Slashdot Mirror
Peer To Peer Meets Manufacturing
Crashmarik writes "Small times has an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing. They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net. We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects. More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?" Great article - the author of it also won The Foresight Institute's prize in communications for 2002.
Hi,
:)
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual
Basic programmer, so I know computers pretty good. In fact I got an A-
in my programming class last term. But I'm a little wary of how much
power Microsoft has in the computer field. Many of my friends use
RedHat and I've recently installed it on my machine at home. Although
I haven't had as much chance to play with it as I'd like, I've been
greatly impressed.
This weekend I gave some thoughts to the things that are wrong with
Linux. I hope no one minds having some flaws pointed out. I'd like to
help make RedHat stronger so it can conquer MS. Hopefully RedHat will
hear this (crossing fingers) and address these. I think with a little
effort, RedHat's Linux can defeat Microsoft's Windows!
To begin with, there are too many different flavors of RedHat.
Browsing a list on Amazon, I saw they made varients under the
codenames of Mandrake, Debian and Slackware, just to name a few. I
know that I'm very new to RedHat so maybe this is obvious but it seems
like RedHat should just sell a few different flavors of its operating
system. Perhaps one for the desktop and one for a server? Could
someone explain why RedHat produces dozens of different versions of
Linux?
Secondly did you know that anyone can view the source code to Linux! I
think that RedHat shouldn't make its code available. After all, what
keeps Microsoft from stealing RedHat's ideas and putting it into
Windows? My friend says that FreeBSD stole the TCP/IP stack from DOS a
long time ago and Microsoft is always looking for revenge for that.
Plus it seems to me like RedHat is just giving away its ideas for
free. And what keeps hackers or terrorists from tampering with the
code and putting a virus in every computer?
On a related note, why doesn't RedHat write Linux in assembly? My
friend says that's what Microsoft does for Windows, and that's why
Windows is faster and more stable than Linux.
Next RedHat definitely should kill -9 (ha, ha!) the command line.
Microsoft finally gave up DOS when Windows 2000 came out. I'm suprised
that RedHat hasn't migrated away from...whatever its version of DOS is
called (Bash, I think?) But maybe this is planned for a future
release?
Finally Linux needs games! RedHat will never be successful in the home
without games. They should also tell M$ to release a version of Office
for Linux too. And Internet Explorer!
Have a nice day! Go Linux!!
How much they're gunna charge for the ink...
Visualize the world of wine
July 25, 2003 - Imagine your kitchen blender conks out the day you're hosting a large cocktail party. You search an online catalog, decide on a model, and click the "buy" button. But instead of waiting three days for the appliance to be shipped to your door, a new kind of printer on your desk springs into action. Layer by layer, the miraculous machine squirts out various materials to form the chassis, the electronics, the motors - literally building the blender for you from the bottom up in a matter of hours.
Call it desktop manufacturing. For gadget geeks in need of instant gratification, it's a miracle. For designers deep in the iterative prototyping process, it's a revolution in product development. And thanks to small tech, it's becoming a reality.
University of California, Berkeley engineering professor John Canny and his colleagues are building such a printer. They call the technology "polymer mechatronics" or, more simply, flexonics. The revolutionary approach to desktop manufacturing is enabled by recent advances in 3-D printers, organic electronics and polymer actuators.
Three-dimensional printers are commonly used to make prototypes of new product designs. For example, a designer may load a digital design into a Fused Deposition Modeling machine. The FDM then extrudes thin beads of ABS plastic in .01-inch layers, until you have a completed passive
functional part or device. While the printers are dropping in price, the leap
from producing passive to active devices is monumental. That's where organic
electronics come into play.
Organic electronics were born in the 1970s when researchers discovered that chemically doping organic polymers, or plastics, increases their electrical conductivity. Since then, researchers have worked to develop the most effective and inexpensive organic compounds that can be patterned on flexible substrates to create useful circuits. In the private sector, companies ranging from Bell Labs to IBM to UK startup Plastic Logic are also working to develop quality organic transistors that are fabricated far more cheaply than silicon circuits. Organic semiconductors will most likely first hit the market in the form of inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and flexible display screens.
Canny's co-investigator in Berkeley's flexonics effort, Vivek Subramanian, is one of many researchers harnessing the microfluidic precision of inkjet printing technology to deposit organic semiconductors in desired patterns. The key ingredient in Subramanian's organic circuits is "liquid gold." Synthesized in his laboratory, liquid gold consists of gold nanocrystals that are only 20 atoms across and melt at 100 degrees Celsius, 10 times lower than normal.
The gold nanocrystals are encapsulated in an organic shell of an alkanethiol (an organic molecule containing carbon, hydrogen and sulphur) and dissolved in ink. As the circuit is printed on plastic, paper or cloth using inkjet technology, the organic encapsulant is burned off, leaving the gold as a high-quality conductor.
Combining Subramanian's circuit printing technology with a 3-D printer enables electronics to be embedded within the housing of the device being printed. The chassis and the electronics are fabricated as one single structure.
The next step is to add the actuators that provide electromechanical capabilities to the devices - for instance, a mechanism that causes the blender's blades to spin when switched on. For this, Canny plans to fill inkjet cartridges with electroactive polymers that contract when zapped with a voltage, enabling components to flex in desired directions. Additionally, the polymers generate a voltage when compressed, so buttons and switches can also be embedde
The guy was trying to suck up a cake through a fiber optic cable ;-)
Downloading physical objects through the net? Fishing net maybe, not the Internet.
Today's fact is tomorrow's fiction.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
...and dotted. Chalk another one up to the Slashdot Effect!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
How long will it be with this system in place until you can download the most ungodly of things from adult entertainment sites? EEEEW!
stuff |
We'll all be complaining about the CIAA (Car Industry Association of America), CBAA (Coffee Brewers Association of America), BBAA (Beer Brewers Association of America) etc etc etc
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
We have no economy, because we'd have almost no labor jobs left, all the services jobs will be in the middle east somewhere for pennies, and we will do what exactly?
Infinite free energy, along with infinite free labor, = socialism/communism, just like the P2P networks.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
When we have desktop universal constructors, then I expect the manufacturing world will kick up a stink, but unless I misunderstand the article the printers it describes can only make certain sorts of devices - mainly those containing plastics and certain types of electronics and specific sorts of movement in them. Sure, this is going to cut into the manufacturing market for some things, but nothing like a real UC could do...
The "Age of Plenty" will make (cough) intellectual property king, until we all realise that the resources have to come from somewhere.
Intellectual Property will die out just the same, as once people learn that sharing is the better of the 2. Each item mapped gives inventors more power and leverage to work with, hence more goods. It'll turn this capitalistic country into a pure form of socialism, one where all needs are provided. Or at least, could be capitalistic with a socialism base floor.
Still, fabs would have to be made and sold, and only a large fab could make smaller fabs. You also have the problem with Energy consumption. Fusors may be the only realistic way of capturing large amounts of energy.
