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Chance and Change - Congratulations! You are one of the few posters that can out rant me on this topic. I agree with most of what you are saying when I can figure it out.
RE: Self driving Trucks. We already have many thousands of these. They are called railroad cars. Every rail car, even the recently reviving boxcar market, carries at least twice as much as a truck and they can be strung by the tens, twenties and almost hundreds behind one or two "drivers" with no need for automated control of each truck equivalent.
This can become a larger factor in our transportation system if we could build, reinstall actually, many of the lines that have been scrapped primarily due to truck competition. making the trucking industry pay the real cost of building and maintaining their "roadways" would go a long way to returning freight to railroads and making our highways a lot safer.
Chance and Change - Congratulations! You are one of the few posters that can out rant me on this topic. I agree with most of what you are saying when I can figure it out.
RE: Self driving Trucks. We already have many thousands of these. They are called railroad cars. Every rail car, even the recently reviving boxcar market, carries at least twice as much as a truck and they can be strung by the tens, twenties and almost hundreds behind one or two "drivers" with no need for automated control of each truck equivalent.
This can become a larger factor in our transportation system if we could build, reinstall actually, many of the lines that have been scrapped primarily due to truck competition. making the trucking industry pay the real cost of building and maintaining their "roadways" would go a long way to returning freight to railroads and making our highways a lot safer.
Thank you, the subject is important, as we are a great nation and to remain being great; it is not only IMPORTANT for the older generation but the new generation to truly grasp and understand the nature of what is this American Democracy and how did it become to be what it is in a world of many nation. We must invest to see with a broader view, the elements of challenge being faced "within" this nation.
We as common citizens feel the pings and the pains of the run wild capitalistic system, where greed has led to avarice, and avarice has driven the aims toward plutocratic motivations. It is critical that we see this, understand it and engage to deal with the politicians who have been a party to undermining the basic economic status of the citizen livelihood. It is not something that is "remote" it is in the middle of our reality and impacts our future.
Politicians should be slated in the programming to be immediately "Recalled" when they venture to self interest and placing corporation above the civility and economic well being of the citizens. This should include a clause which signifies they can never again holder an elected or appointed position !!!!!
We also need means and methods to engage forfeiture, for those who have turned political office into "personal millionaire making systems" to enrich themselves.
We whine and we cry about a vanishing middle class, we scream foul and wallow in despair at the minimization of what is middle class, as the numbers shrink on a daily basis. Yet, after the whimpers we do nothing.
We listen to blow hards talk about they can do this and we ignore the fact we have a congress, because we get caught up in the drama sequences promoted by media tid bit picking and presenting as if they are the instigators who choose whom we are to elect. We need to pay attention, not get lost in wishful thinking, melodrama, madness and religiosity and all such things, and look a the facts of where we are, what is our conditions, where are we going, how do we do so in a world where "diplomacy matters", and how to we navigate with positive enactments which considers many many factored. I'm not telling anyone who they should vote for, but me personally, I say, I stand for Hillary, because she is the most experienced, the most qualified and the one who has had the longest accessibility to global information, as well as intra national information, from many angle and many positions. in a world caught in many factions of turmoil, we need a voice of reason as well as someone known to work in the system which diminishes the irrationality of actions. We must understand the importance of that, while we work on our internal changes that are necessary within these United States. If we go about creating global panic, without a firm plan in place of how to modernize and change our internal economic, then we run the risk of calamities far beyond our ability to consider to comprehend.
We can't get lost, at least for me I won't get lost in Benghazi, or emails madness. I know the sequester cut budgets, I too know the republicans had the right to fund Middle Eastern Embassies, and they did not, I also know that no one at that levels sets up a server systems without controls, not after having been Secretary of State. It is also no different than a company, who will not set up access to their systems without some strong protocols being in place. I think, "future" - where are we, how do we move ahead.
Sanders, I applaud him for getting young people involved, but the system of this nation will not "flip" to meet his agenda; we are a nation with a long series of how we progressed, and it will take process in how we change.
Cruz, we have not forgot the government shut down he spearheaded and took accommodates for it. Nor will be become religious zealotry driven states in the far right concepts when the world and this nation is progressing.
Kaisac, has a logical mind and does not pander to the madness, but he does not have the base support to push his aim or his agenda.
Not to pick on Trump, because the Make America Great is a good premise, but the methodology of his message is flawed, and the grandiose aims are fictional, when he omits to consider, 'there is a congress" and unless congress is rebuilt and repaired, to understand their responsibility of alignment with the Presidential Proclamations and Aims. Then we face "gridlock" by many means, and still the matter of "self interest dominates" and the voice of the people is silenced as the politicians take a stand as if they are the guru, making decisions without public consensus.
