Thinking over 60 mph

A team of scientists in Germany have created a car that operates based on the driver's thought patterns. The car was programmed to recognize specific brain patterns as “turn left” or “turn right.” The first test run of the car only included turning capabilities, but later iterations also included pattern recognition for acceleration and deceleration. There was some delay between the driver’s mental command and the car’s execution.

In addition to the mental controls, the car is also outfitted with cameras and infrared sensors which would likely detect if the car is drifting from the center of the lane. It is also equipped with a GPS antenna to provide pinpoint navigation.

Test runs were performed at an airport with a lot of open space. The article did not specify if the airport had been closed down or if it was functioning at the time of the test.

This brings to mind (pardon the pun) drivers who pay little attention to their actions while operating their vehicles. Most drivers today tend to multitask in some way while driving, whether it be eating food, talking on the phone, or just listening to music. But none of that would be possible if a single errant thought pattern could send car and driver careening over the side of a bridge.

Despite the advances in technology, like cars controlled by camera sensors and thought patterns, it seems like the human race is not ready. In order for this type of technology to be plausible, we must first change ourselves before we change the car.

Gave over, man! Game over!

Video games are one of today’s hottest media. They allow players to immerse themselves in another world and to experience things that would be impossible for someone working 9-to-5 in an office cubicle. But now that video games are considered mainstream, one must think back to how things were thirty to forty years ago. Video games weren’t really considered mainstream. Arcades were popular, but only for teenagers; adults did not typically play video games at the time. So what’s changed?

First of all, video games have become more accessible to different age groups. Especially with Nintendo’s release of the Wii® console, families are being brought together by playing video games with one another. Even more than ten years ago, I can remember watching my dad play the original Sid Meier’s Pirates! game on his computer. I remember watching and playing the Wheel of Fortune video game. My dad claims to this day that I learned how to read and spell from that game.

Secondly, games are easier. Anyone who has ever played Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985) can tell you that games were entirely different back then. Controls were less-responsive, games were more likely to glitch, and graphics didn’t represent what was happening in the game very well. Nowadays, almost all games include tutorials, some lasting several hours, that introduce the player to not only the controls, but the storyline as well.

Thirdly, storylines are represented in games through dialogue more than action. While this isn’t true for all games today, it is a huge pet peeve for some. The original Metroid game featured very little dialogue, if any at all, and yet players could understand the storyline and consequences of actions very easily. Compare that with games like the recent iterations of the Final Fantasy series, where storylines are explained through twenty minute-long exchanges of dialogue, and it’s an entirely different creature. This may actually have little to do with the change in video games to mainstream media, but it is a huge shift in direction from what many remember.

"Would you like to share this with your friends and 150,000,000 other people?"

It’s no secret that people lie. This is especially true on the Internet, and Facebook seems to be a large community of liars, if reports are to be believed. 25% of users, as measured by a 2000-household survey, use false information in their Facebook profiles to ward off identity theft. But is that really all there is to it?

Facebook changes their display a lot; they also change what information is shared between users. New functions allow applications to share information between users even if the user has set Facebook’s privacy settings to “friends only.” Facebook also has a new function that shows a location along with posts made from mobile phones, as well as sharing what music a user might be listening to at any given time. This information is crucial to companies that streamline their products to consumers; they want to know want people want.

Some users, aside from privacy, falsify their profile information for fun. A big example is setting up a funny nickname. I have a friend who lists his Facebook nickname as “Jafar,” the antagonist from the Disney movie, Aladdin. Adding to that, some users create accounts to emulate popular characters from books, television series, movies, etc. These accounts are typically made for fun, but they can also be dangerous if personal information is leaked while signed into the wrong account.

Studies about Facebook’s privacy settings reveal shocking information about users. According to a Consumer Reports questionnaire, only 37% of those polled had actually used Facebook privacy settings or knew anything about them. Just think: if 63% of people on Facebook are leaving their personal information out in the open for thieves and companies to steal and use for their own gain, how is it that our nation has not already crumbled in economic duress?