There will STILL be an economy, just the balance of power will be radically shifted.
More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?
Easy, some manufacturing company will buy or steal the patents and lock this technology deep in some drawer so we will never see it again and they can go on making money.
They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net
Certainly this must give rise to a meaning of a packet filtering firewall. Sure don't want those RIAA dudes slinking into my server room.
http://216.239.57.104/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smalltime s.com%2Fdocument_display.cfm%3Fdocument_id%3D6413
Visualize the world of wine
As our society moved into the industrial revolution ... it meant unrealistic controlls over labor (slavery) had to go.
As society is moving into the information age means unrealistic controlls over information (copyrights, and untangable patented things) half to go.
And as our society moves into the "replicator" age. It means unrealistic controlls over invention and creation (patents) will half to go.
IMHO.
Man, do I look like an idiot. Go ahead, let me have it.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Desktop manufacturing is a long, long, long way off. You can do it with plastic bits, MAYBE circuit boards, but not much else. Technologies like these have revolutionized the manufacturing process - rapid mold prototyping for casting, and C&C machining of parts.
The fact remains though that you're not going to get the strength of cast aluminum or forged metal without very expensive equipment - that's not pessimism, that's physics.
..don't panic
I've spoken to alot of people including some on Slashdot who would prefer to commit suicide than live in a socialist society.
Intellectual Property will die out just the same, as once people learn that sharing is the better of the 2. Each item mapped gives inventors more power and leverage to work with, hence more goods. It'll turn this capitalistic country into a pure form of socialism, one where all needs are provided. Or at least, could be capitalistic with a socialism base floor.
This will never be allowed to happen, people would riot at the thought of such an idiotic and foolish idea.
Still, fabs would have to be made and sold, and only a large fab could make smaller fabs. You also have the problem with Energy consumption. Fusors may be the only realistic way of capturing large amounts of energy.
Yeah but what would our jobs be? Like I said alot of people would commit suicide in a world with no jobs and no work.
There will STILL be an economy, just the balance of power will be radically shifted.
With less jobs, even if theres an economy, you wont have a job.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Well, with the existing technology we can duplicate digital data without loss of quality. I think everyone can agree that a lot of the world (*cough*RIAA*cough*) wasn't ready for this. With the ability to duplicate three dimensional real objects would the world suddenly come to grips and adjust away from a capital, material-wealth based system into a system similar to that in Star Trek?
I know I sound like an uber-geek for saying this, even to the /. crowd, but this has future possibilitiesthat are pretty damn close to the replicator technology we saw in TNG. Imagine the possibilities of being able to create much needed objects after a disaster. Unfortunately, some rich businessman will sit on this technology until it becomes "profitable" to release it, and a few thousand people who would've benefited from its use are dead.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
I already downloaded a piece of software from a site and as soon as I ran it a cupholder appeared from my PC!
Read reviews of shopping cart software
These are cool. You can build any *shape* you want. Too bad you're limited to one (or a few) specific materials chosen more for their useability in this process than for other useful properties. What do you do when you need a copper winding for a motor? Iron core for a transformer? Hardened steel for a bearing race?
Basically, you can use these to make toys, mockups, and maybe most of the parts for certain items. But don't expect them to replace real manufacturing anytime soon.
Coming from a CNC background, I can tell you that a company would get seriously PO'ed if their CNC programs (instructions for machining parts) got posted on the web or P2P. I mean, some of the programs are rarely used, or used only once, but any company would defend those as "trade secrets." I can imagine that any sort of "desktop manufacturing" data that would allow you to duplicate something would be treated similarly.
I just can't see this ever becoming an affordable technology. Sure, it's a great boon to CAD designers who want to produce an "instant" prototype, but I seriously doubt there will ever be a "napster" of solid objects.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWumm, he meant the site was on cold fusion.
.cfm?
:)
You know,
Cold fusion is a red herring anyway, but that's another matter entirely
I'm holding out* for the day when we can go to the corner 7-11 and order up a beautiful woman, right through the nanobot replicator.
* Dear God, no, not in that sense.
Since when has America been in an age of scarcity?? Consider all the famine stricken countries in Africa and what term would you use to describe their societies then?
:-)
I am not saying that there can be no "leading" society and I am not saying that everyone in the world has to eat without Supersize as a menu option but stating an "age of scarcity" is fatuous.
Sounds too much like a marketing slogan to me
Oriental Hero "I want to live in a city where the Police don't shoot you" Jean Charles de Menezes
Is it just me or are more companies actually trying to create everything that was in the Sci-fi movies back in the day. Perhaps in my lifetime I could say "beam me up scotty" and actually go somewhere else in an instant.
But who am i kidding.. We all were told we would have flying cars in the year 2000 right?
Technology can never be produced as quick as ones imagination can manifest it....
Infinite free energy, along with infinite free labor, = socialism/communism, just like the P2P networks.
You say that like it's a bad thing. You are, of course, still free to be a dirt farmer, you just won't have to.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Check out the announcement for Hardster... Just one week ago this was considered humor, now it is being proposed as a real idea. Coincidence? I think not. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Let me be the first to announce the open-source Car project. I'm currently on version 0.2. We have the chasis mostly bug-free, with occasional glitches on an Interstate network. Seat-Belts are available on the nightly builds, but aren't supported yet. You'll still have to use a closed-source engine module, and we're not planning on adding it until version .5 when we have the chasis, firewall, and fuel system components some-what bug free. I've heard some people saying that they've been able to use the engine module from the Open-Source-Lawn-Mower project, but it will only work under light loads. For now, I have to get back to developing the lights module. BTW, we're looking for someone to design a module-hot-swaping system, similar to linux.
Oh great. Instead of the RIAA wondering about those songs on your hard disk, you'll have the NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) getting after you because you have 60 full-sized plastic Cadillacs downloaded from Repster in your back yard.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Half" to go? Try "have." It makes more sense. I know that the first defense against a grammar Nazi is "spelling isn't an indicator of intelligence" but without a valid excuse like voice dictation errors, using the WRONG WORD seems to be indicative of stupidity.
Laws are for people with no friends.
C:\buildDeagle.exe
C:\buildAmmo.exe
Clippy: It looks like you're going on a shooting spree. Would you like me to help?
article on MSNBC that discusses advances being made in the realm of understanding how matter is organized. Certainly in order to have a "matter printer", we would have to know how to create material on the fly. I think there are steps being made in that direction.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Infinite free energy, along with infinite free labor, = socialism/communism, just like the P2P networks.
SO you've perfected a way to turn energy into food? I don't think these printers will make a nice juicy steak as well as they make blenders.
I seem to recall reading about this concept in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Has it been used elsewhere in sci-fi?
Since when ? Natural resources are becoming depleted, and our consumerist age is causing all sorts of problems for the environment...sounds to me like this would be just another way of enabling us to get things that we don't really need, although I guess it would at least save the petrol that would otherwise be required when we order things from amazon :)
It is not "socialable" or socialist to coerce people into careers and to give up resources in the name of sharing, I prefer call it Marxist.