We've lived through the results of bully talk and it cost us $Trillions and many lost lives, we can't and won't repeat that.
We have a great deal of work to do.
It has to start in many places at many levels, including back to the 4th grade Civics classes, not only to teach the structure of governance, but to teach the ethic's that support those structures and then teach the responsibility of citizenry to understand and be a participatory actor within their social and civic responsibility.
We have to consider the luxury of what is voting, and re-instill in the public the value of the vote, but not only the value of the vote; but to read and understand the issue, the person, the impacts and the benefits of what and whom they cast their vote.
This is only a fractional aspect of the works which stand before us. Yet, being fractional does not diminish the nature of importance.
Last edited by Chance and Change; 04-11-2016 at 11:38 AM..
Is 10 years a "great many"? 20? It won't be more than that.
Lots of research and $$$ going into this right now. It's the first large scale application of AI.
It has been 20 years since the AI Deep Blue program beat Kasparov at chess. Notice how fast AI technology has progressed and taken over every aspect of our daily lives. Fifty years ago the dreamers thought we would be commuting in helicopters or have some other sort of personal flying device. Of course, there have been countless dreams about anti-gravity devices which turned out to be as successful as perpectual motion.
I am sure there will eventually be some major changes in transportation. I seriously doubt that the new systems will include anything that looks like a current car or truck or that moves on our current system of roads.
It has been 20 years since the AI Deep Blue program beat Kasparov at chess. Notice how fast AI technology has progressed and taken over every aspect of our daily lives. Fifty years ago the dreamers thought we would be commuting in helicopters or have some other sort of personal flying device. Of course, there have been countless dreams about anti-gravity devices which turned out to be as successful as perpectual motion.
I am sure there will eventually be some major changes in transportation. I seriously doubt that the new systems will include anything that looks like a current car or truck or that moves on our current system of roads.
I say self driving cars and trucks in 5 years
Cause companies will push regulations for this.
They'll say they are safer, less emissions ....etc. all sorts of things.
As to Automation, the ideals and concepts are good, but we have to understand the 1970's, and how the move from analog to digital impacted our society. What we did do, was have a nation wide program of "data entry", which over time improved and data processing and continued in effort to make the systems better. Still, we have challenge and issue with "systems communications" on a unified and standardized platform or some method to interpret multi-language encryption within a collective of variant systems; while still being with the protocol management to void out the ease of ability to be hacked. Self driving units is a good idea, but what are the "many" pieces that are not yet a part of our system to deal with it. One simple thing is we still have analog styled "stop lights" in many places, there is a massive need for embedded sensors, and how to protect it. Then there is the economic impact, of displacement of many who rely on vehicular function for their income. There are likely a variety of current day practical application for it, but to say its going to be mass dominant in 5 yrs is quite a stretch of the imagination when an expansive array of factors is considered.
These things are important, but what we don't have is a ramp up of training as which existed in the 1970 to meet the demand of data processing at that time.
We need training in a broad range of areas to go beyond, just thinking wireless, we still need hard infrastructure. We've become somewhat blinded by wireless to the point we've forgotten the security within hard infrastructure. At this stage in life, these two things have to work together, as we devise better systems to handle the massive impact and need of wireless and hard infrastructure transmission of such high volumes of data-interaction.
We are not talking about megabytes, we are talking gigabyte in the triple lead digit category, which has to have high volume 2-3 lead digits in the "terabytes" category sector. This is a lot of data to process.
(Humor)... we still can't stop web pages from jumping or eliminate the time it takes video's to wind up for viewing, some websites still hang up the system to show a 30 second crappy video. Next time you go to a webpage, look in the bottom left lower of the page, and watch all the websites and web-systems it take to feed the holding containers on the page. Or go to any Agency, and let them tell you how their system does not communicate with any associate or collaterally conjunctive agencies.
It took an almost Arse-kicking threat to get people to cut the crap and make the ACA data systems talk to each other. that means it took making some politicians fear for their exposure, and get out of the way of influencing the non cooperative function of system communications. (it won't be told to the public in such way), but when a whole political party stands against something, to think they don't influence the non working and no cooperative nature of something would be childish to assume or not consider such an obstructive set of acts).
I like what GregW said about "trains", even I have friends who make a living on Trucks, the necessity of trucks won't vanish. Since Warren Buffett invested in the rail system, we've seen massive rebuilding of the railway system with cross-ties being replaced in high volume and being done in tremendous short time frames.