Murphy's Law

Moore’s Law states that computing power doubles about once every eighteen months. This increase in power may not be directly noticeable by consumers, but Intel has continued to provide new technology for many years that improves upon previous abilities. However, City College of New York theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku believes Moore’s Law may be coming to an end. Kaku, who has predicted the collapse of Moore’s Law since at least 2003, says the critical point will be reached within a decade. Constant shrinking of transistors in unsustainable.

Intel has a new chip called Ivy Bridge, ten nanometers smaller from the previous generation, but reports indicate that the chip runs hotter than its predecessors under overclocking, which could suggest that transistor density and size are becoming a concern for microprocessors.

Three-dimensional chips and parallel processing may potentially delay the collapse of Moore’s Law, but Kaku claims these workarounds will reach their limits in time. He proposes that new forms of computing, such as molecular transistors, may provide relief, but mass production is currently impossible. Quantum computing could also eventually become more powerful, but it is not very well understood.

My opinion on the matter goes about like this: if the transistor has more power than the previous generation, it doesn’t really need to be smaller. As long as it has more computing power, it could be the same size or even slightly larger than the previous version. This would prevent overheating by spreading out mass over a larger volume, thus lowering the density. Not everything needs to be microscopically tiny. Personally, I’ve never understood the popular fascination with paper-thin laptops and ultra-thin plasma televisions.

Everything in technology seems determined to find the smallest possible medium for their product. The only technology increasing in size seems to be cell phones. Some new cell phones are almost large enough to pass for tablet computers.

In an age where nothing stays the same for long, let’s try to keep something stable while we can.

The Sea of Doppenheimer

Recently the White House reported that their main homepage was taken down after being accessed by a large number of South Koreans. This was the result of South Koreans joining a Virginia-based petition on the White House website to ban school textbooks which refer to the sea to the west of Japan, known as “the Sea of Japan,” instead of “the East Sea.” Koreans have long desired this change since the sea did not originally bear the name of Japan; it gained that name after Japan expanded their military into other Asian countries in 1928. Korea was liberated in 1945, but Japan refuses to return the sea to its previous name.

Americans have begun to side with Korea in this debate, citing that American soldiers helped Korea gain its independence in World War II. Some Americans are claiming that it is wrong to accept a “false history that was manipulated by the invader who attacked ‘Pearl Harbor.’”

I have two problems with these arguments. The first involves the U.S. government directly. Anyone who knows anything about the U.S. government and the American school system probably knows that the federal government has no say in the textbooks that schools use; the books are chosen directly by the schools from a list approved by the local state. So petitioning the federal government will likely yield little result in the Koreans’ favor.

My other problem is that it doesn’t really matter. South Korea, along with supporters in the U.S., seems to be the only voice desiring a change to the name. Practically every other nation of global influence cares very little about the change. And the change itself would only affect Korea and Japan as a whole; the only adverse effect to other nations would come from war that may start between the two nations if the debate continues.

In all honestly, it doesn’t really matter what a large body of water is called. It will still be the same large body of water if we called it “the Sea of Doppenheimer.” Nothing would change unless the name somehow gives a nation more control over the sea.

Counter-petitions have been made, claiming that the Sea of Japan has always held that name, but no evidence was provided by either side. The issue has been widely reported in the Korean media, leading to large numbers flooding the White House’s petition site to gain signatures on both sides. The White House reported that on the 20th of April the server was downed by heavy traffic and analysis suggested the vast majority of the IPs involved were from South Korea. The White House’s response was to temporarily block Korean access to the site until the flood of traffic abated.

It seems unlikely, however, that the federal government would act on the desires of the petitioners even if it were able to. Most of the petitions seem be ignored in favor of overly popular ones, which usually lead to official statements about how the federal government’s policy already reflects the desires of the petition.