It is not capitalistic, but monopolistic, to controll resources (like information and invention) that are made a limited resource by the force of government and not by natural physical scarsity.
Both Marxisim and federally backed monopolistic behavior are very bad. But free-will sharing, planning, and use of resources according to real natural limits without handing over central authority to "enlightened" people is good.
In each case, only individual liberty can be an end in itself.
Hope that clairifies things...
More importantly: Does it work with porn?
That's what the internet is all about, right? Or am I wrong on this?
Try not sounding HIPOCRITICAL next time.
Learn to spell HYPOCRITICAL.
Next up: Ronald Reagan
"It takes 16 years to brainwash a human child into thinking he needs to work to live, "
This isn't brainwashing, it is biology. The animal that does not strive to feed itself dies.
It is a bad thing however for a Capitalist. We'd end up having a civil war over this.
There are ALOT of people who would rather die than live in a Socialist world. Why do you think there was such witch-hunts to catch communists? Why do you think there was so much propaganda being spewed about how Communists are evil? We still have idiots today who post on slashdot saying Communism is evil and wrong.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"It'll turn this capitalistic country into a pure form of socialism, one where all needs are provided. Or at least, could be capitalistic with a socialism base floor."
This would not be socialist, since individuals would be making decisions, not government elites.
will most likely be the water company. how else are you going to get the raw materials in bulk? they already have the network for liquid materials.
someone wrote a story about this a long time ago, where the worst thing that could possibly happen to you was being cut off from the pipe that supplied raw materials. looks like its on the way.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Dude - this is offtopic - it has nothing to do with the topic of peer to peer meets manufacturing.
"Why do you think there was so much [information] being spewed about how Communists are evil?"
Most of this information comes from the communists themselves, who speak through their actions. Pol Pot, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were rather eloquent in this respect, and vast piles of skulls grin their affirmation.
Socialism is death.
And it was intended as a joke...
Like science? Comics? Wicked...
Funny By Nature
I have been writing SF stories set in a future where nanotechnology is preceded by a manufacturing technology similar to these kinds of solid output printers. However my 'Omnifacture' (as the thing is called in the stories) uses a mix of technologies instead of taking a single 'printing' approach. These include micro-machines, laser sintered metals and vapor/plasma deposition.
Although imaginary, the Omnifacture in my stories could possibly work in real life because it is based on current technologies. All it would require is someone to build the first one and then write the software -- after that an Omnifacture is capable of building more Omnifactures... (The first story I have written involving Omnifactures is titled 'Pyramid Scheme'.)
The interesting thing is that I posit (and use in my stories) a social backlash against such technology as people fear losing jobs and big companies fear losing control of their IP. The end result (in the stories) is that the Omnifacture becomes a black-market item and most countries pass laws against unregistered manufactured robotics of any kind.
So, SF or soon to come reality?
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
This kind of "home manufacturing" using RP is nothing new. Everyone who uses an RP machine for the first time thinks of that. The primary reason why this would never happen on a significant scale was the threat of litigation. Taking manufacturing and more importantly, quality control, out of the hands of Corporations would give their customers too many opportunities to sue them. P2P sharing of product designs would of course also be devastating to such a business model.
I just noticed on the Nightly build that one of the seatbelts hacks I put in will lock-up the steering wheel if you try to lean too far forward. I think the cause is an oil leak in one of the components. One of my testers reported a Red-windsheild of death after this happened on a Pennsylvania backroad.
With the proper tools, we can grow crops x10 the size of current crops.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty?"
Why would it be the age of plenty? Probably it will be the "age of more-power-to-the-DIYers", but you will still need the raw materials (which are scarce) and the design (which is scarce, too). Of course, it has the potential to cut down on costs, but there are lots of things that has cut the costs of manufacturing but we still live in the age of scarcity - and frankly, I don't see how it could change anytime with any technological advance: people will always find something that is scarce.
Real life is overrated.
Please, no Dean. I've had enough of "Economy Stupid" policies. Not only does it sound like Yoda, I'd rather have "Economy Smart" for once: no more Slick and Chimp voodoo like we've had for years now.
I've already started seeding...t
http://getstuff.com/bill-gates-credit-card.torren
or worse
http://getstuff.com/glock19-pistol.torrent
hmmm...
http://getstuff.com/Angelina-Jolies-lips.torrent
WooHoo...
/. keeping geeks safe from skin cancer year after year.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Finally, "Stuff that matters" is true for once.
"...an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing..." (emphasis added)
Christ, I haven't seen the Upright Citizens Brigade mentioned in the media in ages. Who was I to know they went into hardware design?
...is important: it's now setting a precedent for future carry-overs of property[-holder] rights that often made sense under scarcity into a set of conditions where they are unnecessary and will enforce unneeded scarcity.
Why? It's _fun_ to have stuff when other people don't. It's _fun_ to have authority over other people, even (usually) at the cost of other people having it over you. And it's easy to believe that That's the Way Things Are (God's Will, the operation of the Holy Market).
Well....I say it's spinach, and to hell with it.
" Their actions demonstrated that they weren't actually communists, really"
Bad logic there: "These communists were bad, so they were not really communists". Not only were they communists, they were typical communists. This same sort of bad logic is used sometimes in discussions of religious history ("those inquisitors were not really Christians...")
"And if Socialism is death, how come so many people are alive and reasonably happy in European socialist... "
The countries you named are not that Socialist: even though they are more socialist than the United States, and the government is more exploitative (higher taxes), the majority of the economies are still controlled by the people (privately controlled) and not the State.
Yes, IRTFA.
Yeah, right, keep on dreaming mate.
Was it Iain M Banks that introduced this term? Anyway, it doesn't look bloody likely anymore if you ask me. We are running out of environment to fuck up and rapidly.
According to several articles recently in mags. like New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) et al. things like fishstocks and other wild species are on the brink of plummeting and we are going to see species disappear in significant numbers in the near future. Go on, call me a tree hugger, but I think it is sad (to say the least) - and it will probably have catastrophic consequences for most of us.
On top of that, resources such as oil and clean drinking water are soon to become scarce. So I think instead of dreaming about 'The Age of Plenty' you should prepare yourself for 'The Age of Only Just Enough If You Are Lucky'.
This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. Big Business will never let this go through, ever. Watch and see: they'll wait until it's perfected before they buy it out, and they'll keep it in their own internal design studios forever after.
This is an enabling technology, which permits ordinary people to create their own design, fabrication, and manufacturing shops -- it reduces the barrier to entry so that anyone can play in the product design game. We've already seen from the open source movement what motivated individuals can do without corporate support. Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation, and their habit of producing products that are "just good enough", would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs. Also, product designers and engineers wouldn't desire corporate jobs anymore -- they'd strike out on their own, and the corps would have a hell of a time finding talent, even in the third world (in our wired world, *anyone* would be able to start fielding their designs via the internet, so why would a cash-poor engineer in, say, Southeast Asia work for a corp?). These facts are not lost on manufacturing companies, ok?
