2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

Anyway, futurism in general is kind of iffy, and I'm inclined not to trust Kurzweil specifically...  ^{from a Newsweek article}

Immortality would be nice  ^*

, but I'm not holding my breath.

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If you don't die of old age, the likelihood of dying a violent death rises. It wouldn't surprise me if later newspapers had a title "New technology raises chances of death by violence or accident!"

To nitpick, we're capable of making cars that drive themselves. They're just, you know, untested and undeveloped.

edited 10th Feb '11 10:53:10 AM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Too much reliance on computers makes me a little nervous. Computers are much more liable to break than, say, some good old cogs n gears.

But they're less likely to be infected with terminal stupidity. Although, I suppose it depends on how you count solid state devices.

edited 10th Feb '11 10:54:03 AM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

We use computers so much because their behavior can be adjusted and changed much faster and cheaper than would be possible of any physical mechanism. I see your point, though.

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Oh, I won't argue that computers are awesome, I'll just always have a wary paranoia about them. Dumb mechanical devices simply break, computers can break physically or be corrupted.

Well, yes.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

As our systems get more complicated nothing but a computer will be able to handle it. They're starting to turn to fully automated spaceflights these days to achieve better precision because training pilots capable of doing space flights is getting too costly. There are other things, like safety controls at a nuclear power plant are usually always computerised because no human can sit there all day and maintain it. So unfortunately, it's just going to get worse for you.

Also I've noticed the military has had a lot of money wasted on non-sensical computerisation of things.

I'm not really sure what you mean by corrupted. An unexpected crash isn't any different from a catastrophic gear jam in that it shuts down the machine and was caused by the human designer failing to take something into account. It is different from a catastrophic gear jam in that you can probably fix it without a wrench (that is, fucking around with the interior), and can be predicted and dealt with purely mathematically, instead of with error bars.

They were also the first users of computers (in targeting systems and crypto), so maybe the brass likes them.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:14:48 AM by Tzetze

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That said, computers also have a positively incredible amount of shared data and crossing procedures, and the slightest inconsistency, unforeseen circumstance, or even package/compatibility conflict can cause the whole thing to flip out. I'd trust one to run calculations, react to something quicker than I can, and generally do things that can be overseen and sanity checked by a meatsack, but the kind of reliance we're talking about on something like that seems like it's majorly asking for trouble.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:18:00 AM by Pykrete

Nuclear power plants and your electric grid and traffic has been okay for the decades they've had only computers run them. Also all our passenger flights are computer run. I think you guys take "computer error kills a billion people" totally out of context. It can't happen because any mission-critical system is built with fail-safes. Nobody cares if windows locks up because you don't die. People do care if an autopilot system in an aircraft locks up, so it is designed with fail safes.

Let me put it like this, you can trust "humans" to be somehow more reliable and result in 10 000 deaths a year, or you can rely on a computer for 0 deaths a year and then once every 20 years a problem crops up that kills 1000 people.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:32:21 AM by breadloaf

^^ You do realize the same can be said for human operators too, right? You have any idea how many ways the human body can spontaneously malfunction resulting in severe complications or death? I'd say the risks are smaller with a computer than a human. Of course, the optimal would be a computer AND a human, but whatever.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:32:27 AM by SilentStranger

I dont know why they let me out, I guess they needed a spare bed

Oh, sure. And most software doesn't go through the kind of vetting I'm thinking of.

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If it's not a real-time system, it doesn't need to be. We're not going to run java to control your car. (I hope)

In any case your bigger issue is still humans no matter what. Only humans can put in faulty systems in the first place. If your leadership is sound, they put in working computerised solutions. Those working computerised solutions lead to entrenchment of better computerised solutions. Anybody working to put in faulty systems fails whether or not they were using computers. You'd get the same failures if you put in a crappy human government. We act like "Gee human beings never ever went on a pointless genocidal rampage killing tens of millions of their own citizens."

edited 10th Feb '11 11:35:50 AM by breadloaf

Um... the system I was thinking of, Deep Space 1's Remote Agent, actually was written in Java.

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Breadloaf, can't you see I'm trying to just gripe about something I can't change? I know it's only going to become more and more central, for obvious reasons, and that I can't do anything about it. I just don't trust computers as much.

The reason we do it for the things we do it for in the military is because for those sorts of devices it's necessary, or vastly more efficient. I love my M68 scope over my iron sights, I hate iron sights, but I know those irons will never break, and I always keep them sighted just in case.

^

We have metric fucktons of java based systems, they are all really slow though. :(

edited 10th Feb '11 11:38:12 AM by Barkey

Fine... "casual" non-real-time java. Actually they're starting to use java for American cruise missiles now. That'll be awesome.

Well my gripes on java is the same as your gripes on computerised military hardware. Can't control it.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:39:36 AM by breadloaf

See, this is why I'm also skeptical of computerization. What the fuck.

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As a language, Java is no better or worse than any other. What matters is the systems it's run on and the programmers coding it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'd argue that some languages are better than others, but that would be even more off-topic. So, you hit the problem in the second sentence there. Human foibles lead to a lot of problems in software. Basically we go for «worse is better», and it starts fucking up when we need perfect systems.

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-Rant against Java-

Not exactly. The Java programming language isn't preferred for real-time systems because of its non-deterministic nature with respect to mathematical proof of correctness. That's why the original military systems were done in Ada and checked to death for any bugs. Mathematically proven to have zero logic problems.

The java language itself can be error checked but the jvm must also be error checked and if you use a JIT with the jvm, that's even more difficult. The standard Sun JVM is totally unstable and is not deterministic. Even the IBM one fails one in a million chance on the most basic calculations.

-End Rant-

However, in response to the "what the fuck", this is my point, political leadership. Your computers aren't what is screwing you, it is poor leadership. Competent leadership leads to competent systems, like for instance, Alberta's eHealth systems were done very well, whereas in Ontario, it was a total corrupt failure. It's not the computers at fault but the people at the top. They're just tools and if not used correctly, then they won't work very well. My only point is that in order to move ahead and do better things, you need computers and not humans to run the systems.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:47:55 AM by breadloaf

The problem that we have with our java based systems is that they all run from a central network, with every base that uses the program accessing it from there. Things that come to mind are MILPDS(Military Personnel Data System) and SFMIS(Forgot the acronym, but Security Forces uses it to track weapon registration, qualification, military vehicle registration and police reports)

So in summary, during peak hours these systems get really fucking slow, and sometimes go offline completely or have sporadic connectivity because they can't handle the load. That's why I loved working nights. Midnight on the west coast is the perfect time to log onto SFMIS and write reports, because the only people on are night owls in the continental US, and cops at overseas bases where it's morning, or deployed locations in the middle east where use is minimal.

Hold on, though, aren't computers made by people?

edited 10th Feb '11 11:49:40 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Well the singularity is about getting to the point where the computers design us new computers. That's the holy grail.

As for the centralised system of the American military systems, in my opinion it's because they're trying to use old philosophy with new technology and a corrupt government. The whole point of using Java instead of Ada is so that you can work with private corporations who charge you through the teeth to install even a server. Then I think the military is maintaining it's old computer security policy designed in way back when, which requires centralised servers and dumb terminals but even if they change the hardware to be standard client-server schemes, your software is still tuned to the old times. Plus from what I've seen, the American weapons acquisition program just purchases whatever the hell the current top brass happen to be in the pocket of, so your software is just all over the place.

...the JVM is nondeterministic? How?

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