On Tue, 03 Dec 2013 19:25:43 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> And that's just the moon, the nearest planet.

Um, the moon isn't a planet.

Jim

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On 12/03/2013 02:25 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> (Also, Jupiter isn't a planet, it's a star that didn't ignite properly,
> but anyway...)

ROFL ... true enough, I got some weird looks the other night at a 
viewing party (checking out venus) when I offered that nugget up.

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> However, not all technology is feasible. 50 years ago it was envisioned
> that by the end of the century we would have flying cars and that space
> travel would be as trivial as taking the bus. Nope, it's still too
> freaking expensive and dangerous to be in any way feasible. Maybe some
> day, but it's still not looking very good.

well, at least now we got flying mail delivery :)

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (Also, Jupiter isn't a planet, it's a star that didn't ignite properly, 
> but anyway...)

It's not classified as a star. It's classified as a gas giant, which is
a type of planet.

An even stranger tidbit of trivia: When they want to send a probe to
the inner planets, such as Mercury, they have to actually make the
probe go to Jupiter for a gravity assist to slow it down enough so
that it will start falling towards the Sun. Else it would take too
freaking long. (It is, in fact, basically as hard to make a probe
fall towards the Sun as it is to make it go towards the outer planets.
We are, after all, orbiting the Sun.)

But that's not the hard part. The hard part is to make it then start
orbiting the target planet. It requires pretty clever and contrived
manoeuvering to succeed. The probe is basically falling towards the
Sun at a staggering speed, so it's like trying to catch a bullet
with a net.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> James Holsenback <nom### [at] nonecom> wrote:
> > too bad we have to wait for some egghead to figure out how to convert
> > matter to energy then back ... hey 10/15 years ago the idea of a 3d
> > printer would have been considered a pipe dream, so I don't think the
> > eventual reality is /too/ far fetched.

>
> Sometimes that happens because the technology is feasible. For example,
> people carrying what effectively amounts to less-than-wallet-sized
> supercomputers in their pockets was basically an unthinkable dream
> just a mere 20 or 30 years ago. (Modern cellphones are most certainly
> supercomputers compared to even the fastest mainframes of 30 years ago.)


How true, I have been re-reading a few science fiction books written from the

public phone booths although their clothes come out of machines. That one
slipped past all the future-ologists.

Stephen

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> The problem with flying cars is the absurd fuel bills. Plus, lots of
> people don't look where the **** they're going when driving in *two*
> dimensions - imagine the carnage in 3D!

50 years ago, did any actual scientists who knew about the physics of 
planes and cars actually predict that it was likely we'd all be driving 
flying cars in 50 years? Or was it just the media and the general public 
"dreaming" of such things?

> Cars that drive themselves? Well, that's looking like it may one day be
> plausible.

Indeed, there is no reason why this shouldn't be technically plausible 
with enough computing power. The only issue I can foresee is that 
currently in most crashes the car manufacturer is not at fault, with 
self-driven cars I expect the car manufacturers will more often than not 
be liable. You're going to have to be pretty sure it won't go wrong if 
you start selling these things - one small bug could bankrupt you.

> The problem with space flight is that everything is so damned far away.
> It's been decades since anybody went to the moon, so I think people have
> forgotten this... the Apollo astronauts didn't just get into a spaceship
> and then land on the moon a few hours later. It took them *days* to get
> there! And that's just the moon, the nearest planet. It took the various
> Mars probes *months* to get there!

Today we are limited by utilising conservation of momentum and gravity 
for space travel - that's not likely to change in the next 20 years. 
Even if there is some amazing scientific breakthrough tomorrow, it will 
take many decades before that technology is reliably implemented into 
regular space travel.

> You know what? Computers that program themselves... Yeah, never
> happened.

You could argue that neural networks and other machine learning 
techniques are computers programming themselves...

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On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:39:35 +0000, scott wrote:

>> You know what? Computers that program themselves... Yeah, never
>> happened.
> 
> You could argue that neural networks and other machine learning
> techniques are computers programming themselves...

Actually, it has sort of happened; I read something the other day about 
Watson coming up with optimal coding techniques for coding problems.  
Modifying its own algorithms, given that, ought to be trivial.

Jim

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I also recommend reading "Physics of the Impossible" by Kaku, it goes 
through a number of futuristic/"impossible" ideas and provides a 
scientific explanation of if they are really impossible, and if not when 
we are likely to develop the technology to do it.

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:39:35 +0000, scott wrote:
>
> >> You know what? Computers that program themselves... Yeah, never
> >> happened.
> >
> > You could argue that neural networks and other machine learning
> > techniques are computers programming themselves...
>
> Actually, it has sort of happened; I read something the other day about
> Watson coming up with optimal coding techniques for coding problems.
> Modifying its own algorithms, given that, ought to be trivial.

so someday perhaps it'll turn into Sherlock, all by itself ;)

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On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 13:36:47 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:39:35 +0000, scott wrote:
>>
>> >> You know what? Computers that program themselves... Yeah, never
>> >> happened.
>> >
>> > You could argue that neural networks and other machine learning
>> > techniques are computers programming themselves...
>>
>> Actually, it has sort of happened; I read something the other day about
>> Watson coming up with optimal coding techniques for coding problems.
>> Modifying its own algorithms, given that, ought to be trivial.
> 
> so someday perhaps it'll turn into Sherlock, all by itself ;)

LOL

Perhaps it already has. ;)

Jim

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