I think that one of two things are going to happen.
Possibility number 1: the technology and all patents related to it are bought outright by a group of manufacturers, who limit it strictly to their own internal R+D offices. Of course, patents only last 17 years, right? So one would think that eventually, the tech would get out. Perhaps... Unless they manage to legislate increased patent protection, using this specific issue as a wedge ("Senator, this will destroy the whole economy! We have to do something, blah blah"). Result: the public doesn't get their hands on this for decades, if at all, and big business wins.
2. A group of manufacturers act in collusion, purchasing the company that owns the patents, and they drive the price up so high that only industrial design firms can use the device. They use the patents to prevent cheap models from being made, and have the whole thing declared a trade secret to increase their protection beyond that offered by patents. Result: the device is never offered to the public, big business wins.
It's a shame, but it's the way of the world.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
and why would people continue to invent things?
Lots of reasons: To scratch a personal itch, because it is cool, because someone else wanted it and paid them for their time, because they got a grant, because they could, just because...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
MODERATORS PLEASE READ
Please don't mod stuff down as "overrated" when it has a score of zero. If it's really a troll or something, have the testicular fortitude to mod it as such - don't use "overrated" to hide from metamoderation.
We now return to your regularly scheduled Slashdot comments already in progress.
I don't see this replacing manufactured goods in price. Where this process would be invaluable would be for mechanics, construction workers, etc. All sorts of things could be repaired with this. So many items go in the garbage, not because they are useless, but because they are in need of one minor, obscure part that is no longer in stock. Anyone who has done mechanical or construction work can appreciate the need to be able to duplicate one trivial part that cannot be purchased. I am thinking any auto mechanic would go nuts over such a machine.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson...
They have those replicators (printers) connected to "feeds" (component reservoirs) and can get/create almost anything they want on the molecular level.
AND the society of this age is a thriving nanotech/Private Community mix.
AND diamond, coming from carbon (the most inexpensive stuff possible), is so common it's a natural construction base...
Go read it, its a good book
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
If you break down very strong materials down to the molecular level, you have the same elements present in everything. If a machine could be devised that accepted raw materials in the form elemental matter - a container for hydrogen, a container for iron, a container for gold, a container for silicon - and then arranged those elemental molecules in perfect replication of forged steel, or cold-rolled alumnimum you'd have the ability to create nearly anything.
Unless we have free energy, the requirements for what you just described will not be practical for some time. Nanoscale manufacturing for common materials doesn't make much sense at the consumer level, at least for the forseeable future. Metal is cheeeeep.
..don't panic
i think the answer to that question was addressed in the s-f flick "forbidden planet"
But look why they are bad. There's funding to these schools, but funding isnt the issue. You dont need fancy-schmancy school building to teach better. The problem is 2 fold in education.
The main problem we have with highschool and below, teachers are forced to teach 30-50 kids a class, even a teacher who cares cannot teach 30-50 people with just chalkboard and 10 year old textbooks.
You need to use the technology to help teachers do their job, you need to give teachers the tools they demand to teach 30-50 kids instead of trying for the impossible goal of making classes smaller.
1: MANY teachers dont care/teach
2: The bureaucracy prevents effective teaching through inane policies
The difference between college and highschool, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher cares, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher is good at teaching, the students are given the tools they need to educate themselves, and the teachers are given the tools to give lectures and answer questions from big classes with 50-100 kids. Our colleges are doing a good job, why not apply it to our highschool? Its proven to work at Harvard, MIT, Yale and these other schools.
etting rid of teachers and giving jobs to those who love to teach (similar to computer geeks to enjoy to do computer stuff, for free...). That'd cut down on bad teachers. I even had a teacher who told my mom (I was in kindergarten), after she asked the cirrculum, "Like it matters, it's not your ability to change it".
Lets be realistic, people arent going to teach for free. Sure I'd teach but I wont do it for free. Also I need the TOOLS to teach 100 kids, this would require we update the technology, perhaps using smart boards like you see here http://www.smarttech.com/
Japan is doing this, Europe is doing this, our schools however are wasting their time arguing about how to do things instead of actually just spending money and funding the schools like everyone else.
Also, the bureaucracy prevents students from doing their own things they like. I went to public school and I wanted decent programming classes along with network classes (big network in class to use). But NOO! School policy that students cant have any power, even on a closed network. I wanted experience on computers that would be hard to me achieve otherwise. Instead, I was held back by the standard REQ'd classes along with inane teachers who didnt want to be there in the first place.
I went to crappy highschools and good highschools, the job of a teacher is to teach kids to educate themselves, to act more as a guide, or a coach, but without the proper tools a kid cannot even teach themselves. When I went to the terrible school the books were almost 20 years old, we werent allowed to take the books home because the teacher was concerned about us stealing them, the teacher would do nothing but sit and eat donuts and drink coffee, perhaps give the daily homework assignment, and tell us to read chapters in the book and punish the kids who decide not to read it right then in the class.
In the good school everything was different, teachers gave students REAL assignments which required teamwork, I actually had to think, do research, write papers, and the teachers would review my work, comment on it and send it back to me giving me time to revise it and improve it before submitting the final product. This work would go into a portfolio which would be reviewed to see if I'd graduate or not.
You see, the current school system is so focused on tests, passing tests, or getting good scores on the SATs that kids arent taught skills which help them learn, they are taught to pass a certain test, trained to get a high score on the SAT, and kids get judged more on their attendence and homework assignments than they do on their actual classwork. The structure of the bad schools just sucks, the tools suck, in the good school there were 2 sometimes 3
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"Wow, I guess you must have missed that gigantic backlash against the dehumanizing qualities of industrialization, and the tendency to "wage slavery". Do the words Luddite, and Marxism mean anything to you?"
"Wage slavery" is a meaningless term, as no slavery is involved.
The Marxist "worker" backlash is not something found actually in history. Karl Marx's predictions say it is there, so some of the gullible believe it has happened that way even though it has not.
Marxists actually tended to by a tiny minority of thugs who succeeded with their lust for power, guns, and ability to lie, over the majority of workers who did not agree with them.
Once in power, the Marxists typically took everything out on the workers first: getting rid of any choices they had about anything, and killing them by the thousands or millions.
Nothing is free. Replicating something, and doing it without consuming kilowatts of power are two different things. Very few nanotech papers discuss the amount of energy required to break the bonds that make up materials.
..don't panic
But look why they are bad. There's funding to these schools, but funding isnt the issue. You dont need fancy-schmancy school building to teach better. The problem is 2 fold in education.
The main problem we have with highschool and below, teachers are forced to teach 30-50 kids a class, even a teacher who cares cannot teach 30-50 people with just chalkboard and 10 year old textbooks. You need to use the technology to help teachers do their job, you need to give teachers the tools they demand to teach 30-50 kids instead of trying for the impossible goal of making classes smaller.
