That is easy. Break the task down into smaller tasks that you can estimate. If you can't estimate a broken down task, break it down more (think "3 hours"). Then add up all the bits.

1. Figuring out the right problem to solve. Or the best problem (which problem will have the most impact when solved).
2. Explaining why something took longer than I expected it to.
3. Estimating the time to fix some random bug before I understand the bug.
4. Explaining why the work I've done over the past year is more important/difficult/better than the work done by a co-worker over the past year.
5. Balancing staying focused on task versus expanding the breadth of my knowledge about the system I'm working on (I naturally bias towards the former).
6. Understanding the forest when I spend all day looking at individual trees (related to 5).
7. Knowing when to ask a co-worker a question to get past an obstacle in five minutes versus spending an hour figuring it out on my own.

Most of the things the article describe sound like the easy parts.

Most of my challenges seem to revolve around communication.

Psychohistory kind of depends on most people nothing thinking of Psychohistory.

The Kinect gets 3D information. They can take the polygons mapped with the video image and apply small rotation from the picture of the other person onthe screen to the camera. You'll get some artifacts where you are exposing areas that the camera can't see, but maybe those can be filled in with surrounding pixels so you don't notice so much.

I read "followed by" too, but I just assumed the slashdot summary was written badly. Even though I was wrong, I'm sticking to that theory.

I think most Americans agree that our health care system is broken, but there is a lot of disagreement on the way to fix it.

My only complaint is that I am skeptical a planet sized brain would be that aggressive. I'd rather think it would consider humans part of its own 'biology' in much the same way that we consider mitochondria and e. coli part of our biology.

We have no problem wiping out e. coli when it gets out of line but we would never eradicate it completely.

the Traveller?

I thought this was brilliant.

Perhaps the larger the team, the longer the short term is.

The average lifespan of a human being should then predict how selfish we are as a species and how large our social organizations (businesses, governments, churches, cities, etc) can be before corruption sets in.

It also implies the only way to really get people to cooperate is through life extension technologies.

Check the times on all of the posts.

I posted my original at the same time as his. The GP was making fun of how similar our titles were.

Why would you say "exactly"? It isn't even close to exactly. I think "really" would have been a much better choice. Also, drop the period in the subject. It's cleaner.

BingDrive.

Human drivers operating remotely is really a step in a different direction. It isn't moving past autonomous vehicles.

You could replace the remote humans with remote computers and it would be a form of autonomous vehicle.

In any case, given how often my cell phone drops signal while I'm driving I'm not sure I would want one of... oops...

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