Manga Streaming

In the wake of Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA, it is beginning to seem like the bills were never needed.  Popular file- and video-hosting website, MegaUpload, was taken down and the owner and CEOs of the website/company were arrested by American forces despite the fact that the owner did not live in the United States.  This came about without the assistance of either SOPA or PIPA, throwing into question the necessity of these bills.  However, other media besides movies and music are feeling the pressure of censorship.  While not nearly as popular in America as it is in Japan, the industry of manga and anime has a very large cult following.  Controversy abounds due to websites that illegally host copies of Japanese manga translated by fans.

VIZ Media, the Japanese company responsible from bringing many popular Japanese manga and anime series to the United States, demanded four days ago that popular fan website Mangastream.com cease illegal translation of manga.  The problem with what MangaStream has been doing is that they are involved with many series that have been licensed and officially distributed within the U.S.  However, MangaStream takes the manga and translates it into English as soon as it is released in Japan.  Normally, VIZ Media would translate these series and redistribute them in America within several months, but MangaStream and similar sites allow for rapid releases of the same series for free.

While many cite the loss of profits as the reason for halting MangaStream, that argument loses some merit when one thinks about those who would not spend money on official manga releases, series that are not even available in English, and fans living in other countries that cannot read manga in their own language.  Evidence has also been coming in for many years that a great percentage of profits in the manga and anime industry come solely from merchandise like toys, “plushies,” and video games.  Some margin of profit is still lost, but many who claim to read illegal translations online still buy official releases and merchandise.  For others, online translations serve as a preview of the series, an opportunity to see what a series is like before decided to spend money on it.

A cry of anguish sounded from fans of popular series after they were taken down.  For some that live in foreign countries, online translators are the only way to read their favorite series since VIZ Media rarely distributes series in countries like Indonesia or the Philippines.  MangaStream is still active, but only for a portion of the series which they used to translate.  In the wake of what many fans are calling a catastrophe, other sites continue to obtain and translate manga directly from Japan.  Some wonder if it is only a matter of time before these sites are taken down as well, but many remain optimistic that other websites will appear and the illegal manga distribution will continue.

Safety First

Having just received my first car, the wonders of software in vehicles excites me. One of the main software components in cars today is the ability for the car to park without assistance from the driver. This software must obviously be rigorously tested before being used in commercial cars. The question comes, however, of how safety authorities handle this software. Could an officer site the driver of a car for hitting another car while it was being controlled solely by the parking software? If so, would the driver be able to sue the company that designed the software for inadvertently causing the accident?

According to an article on PCWorld by Leo King, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is charged with investigating such incidents. After Toyota discovered acceleration problems in its cars in 2009, an investigation was opened to discover the cause. No conclusive proof was found that cited computer systems as a plausible cause for the malfunctions, but questions remained about the dependability of the increasing amount of software control in motor vehicles. In the same article, King quotes Louis Lanzerotti, a distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lanzerotti claims that it will “be difficult for NHTSA to keep pace with the technology.” He calls for the NHTSA to “develop much better knowledge by engaging with the industry.”

In another article written by Evan Ackerman on IEEE Spectrum, research is presented by a group at Carnegie Mellon that proves mathematically that autonomous cars (cars controlled entirely by software) cannot cause an accident. The tests began with two cars traveling in opposite lanes of a road and then expanded, including more cars and more difficult maneuvers such as lane changes or exiting a highway. The software is still limited in what it can do; the article provides the humorous example of a moose jumping off of an overpass onto the hood of the car, which would an unexpected event for either a human or computer driver.

The “car of the future” used to be a joke that would appear in some cartoons and television shows around the 1970s. As technology moves forward, however, it seems like society is moving ever closer to a real car of the future. After all, if graduate students can design a program to accurately control cars with one hundred percent accuracy, how far away can we be from flying around with the Jetsons?