1: MANY teachers dont care/teach
2: The bureaucracy prevents effective teaching through inane policies
The difference between college and highschool, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher cares, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher is good at teaching, the students are given the tools they need to educate themselves, and the teachers are given the tools to give lectures and answer questions from big classes with 50-100 kids. Our colleges are doing a good job, why not apply it to our highschool? Its proven to work at Harvard, MIT, Yale and these other schools.
Getting rid of teachers and giving jobs to those who love to teach (similar to computer geeks to enjoy to do computer stuff, for free...). That'd cut down on bad teachers. I even had a teacher who told my mom (I was in kindergarten), after she asked the cirrculum, "Like it matters, it's not your ability to change it".
Lets be realistic, people arent going to teach for free. Sure I'd teach but I wont do it for free. Also I need the TOOLS to teach 100 kids, this would require we update the technology, perhaps using smart boards like you see here http://www.smarttech.com/
Japan is doing this, Europe is doing this, our schools however are wasting their time arguing about how to do things instead of actually just spending money and funding the schools like everyone else.
Also, the bureaucracy prevents students from doing their own things they like. I went to public school and I wanted decent programming classes along with network classes (big network in class to use). But NOO! School policy that students cant have any power, even on a closed network. I wanted experience on computers that would be hard to me achieve otherwise. Instead, I was held back by the standard REQ'd classes along with inane teachers who didnt want to be there in the first place.
I went to crappy highschools and good highschools, the job of a teacher is to teach kids to educate themselves, to act more as a guide, or a coach, but without the proper tools a kid cannot even teach themselves. When I went to the terrible school the books were almost 20 years old, we werent allowed to take the books home because the teacher was concerned about us stealing them, the teacher would do nothing but sit and eat donuts and drink coffee, perhaps give the daily homework assignment, and tell us to read chapters in the book and punish the kids who decide not to read it right then in the class.
In the good school everything was different, teachers gave students REAL assignments which required teamwork, I actually had to think, do research, write papers, and the teachers would review my work, comment on it and send it back to me giving me time to revise it and improve it before submitting the final product. This work would go into a portfolio which would be reviewed to see if I'd graduate or not.
You see, the current school system is so focused on tests, passing tests, or getting good scores on the SATs that kids arent taught skills which help them learn, they are taught to pass a certain test, trained to get a high score on the SAT, and kids get judged more on their attendence and homework assignments than they do on their actual classwork. The structure of the bad schools just sucks, the tools suck, in the good school there were 2 sometimes 3 computers in eve
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"This is completely naive. The best teachers are leaving to do other things because the pay is so abysmally low. Schools are having trouble finding ANY teachers right now."
Then they are just greedy: good riddance.. The pay is quite adecquate, and where the teachers union is involved, the pay way too high: above the actual value of the work.
Want to reduce class size? Cut the pay and hire more teachers with it.
" Schools are having trouble finding ANY teachers right now."
The schools I know about, applicants are lined up for the cushy jobs. This obviously varies from place to place.
You'd still have to buy raw materials, energy, designs, software, Repairs to your fabricator, newer versions of the fabricator that can make more elaborate products, etc...
Maybe economies will be more centralized around this method of production...
Maybe a lot of blender-assemblers will loose their jobs, but the overall system would still be the same... Think of when Automotive assembly lines went robotic... did that destroy the market for AutoWorkers? did the UAW collapse? no. Some jobs changes, some were ended, but new ones were created too (maybe nobody welds the frames, but somebody welds the robots!)
Think of the infinite new permutations the marketplace would develop for thes products too -
- Your Target/Michael Graves Fabs (everything comes out pastel blue and gray and bulbous)
- etc.
And then theres the Fabs that build Fabs, and those that build them... and all the materials that THEY'RE made of, and all the energy needed to create them.. and all of the food and entertainment and transportation and services and drycleaning and telecomunications and everything else that this development would hardly affect at all!"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." --Benjamin Franklin
So how long until we can start sending each other copies of our CD collection instead of a lossy rip of it? Maybe include the jewel case and cover art too?
"Communism is an economic system you really cannot compare the communism to democracy as you seem to be implying"
According to Marxists, the difference between politics and economics is illusory. So, to them, it all the same thing: communism is a political system as well as economic.
"The people mentioned were dictators, using the logic you did would be like saying captialism is evil because the actions of Sadam Husien and Adolf Hitler."
Both of these men were socialists, actually (Ba'ath Socialist and National Socialist) However, you are also ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of communists are or have been followers of these dictators, backers of their ideology. The murderous dictatorship model of communism founded by Lenin is far and away the dominant version. It has hard to find communist leaders who are/were NOT genocidal dictators: most have been.
"The point is moot anyway as now is not the time for Communism if you believe Marx. He belived that communism will come at the wake of the collapse of capitalism."
Most Marxist scholars diagree, as most follow the Soviet, Mao, etc model that can have communism come at any time.
Since electronics (though I doubt we're talking about the latest Intel CPU!) and display screens can be made with this technology, along with simple buttons and actuators... I think I could come up with a short list of some fairly nifty items that *I'd* want, anyway.
Throw the geeks of the world at the issue, and I'm pretty sure there WILL be a "Napster of Solid Objects" and a whole mess of trouble with governments and corporations trying to restrict the spread of certain types of plans.
On the other hand, this all depends on the cost of the raw materials and energy requirements, right?
Right now the RIAA has it made, they are selling overpriced CD's representing underpaid artists and suing thousands of people and milking their life savings. Life is good, they don't want to change and if I was on the receiving end of that cash cow i'd probably agree with em. :)
But realistically, it doesn't take a fortune teller to tell that pay as you use business models will become more and more common place.
In this case, being able to replicate almost anything, manufacturers/inventors should be embracing it.. Why? Because it will cut down big down on their expenses, no distribution, manufacturing, etc, just R&D and a sales force. I'm just not sure how returns will be handled. :)
It all comes down to this... if the proper controls are put in place early enough, the issues will be minimalized. If we look at the RIAA for example.. If they had embraced the 'net and offered services customers wanted this whole mess could have been avoided. There will always be a percentage of the population who won't pay for goods, that won't change.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Star Trek was right all along!
No wonder Data was always stuck in those damned Sherlock Holmes recreations. The DRM on his Harry Potter broomstick only allowed him to use one broomstick per Quidditch match and would expire before he caught the golden snitch.
(Fortunately he was designed to serve as a parachute, otherwise there would have been tears before bed time.)
I can certainly see a 3 Dimensional printer being available, and transferring models, etc very easily.
:).
The problem is, I can't see an electric motor working. Unless it winds it, makes the bushings, and the springs just so, it's not going to work.
I mean if this kind of thing was remotely feasible, we'd have everything built like this instead of how we do it now. Then again, maybe that's the revolution, and why it's so insightful
GeekWares - Buy and Download Today!
