can pretty much just jump to put yourself into orbit around it.
Mars is more like taking off from earth, and the weight of all that fuel would never make it out of *our* gravity well let alone landing it safely and taking off again at the other end.
Until we have the ability to synthesize or mine more fuel at the other end of the trip and land a reusable launch module the trip to mars is one-way.

This is either a plan for one-way mission or it's a scam (or both?)

Space

China's Radical New Space Drive 419

Posted by samzenpus
from the learning-to-fly dept.
First time accepted submitter Noctis-Kaban writes "Scientists in China have built and tested a radical new space drive. Although the thrust it produces may not be enough to lift your mobile phone, it looks like it could radically change the satellite industry. Satellites are just the start: with superconducting components, this technology could generate the thrust to drive everything from deep space probes to flying cars. And it all started with a British engineer whose invention was ignored and ridiculed in his home country."
Technology

Digital Pen Vibrates To Indicate Bad Spelling, Grammar and Penmanship 144

Posted by samzenpus
from the try-again dept.
Zothecula writes "Use digital technology long enough and you start to become dependent upon it for such mundane tasks as spell checking. That means when you pick up a garden variety ballpoint pen you're back in dictionary and 'I before E except after C' territory. The creators of the Lernstiftdigital pen hope to bring handwriting into the 21st century by having the pen vibrate to indicate when the writer makes spelling and grammatical errors or exhibits poor penmanship."

Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ...

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