What DARPA's Been Up To, At Length 54
The New York Times takes an inside look at DARPA, the secretive defense agency, mentioned frequently on Slashdot, that is "changing the way we use machines — and the way they use us" in the form of a review of Michael Belfiore's The Department of Mad Scientists. Besides tracing the history of the agency, Belfiore's book expounds on the well-known Grand Challenge and its link to ever-more-automated vehicle control in civilian and military contexts, as well as other DARPA pet projects, including robotic surgery, information analysis, and the integration of electronics with the human body.
The truth (Score:4, Interesting)
Darpa is an old boys network that funds tons of projects by the program managers friends. I worked on a robot project for a couple of years and it was depressing. They ask you to do something impossible, but something that sounds cool. Then they don't care if it doesn't work - the right money has exchanged hands.
Sure they have done some good things, but that was a long time ago. What my complaint is mainly about is the low level of science, and the sleazy way they distribute their money.
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Re:The truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Science isn't about doing something and getting the expected results. Science is about doing something and when reviewing the results going 'Well that's odd. Guys come here and look at this.' And then discovering something new.
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Science isn't about doing something and getting the expected results. Science is about doing something and when reviewing the results going 'Well that's odd. Guys come here and look at this.' And then discovering something new.
DARPA is military research, whose point is about doing something and getting the expected results.
If you want science, go get funding from the National Science Foundation.
Re:The truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is really why the NSF should be given a reliably large sum of money each year and told to just make the best use of it.
nsf v darpa (Score:1, Interesting)
your forgetting the religious lobby, nsf research tends to support inconvenient truths such as evolution directly or indirectly (such as genetic based research); whereas money spent on darpa will likely result in people of competing faiths being reduced in number.
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Tell that to the “dark energy” crowd. They are all about getting the expected results. Because they went “Well that‘s wrong. Guys come here and let’s invent some voodoo stuff, because our theory can’s possibly be wrong“. ^^
Protip: Nature is always right. By definition.
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What are you talking about? "Dark energy" is just a broad term describing something that influences the Universe in a particular way. It's a placeholder after discovering something new (accelerating expansion) and awaiting for adequate explanation.
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Correct.
Engineering is about doing something and getting the expected results.
Science is about giving the engineers something new to play with.
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The only firm "deliverables" (CDRLs in contract-speak) in most DARPA contracts are status reports and a final writeup. If you get something that actually works it's a major bonus for future contract work, of course, but doesn't affect your DARPA money. That's why it's called "Research" and not "Development". Sometimes trying for something impossible turns up some interesting discoveries. Sometimes not.
Re:The actual truth (Score:1, Insightful)
And then there are the rockstars of DARPA initiatives, like Lincoln Labs, who appear to be interested in m
Re:The truth (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point. DARPA is about reaching a long-term goal -- one which isn't achievable with existing science/engineering. DARPA contracts are short term contracts whose goal is to determine why one small step towards the ultimate goal is not achievable. This is followed by another contract that determines how to facilitate the previous step ... or to determine how that is blocked. And it keeps on going!
Eventually there is success, and the success flows back to the first step ... except now you are asked to go just a bit farther to discover what the next block is.
The PM's job is to keep an eye on the overall goal & to act as a champion for the program. And, although they are generally experienced technical managers, PM's don't remain at DARPA for a long time, it's just too intense.
If you understand what is going on, and DARPA contracts are great to work on, encouraging freedom & creativity, and you'll probably get more contracts. If not then you'll end up frustrated, somebody else will have to dig through your CDRLs to get the needed data, and the followup contract will end up going to somebody who understands the process.
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DARPAs point is to fund things that are going to fail. If every project succeeds, then DARPA is failing at its mission.
Perhaps the fact that you didn't understand that was part of the problem on your project?
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Two words: (Score:1)
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The first time I'd ever heard of DARPA was when I played Metal Gear Solid. Ever since then, I've always had the ideas of DARPA and Metal Gear irrevocably tied together in my mind. They'd better hurry up on that Metal Gear too, because Japan's military research have a Gundam project going on! Granted, right now it has a more ungainly shuffle than that damn deceptively marketed Robo Raptor (I bought one of those... I felt so cheated), but you never know; some genius may step in and accelerate the project.
The suckitude that was DARPA head Tony Tether (Score:5, Interesting)
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So, people who want DARPA money think it's a good idea when they get it, and a bad idea when someone else gets it. Can we get an assessment from someone who isn't so obviously vested in the outcome of DARPA's budget?
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Also, you're aware that this not some hindsight Bush-bashing here, right?