When the printing press was born, together with gunpowder in weapons it brought about the distruction of fudal opression. It allowed new ideas to spread promoting revolution and eventually democracy, the availability of religeous texts lifted the oppressive and conservative warping of the bible propergated by the clergy of the day. The publishing of the classics in vast quantities allowed the commoners to become educated and eventually stand up for themselves.
It was centuries later that it was decided that things printed on these presses should be copied, before then everything was for accidemic uses or was timless like the bible or classical plays or histories. Then someone found out a way to make money from this, create new laws to force royaties. Machinery started to be patented and builders were forced to not use new technology.
Today we stand in a world where entire countries have incomes less than individuals, where the worlds most ecconomically prosperous country exports almost nothing phisical, except maybe old el-paso barito kits, coca-cola concentrate and the occasional calefornian orange. Where the holders of the "interlectual property" that they obtained though a little bit of tenacity or luck, or simply bought like an officer from victorian england buying his commision can dictate the price of the sale of their intangible chattles and the public must buy. Where streamlining, efficiency and outsourcing are the measure of good buisiness in an effort to have as few workers who will work for as little as possible so those who simply manage can take everything.
Today the measure of a physical object is not what it is, it is what it represents. Western "worksmanship" is simply a swoosh slapped onto a shirt made for nearly nothing in a third world country, rather like the way a five hundred dollar program is arranged in dints upon the surface of a worthless disk. If you live in a western country, you already live in a world where the construction is nothing and the concept, or interlectual property is everything. This new manufacturing won't change anything.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I't'd free up people to do stuff they truly enjoy, instead of only looking at money.
Thats a pipedream, the Capitalists will never allow this to happen. I mean its a nice dream but come on, do you think George Bush would allow this to happen?
If anything, I doubt that kind of future. In the future, common software will be given freely. The content AND contract jobs will be the money makers. And they still wont be able to control content then either.
Thats a very optimistic future but its going to take a war with the information and patent owners before we will have this world. Alot of Capitalists would rather work the people like dogs and make us compete for scraps than just give us the information.
Same problem: Capitalism does NOT extent to nformation sciences the way it goes to physical objects. The only exemption is tailoring drugs specific to an individual person. Surgery will be also needed.
Ok I agree with that statement.
That's why I said socialism. There's really no word for a economy(?) like that. Socialism, giving the extra for the benefit of that society, is probably the best guidelines to start by.
Just because we may be ready for socialism doesnt mean rich people want us to ever have it. it would destroy the class system and power system, government doesnt want this, rich people dont want this, a whole class of people cannot stand the idea of us all being equal.
There's something everybody can do. If his BASIC needs are provided (under the nearly-unlimited system), he can do what he enjoys. If he wants more, he can contribute.
What stops the USA from providing the basic needs to everyone right now? Countries in Europe already do this, why cant we provide universal healthcare? and dont say its too expensive, we spend more on nuclear bombs which will never be used than we spend on stuff like this, how many hundreds of billions were spent on the utterly useless starwars missle defense program? It was a waste because 911 still happened.
HealthCare should be universal and Education should be universal, we shouldnt give people a check but we should provide the basic services a person needs to survive in this world, just survive. This means they need the ability to seek help from a doctor if sick, they need the ability to educate themselves so they can compete in the global economy, and they need the ability to eat and drink water.
For people who canont pay for these things, our government should provide the basics to these people. Yes we can afford it, Reagan spent more than enough on the cold war to prove we have the money to afford this, we are the military leader of the world and I see no point in wasting 400 billion dollars a year on the military budget, if we cut this in half we'd have enough money to fund schools and provide universal healthcare, hell if we just reversed the most recent taxcut we'd have the money. IF Bush can spend why cant Democrats spend?
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Holding back technology just to keep enough menial jobs around for everyone is very short-sighted.
Why do people want tax cuts instead of going for this socialist society you mention? I mean we can have universal healthcare right now, Howard Dean is pushing for a society just like you mention, with universal healthcare and providing the basic commodities. Whats stopping him? Well about half the country believes that NOTHING free is good, they believe that they should EARN everything in life, that there should be NO safetynet, no free entitlements, nothing.
I'm a socialist, I think we should go for providing all the basics, I think we now finally have the money and technology to start doing this, but we cant do this because half the country would rather have tax cuts than spend their money on doing this, they would rather be greedy and have more money in this world, than to spend money and provide the world you mention.
Alot of these people are just too greedy to live in any other world but this one. Bill Gates would most likely commit suicide, he lives to make money, he does nothing else with his life, imagine someone like him being told his money is useless and pointless.
Imagine all the rich greedy people who suddenly cant make any more money, you dont understand that some people LIVE to make money, they dont have hobbies, they live the business, when Capitalism is gone alot of people will commit suicide.
Why? well alot of people commit suicide when fired, some people bring a gun and shoot up their job, and others just go crazy.
These things happened during the great depression, do some research on history.
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"Thats a pipedream, the Capitalists will never allow this to happen. I mean its a nice dream but come on, do you think George Bush would allow this to happen?"
Of course he would: more than many, he does favor us making our own economic decisions. Not as much as a Libertarian, but it is clear he has no problems with this.
"Just because we may be ready for socialism doesnt mean rich people want us to ever have it. it would destroy the class system"
What? Socialism increases the stratified "class system" by giving the ruling class much more power.
"and much of the western affluence will be based on unsustainable levels of energy and resource use, at least until we get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels etc.."
It is quite sustainable. The whole "it is not sustainable" thing is taken as a given, and never questioned. When it is, it is easy to see it is not true.
"Why do people want tax cuts instead of going for this socialist society you mention? "
Because they are socially responsible, and believe that things are better people actually keep what they earn, at the expense of greedy government elites who would waste the money to increase their own power.
Do I want to keep more of what I earned instead of giving more to the rulers? Heck ya!
You know, we are living in an age where anyting is possible...with the right resources. Who knows, in 50 to 100 years from now Open Sourced engineering and contruction will be available to the masses. I personally would like a replication of a farrari or even a personal single seater space jet by then. Of course, that's all moot as I doubt I will live that long to see such a revolution.
Life is not for the lazy.
"No thats CAPITALISM. There are no classes in socialism, because everyone is equal, everyone owns everything."
You need to take a class in socialism. In the most strongly socialist societies, you have super-powerful dictators who say that everyone is equal and everyone owns everything. Kim Jong Il must be so happy that there are those like you who don't bother to question what leaders say.
Class is much more stratified. In Cuba, for example, the ruler is a multi-billionaire, and most of the rest of the people are in abject poverty, and the ruler has passed laws which make it illegal for anyone to work their way out of it.
"Economy controlled by the state is economy controlled by the people."
That is a lie that fools the easily-fooled: the dictator says "I don't own it, you do!".
"Privately controlled economy will end up with economy controlled by a few, not publicly elected capitalists"
No, the economy is controlled by the people themselves. People control their own work and the products of it.
