A year for swashbuckling advances

[Jovial Monk]

Telstra.

Plus certain things just are so big they require govt support.

Just about every country in the world is running out FTTH. Broadband will add $70Bn to our GDP.

[Neferti]

Telstra.

Plus certain things just are so big they require govt support.

Just about every country in the world is running out FTTH. Broadband will add $70Bn to our GDP.

You know, I couldn't give a rat's f*** how fast my emails arrive or how quickly I can read the News online. We will still need to go via the USA for everything ..... have you tried downloading files (updates from the USA)? Have you ever tried downloading a game from the Internet? Do you really think that having faster connections here will make a difference to that? I doubt it.

Oh, and stop talking about Doctors accessing stuff ...... the USA has much faster cable than we do and they don't do that yet. It's a pipe dream, and you know it. Gillard's advisors were still in nappies when I had the Internet in 1995. They have no idea about anything.

[Super Nova]

The idea behind today's network technology is it's like a spider's web. It will follow the appropriate path depending on bottlenecks.

If yoyu have a big pipe an that pipe slows down or breaks you are stuffed.

So let's hope the NBN is fully redundant, no single points of failure and meet this network topology. I expect the other telcos to pick up the slack via wireless in this event. Here in the UK now, I get unlimited data wireles access, I really have not need to home broadband. I have because it is bundled with my other services.

I really don't notice the difference if I use my work, home or wireless network from my PC. That includes Skypes performance which is network intensive. Smarter compression algorythms are making it work at wireless bandwidth levels.

Still, as I keep saying all of this depends on a good backbone. This backbone doesn't have to be fibre.... as it is today in the future. Not too distant future by my radar.

[Outlaw Yogi]

As cars get more automated, more elaborate computers gradually the NBN will drive the cars, faster and more safely than humans can.

If I acquired a vehicle with such apparatus, it'd be the 1st thing I'd rip out.
Merc now has electric steering available, I'd rip that out too.
All new bikes from 92 onwards have their lights hardwired to comply with current ADR, which is why I avoid 92 onwards bikes, but if I did get one, I'd ignore type approval and put an on/off switch to the lights. And if I ever get a vehicle with a seat belt blinking beeper warning, I'll disable the phuking thing.

[Neferti]

Yet, Monk drove 1500-2500 ks or so, up to Queensland in an ancient Mazda (or whatever OLD vehicle it was) to meet Aussie and Leftie. It's all on his Blog. Unless he has hidden it, like he claims Deepthought does.

[Jovial Monk]

Car wasn’t older than me so it seemed safe enough and so it proved, biggest problem was a puncture and a stupid emu walking into my car.

[Super Nova]

Jovial Monk wrote: As cars get more automated, more elaborate computers gradually the NBN will drive the cars, faster and more safely than humans can.

This is a silly statement.

As you know Monk, NBN is just a bloody network. It's sole function is to move packets of data around. It will drive nothing.

Smart applications running on fast computers receiving input from smart sensors and other information feeds in near real time will direct outputs to smart servos to control the car. NBN has not part to play except when the car wirelessly contacts a hosted application, say on the web, and the packets traverse the network and the packets find NBN the best route. These applications maybe traffic update systems.

If you propose that ever car will signal it's position back to a single host so it feedback what each car needs to do in relation to another (thereby using NBN) you are mad and I am glad you don't do mission critical system designs.

For this to work the inteligence needs to be in the car, not at a point somewhere in the cloud.

[Super Nova]

THIS is Alan Turing year, marking the centenary of the birth of the great British mathematician, computer scientist and World War II code-breaker.

He is perhaps best remembered as the originator of the Turing test, published in 1950 in a paper entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". The test requires a human judge to converse separately with a person and a computer — not knowing which is which. If the judge cannot tell the two apart, the machine is deemed to have passed with flying colours.

I think we are less than ten years away from this one. They always say that however ask anyone wit hthe new iPhone.

The speak to search translation is impressive. Just speak to the phone and ask "call me the nearest taxi", it translates to text, searches Google, find the number and calls it.

Andriod or is it Apple use a smart real speach translation idea that searches a database (or Google) for common expressions and uses that to transate to a foreign language, so you get more than a word for word translation, it translates as a human would.

IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple and other smaller players are really getting ready fo rthis. All the components are there.

Talking to a computer and passing the Turing test is the holy grail. We have the bits, we need the program to be polished, a faster computer and we are there. It is close. It's hard to do so I think 10 years is the likely timeline.

I look forward to my startrek computer in my home.

[Super Nova]

You don't need the NBN white elephant.

I agree. We need a network. There are many solutions other than this. It's nto going to hurt though, from a technology perspective, it will just be a waste of money. Just a small issue.

[Super Nova]

Chargeless and almost massless, yet undeniably there, fundamental particles known as neutrinos set the physics world agog last year when they showed signs of having broken nature's ultimate speed limit.

Scientists at an Italian research facility in Gran Sasso reported that neutrinos had travelled 730 kilometres from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the huge particle accelerator at CERN straddling the Swiss-French border, 60 nanoseconds faster than light speed.

The team tried sending more particles, but in tighter bunches, along the same route to establish whether the results could be reproduced. Although the jury is still out, this might be the year when the highly controversial find is either upheld or laughed out of town. Watch this hyperspace

Here is an idea.

What they messured wasn't the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light but rather they find a shorter distance, a different route through space to beat light/EM there.

Nobel prize here please.