Rail, is good, equally so, we are missing the mark when it comes to rail infrastructure, because we've been LEFT BEHIND, when it comes to high speed rail systems. Is "high speed rail machine" something we bypass, or must we at some point engage it?
We should have been in the lead of this more than 20+ yrs ago, and yet we have not even started. We don't need to buy up massive volumes of land. We use the same land we already own - which is part of the Freeway systems land.
Nothing can get going because wealthy land owners clog it up, by trying to force the system to purchase their land, and politicians playing land sale games to enrich some, when that is so far out of bounds, they need to be called on it.
The intricacy of our freeway system is such that we can build an amazingly vibrant high speed network all over this nation.
We had better do some catch up before we play the run-away game.
Look at China, then Look at India, and ask yourself, what benefit is a self driving car going to do to "present day" India? How will it function in a "billion person environment, such as China and India"? China already has the high speed rail, they have massively huge freeways that are jammed packed. What benefit if any and how can it benefit to have self driving cars moving at a snails pace on the highway that is already gridlocked. ASK YOURSELF, how much more prep work is there to be done to introduce this concept and practical function into place like China and India.
Long distance open highway might be a good area to focus, to kick it in the same as one would use "cruise control". One has to look back and then consider much.
How long did we go from the Wright Brother, to get to Jet Aircraft? It took many phases and still we are continually modifying.
Now, let's look at what might the landscape of such things look like in the 22nd Century? and the 23rd Century, then we may be more in tune with what is to come. We won't be around to see it, but it can and will come. Maybe even in the latter part of the 21st Century, of which many of us won't be around to see it evolve.
Remember, we have many works to do, if one notice how we fell off the Solar Energy wagon, because of political opposition and poor management of a trade agreements as it related to solar panels? We need to learn better how to manage such thing and the resources necessary to meet and complete these task via the American resource system and to have the ability to do much of development and construction of components upon American soil. Then we can move at our own pace.
We were once a nation that could do that, but now we are an importer, reliant on imports which becomes an impediment economically, and a challenge upon and unto our citizenry and cities and states. We are not the system of WWII, who could build planes, tanks and all such things based on American foundry and Industry, now we can't even put two items together without importing some type of screw or fastener.
When we think and or allow the greed masters to tell us our people are too above doing the work to build and assembly what we need, we have chosen a pathway downwards.
Last edited by Chance and Change; 04-11-2016 at 01:44 PM..
.....in all these matters, what do we grasp of environmental realism; what of the impacts, the challenges and the synergistic summarized effects of how what we do impacts as well as changes our environmental reality? These things are far from awareness even as we listen to the political punditry, we talk about our industrial and monetary systems and we talk about the citizenry. We still have people fighting against the idea and investigations of climate change and people denying that the environment is impacted by what we do as human beings.
One should look into review of areas which have been evacuated, shut down, dug up and covered over and made non habital for what equals long periods, some beyond our own life-cycle.
We still don't know enough about electro-magnetic impulses and how it affects the waves which exist in the invisible realm, and we tinker with wireless transmission by way of frequency modulations from many levels. All things have relevancy.
I'm not saying stifle progress, but let's "not hide variables" and potentials of consequences in our urgency to engage a future based solely on the fancy of a vision. Let's think it through with real time awareness. We'll never get 100% non injurious creations by mankind, but we can minimize the impact and volume damage, by putting all things on the table for the scientific community to deal with and then listen to.
Now, let's look at simple:
Can you imagine people flying around in personal high speed crafts? Heck!!!! no place would be safe, certainly not to walk and maybe not even to fall asleep in your bed. We are very far from being a responsible society who could handle the masses in such machinery. We have people who still can't stop "texting while driving" and result to kill others and sometimes themselves.
We have the craziness of people paying millions of dollars for cars, that go from 0-60 in 2-3 seconds, now where in the heck can that be safely done, except on a race-track, and that still does not guarantee safety. It's still 4 wheels and Tires, and rubber on the roadways. We know much about building roadways, but we don't invest such in the general public highway to be designed for any vehicles going 200 mph.
So, the Jetson's was a great cartoon, but in that cartoon, if one note, the people were very regimented and sterile in mentality to have evolved to a level to even make the cartoon project a futuristic image.
We have a lot of things to do, and these things can be many ways to create many industries here in these United States, we simply have to see it, understand it and work to advance the level of cultural mentality of the people, otherwise we are not ready for some of what science and technology has already created.
Can you even imagine the tens of millions of dollars in judgments that will be awarded for every case where a driverless car injures or kills someone?
at least your insurance wont go up coz it will be the fault of the car makers, the satellite providers, heck maybe even the state or county or city for not maintaining the dividing lines visible
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