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I'd rather see funding go to a project for people that have been languishing for decades: upper extremity amputees have all but been ignored by the prosthetics manufacturers because they are such a small segment of the amputee populace. Extraordinary progress has been made in leg technology just since the 80's, but most arm users have been stuck with a device ( the cable operated elbow and split hook )that hasn't fundamentally changed since the Civil War. Sure, there have been incremental moves forward over
During that "disasterous" period... (Score:2)
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With an incurious, aggressive president, we got an incurious, aggressive DARPA head, who cut long-term and academic research in favor of short-term corporate research.
I agree as long as we make the translation, "long-term and academic research" == useless research and "short-term research" == useful research. It's worth noting that Anthony Tether headed DARPA over the period when DARPA became popular on Slashdot due to its much cooler projects. To be blunt, for all the talk of the value of academic research, it really isn't that useful or interesting. I'm sure academics are overjoyed to be able to hog the public fund trough again, but that doesn't mean that they deserve
Tether did a good job (Score:4, Informative)
Tony Tether (whom I've met) did a reasonably good job with DARPA. Especially in robotics. He was behind the DARPA Grand Challenge, which was done partly to give academic robotics departments a serious butt-kick. Academic robotics had been funded by DARPA for decades, but nothing fieldable was coming out. The reason that major universities devoted entire departments to the Grand Challenge was that DARPA had told them quietly that if they didn't do well, their funding was going away. Prior to the Grand Challenge, a typical academic robotics project was one professor and a few grad students producing a thesis on an obscure topic. Universities weren't organized to do system integration and make all the subsystems play together. Now they are.
It was time to cut back on Government-funded R&D in computer science, because it's a mature technology. DARPA shouldn't be funding "high performance graphics" - industry, Hollywood, and the game industry are doing that just fine. Networking is in good shape. DARPA hasn't been influential in operating systems since the 1980s. DARPA never had much of a role in personal computing at all.
DARPA isn't the NSF. Their job is to develop technology DoD can use.
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The whole motive of the Bush administration was two fold, loot the middle class and employ nepotism as far and widely as possible.
Science and ethics (Score:1, Insightful)
The interesting bit in the article is about modern-day Cybrogs and how we and machines are getting integrated. Of course the article is designed to startle - after all people will read it only if it challenges them. But should we really be scared?
It is not really any more alarming then "machines that can actually create cloth" were in the early 19th century. That too was a ceding of a human ability to machine enhancement.
We need to realize that we always were part machine - albeit chemical and biological on
Why post anonymous? (Score:2)
Our humanity is in danger from only one thing: laziness. If, due to our own laziness we give away our free will, social intelligence and inquisitive inventive mind - then we are in trouble. That would happen if we allow educational standards to keep slipping. It certainly could happen, but its up to us.
That didn't look right, had to verify... (Score:2)
Very insightful...
There, fixed it for myself.
Being human, being cyborgs (Score:1, Redundant)
It is not really any more alarming then "machines that can actually create cloth" were in the early 19th century. That too was a ceding of a human ability to machine enhancement.
We need to realize that we always were part machine - albeit chemical and biologi
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True fact: my family does not have a TV at our home, though we do have a DVD. The result: my children actually read books, as well as watch relatively high-quality movies.
In other words: education is not just about the educational "system". We as parents can and should take control.
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True fact: my family does not have a TV at our home, though we do have a DVD. The result: my children actually read books, as well as watch relatively high-quality movies.
So does this DVD you have beam the images from these relatively high-quality movies directly into your brain?
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Perhaps it is the combination of all this in a single package: we are multi-purpose, FLEXIBLE, animals.
I think it has something to do with being able to use fire, although whether that came from brain development or vice versa might be the next question. There's other social, tool-making, inquisitive animals.
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Others may feel that walking upright was the critical factor; or perhaps omnivore behavior; or perhaps the development of our language skills.
I don't know; and your take may be correct. I am just saying that we ARE flexible animals, and that - however it came to be - is a big part of what makes us human.
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The laws. As long as the laws say something is human it's human
> Perhaps it is free will,
This is very important too, from a strategic POV.
It is dangerous for humans to say stuff like:
1) It's not my fault, I have no choice - I'm born like that.
2) We have no free will
3) We are just machines
Because defective machines can be discarded a lot more easily than defective humans. So even if 1-3 are true, a wise human might want to maintain the illusion that they are special
Anyw
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I think the tech we DO have was funded by DARPA at some point in the development of quite a bit of it. And how WITHOUT "exotic experimental stuff" will we find something that can ?
skynet (Score:2)
ah well , about time they started with skynet. The world is supposed to be in ashes by 2018 , so they better hurry.