Why? Because without Democracy, neither system works.
The previous Communist system did NOT have Democracy, and guess what people, we dont have Democracy under capitalism UNLESS and this is a BIG unless, we have enough CAPITAL to bribe politicians and hire lobbyists.
Guess what though, our Boss wont allow our salary to get to the level required to do that, the rulers(corperations) will hike the prices if we do make more money to limit the amount of free money we have to spend on things such as this.
Its a no win situation unless the popular vote and democracy rules.
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I can see the new spam of tommorrow: "Hi, I am becky and 18, turn on your repicator so we can have an intimate relationship" *turns on replicator* Out pops out a sumo wrestler that kicks your ass and then a salesman who offers to call ambulance if you sign up with their medical insurance.
Imagine a device that would allow any family member to design and create his/her own toys, for their own use or for gifts. Consider the possibilities: what a great tool for teaching/stimulating creativity amongst children. Imagine a thriving network of toy P2P. Imagine these capabilities in a device that sells for $300-$500 with refills at $100. There is a market for this, and I think it may dwarf the videogame market in time.
Capitalism has nothing to do with corporations ruling. It has everything to do with the people (individuals) making their own decisions about their own economic lives.
"Its a no win situation unless the popular vote and democracy rules."
So what are you complaining about?
>>effectively downloading physical objects
and the suing continuess - better pattern your ass right now
what if you could download a cd, literally. Download the iso and actually physically make the cd. Piracy in it's ultimate form, I love it!
None of us are as dumb as all of us.
But when you have infinite free energy and infinite free labour, why would you want an economy? We can spend our time writing poems, or walking in the countryside, or having sex (or doing all three at once). Sounds better than having a job.
I guess you could just download a minimal bootstrap driver which prints Lego(tm) blocks from which you build the real printer.
Never pet a burning dog.
....lika pizzas and stuff????
Great. It wasn't enough that I got prossecuted by EMI but now Pizza Hut is on my ass as well.....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Using the articles own blender analogy, the whole thing comes to a screaching halt when it reaches the blade at the bottom of the blender. What will the blender's blade be made from? Plastic, some exotic polymer, ceramic, carbon fibre, gold??? The only material that will be acceptable for this purpose will be some form of steel. Any other material will be finished the second the user drops a quart of ice cubes in the blender.
It is a great idea, and I am sure that everyone has at least pondered how wonderful the world would be if the replicators from Star Trek were real but, this isn't going to make that a reality any time soon.
SPOILER ALERT!
In the end, we all get allas, which can create anything (up to a certain size) by rearranging and transforming the atoms in the area, and depend on a big catalog of what to make. The allas can make others, so in a few weeks, everyone has one. The book shows what would happen with reasonable accuracy: intellectual property and real estate become the only valuable things. There are artists who sell cool T-shirt designs, and pirates who hang out by the door and make cheap imitations of them. All the manufacturing companies fail, but it doesn't really matter, because everyone has an alla.
The book didn't mention the manufacturing companies attemps to survive, and I think it underestimated them. If the allas had been less user-friendly and not everyone had them, I'm sure the manufacturing companies could have made them illegal, and the short-sighted government would have let them. Obviously this wouldn't work; it's difficult to kill someone who has an alla, so it would be similar to P2P today: illegal but mostly unenforcable.
SPOILER ALERT!
Eventually, the men realize they can hurl huge blocks of TNT at each other, and the aliens and their god take the allas away at the behest of a few humans. Allas are too dangerous for one-dimensional time.
Litigious bastards
what happens when we want tea? we get
'...a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.'
neopets.com
Imagine the peer-to-peer conspiracy then. Everybody wearing Armani shits, driving performance cars, and downloading the MP3 player to play the free downloaded music.
Hell, I'll just download the actual bands and keep them in my squalid basement, just like the RIAA.
Previous empires, like Rome and Byzantium, have tried to control everything from IP to the status of individuals, in an effort to protect the interests of the ruling classes. They all collapsed, but after hiccups progress continued.
IP and the threat of IP litigation is in the end an attempt to buck the free market. It gets represented as free-market economics (protecting property is the basis of rule of law etc.) but in reality ALL IP is shared to a greater or lesser degree. It's increasingly hard to point to any genuine "invention" because more and more shared, non-IP education is needed to get to the point of inventing anything (and music is the same - just about all music is now derivative of earlier work.) Once upon a time the calendar and writing were protected secrets. Once upon a time you needed to be a skilled plumber to connect a faucet, now you can get a couple of tools and some simple compression fittings and do it easily and safely yourself. People have not stopped writing, telling the time and plumbing because these are no longer secret. Far from it. The moral seems to be that extending knowledge and power to the people benefits everybody in the long run. It may cause painful readjustment to people who have got very rich by getting into positions of power, but ultimately the world owes nobody a free lunch.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
In order to have a communist or socialist government, you have to have totalitarian state. That's the whole problem. Heck you can't give someone the keys to a major corporation without them trying to loot it. Imagine giving someone the keys to the whole US Economy.
This is my sig.
Just let the people vote on everything then you dont need a dictator.
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If Universal Constructors (or similar devices) were to become everyday household appliances; appliances that only need a blueprint to build practically anything, the consequences could be more than we bargained for.
People could sit in the comfort of their own homes and counterfeit money. We could replicate priceless antiques and works of art. Anyone could manufacture drugs with a near 100% level of purity without the need for a backyard plantation, hydroponics and/or a home lab. Weapons and ammunition could be made on demand, allowing the owner of the UC to build a small arsenal in a relatively short time. If Universal Constructors become so advanced that they could manufacture objects at the subatomic level, then you could turn lead into gold (and yes, water into wine wouldn't be such a cool trick anymore either). The potential economic, political, medical and cultural ramifications are staggering - considering that these are only a few possibilities off the top of my head. People will always find new ways to exploit the system.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for kick-ass Star Trek-esque replicators (and I don't mean to be a fear merchant), but if technology of this capacity is going to become so widely and readily available, it just needs to be regulated in some way so that it's capabilities aren't abused.
- Adam
does this meen i can now download a 60" flat screen of kazaa??? when this goes go live my internet connections going to get bent over a table and brutaly shafted till i have enough screens to wall paper my room with :) oh what a glorious sight it will be any one know of a video card that can support 60 or so monitors? (wipes foam from mouth while ignoring nerious looks of surounding office workers)
Roses are Red Violates are Blue im not very good a poetry but i have many other redeming qualitys
If you can't find it, you can at least follow this link to get the idea.
This is the reason why there's been, and will continue to be, such a fight over Intellectual Property Rights.
IP is not really about music. The big boys and girls are just letting the music folks 'carry the can' for now.
Is the classic book on this general topic. Now things haven't been happening quite as fast as Marshall Burns thought they might, but there is an amazing amount of stuff happening-driven by things like the need of the military to reduce parts inventory on battle ships/aircraft carriers.
If you put a matter de-compiler right next to the universal constructor, then you're really cooking. Figure near 100% recycling. Think Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future.
But the official definition of economics is "the problem of scarcity." So if you don't have scarcity anymore, what does happen? Think I'm gonna go to work and take orders from the PHB anymore? Not on your life. I can stay home and have my UC build me pizzas and sodas until the cows come home. Get tired of your Honda, well then de-compile it and have the UC build you a Ferrari. No need to work to earn the $60,000 differential you'd have to cover now. So I predict the first thing you'd see is the death of capitalism and the 19th century monopoly model you see now.
But if you think the *AA's are horribly nasty industries trying to take everyone down with them, you can only imagine how vicious all those capitalists will be. UC's would be a moment of fantastic liberation for mankind which will allow everyone to do what they want to for a living instead of what they have to, but the capitalists won't see it that way. They like looking down their noses at the rest of us peons and telling us what to do. They won't give that up without a bloody fight.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Has som interesting implications. Massive unemployment in China.
The article misses the whole point. This isn't a efficient way to make things you can make now. It's a way to make things you can't make now. Things with detailed microstructure. Things with moving parts and electronics inside.
This is inherently a slow technology, because you have to build up thick objects layer by layer. But it produces objects that are more "organic", not in the hippie sense, but in the sense of having "internal organs." The first applications will probably be medical devices.
What else? Photonics parts such as switching mirror arrays. Peristaltic pumps. Cell sorters. Sensing devices. Once it's clear what you can do with this approach, there will be new, interesting things to be made that way. But they'll be small, high-detail objects. You're not going to make an I-beam that way, even if you could.
Almost all manufactured objects made in quantity (with the notable exception of wood products) are produced by some kind of "moulding" process. Casting, stamping, lithography, injection moulding, hydroforming, etc. are all "moulding" processes, where material is formed to match a master pattern. All these processes are fast and cheap. That's the great achievement of the first half of the twentieth century.
Machining, by contrast, is slow and expensive. Almost nothing you buy in a store is carved out of a solid block of metal. Many things could be, but that's only done for the prototype. Volume products are made by moulding-type processes. There may be a bit of finish machining, but it started with a moulded blank that looked almost like the finished part.
You can have a computer-controlled milling machine, and all the software to drive it, at home right now. I know two people who do. They don't use them for making routine household objects. It's too slow and too much trouble.
If you want a sense of what one-off manufacturing is like today, download eMachineshop. It's a free CAD program with a difference. After you design the part, use the Job->Material menu to specify the material, and use the Job->Price menu to get an estimate. Then use Order->Place Order to have one made. An automated machine shop in New Jersey will make one and send it to you. Most parts cost $100-$300 for the first one, and a small fraction of that for each additional copy.
But basically freedom of the press is only for those that own one. (and ink) Raw stock and machine needs will lead to centralized limited run production depots, such as desktop publishing did. I downloaded plans, bought some standard aluminum stock, and now have a precision milled device, and i never measured a thing! just think: freeware bicycles and so on!
The whole idea of selling people a magic machine whose uses are barely known is new to our generation, but this isn't the first instance. We've already seen the publishing house in a box and the multimedia studio in a box. Now we're looking at the factory in a box.
Of course the holders of certain government-granted rights (copyrights, patents) that are threatened by these new things will want to keep them inside the box. I think we are about to live through a Dark Age of legal repression and control that will make the DMCA look like a parking meter. But at some point it will become impossible to limit this technology to a small set of rights-restricted uses. At the other end of that tunnel is a world we can't even imagine.
P2P Replicators! Imagine an episode where Picard & Pals visit some forlorn world, cast in societal chaos because of P2P replicating. Wesly of course uses a diothermal tectride coated coconut to offer a compromise solution and Picard offers some sage advice about the Prime Directive at the end. If only I was a couple of years earlier :(
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
"...just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. "
if this was true, and the egine was actually practical, what ever company who bought it would manufactures it. why? simple. money.
You announce and pruduce engine, use your political power to force the end of the gasoline engine for rnviromental reasons.
You own the Patent on anything to do with the only viable alernative. you would make a fortune. A petroleum company tat did this would have a huge increase in stock price, you would have no competitors, and you would still make money for petroleum for other markets(plastics, etc...)
not all countries support patents.
"They use the patents to prevent cheap models from being made, and have the whole thing declared a trade secret to increase their protection beyond that offered by patents"
by definition, you can not patent a trade secret.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ever got a cup of tea from a vending machine?
Mommy, may I have a faber for Christmas?
I can't wait till they invent organic ink, so I can print out an apple or a burrito whenever I'm hungry.
That expectation is based on a misguided assumption that profit is the only motive behind all creation. Often the real motive is trying if something is possible, or scratching a personal itch.
Also, other modes of making profit are possible; eg, prepaid design. Wannabe-users make up specs, put money into an escrow account (a couple $ everyone), and whoever will develop the device that will be up to specs first, gets the money. That way the developer gets money and everyone else gets the design.
Of course many free-market people will continue to refuse to accept the death of traditional capitalism.
"It depends on what you mean by an economy. Surely the (forgotten) purpose of the economy is to satisfy our needs? Once needs can be satisfied without an economy, why have one? With any luck, the economy will be replaced by community. We will then live FOR those around us. It might take a bit of adjustment, but I'm sure most will cope."
A sharing economy only works when everyone shares. Everyone's so focused on artificial scarcity caused by corporate interest that they forget that such can happen at all levels, and various degrees. Also scarcity doesn't have to be material in nature. How many can make music like Mozart? Paint like a Rembrant? Write like a Shakesphere? Postulate like Galileo? The world will always be unequal, and trying to be PC will only lead to failure. Will there always be an economy? As long as humans remain humans. It's intrinsic to our nature, just as we will always need leaders, in whatever form they take. If people want a better world, then change the people, not the world? For only changing the latter will fail, and changing the former will end up with the latter falling into place.
YES! I will finally being able to download pizza at 3:00am!
I don't think these printers will make a nice juicy steak as well as they make blenders
Only if the "ink" is manufactured from soylent green
...where Natalie Portman jokes should NOT be modded as offtopic.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Dean reminds me of Clinton, Clinton was an unknown moderate who appeared out of no where and won the election, around that time"
I see that Dick Morris fooled you too. The guy was anything but moderate: he was a left-winger.
I'm already there dude. You forgot swimming.
But as for the article, I think one thing that wasn't mentioned is the sad state of rapid prototyping patents. Don't believe me, go look for yourself. Try seaching for rapid prototype and plastic. You'll find that there are incredibly broad patents held by Boston law firms that are somehow being renewed annually that use almost absurd language to claim ownership of anything that has to do with printing and producing objects.
I came across this when I read that crazy glue --cyanoacrylate-- could be solidified instantly on contact with a mildly alkaline surface. As long as all moisture was kept out of the printing area, the glue wouldn't set within the printing head. I thought hey, this would work great in a modified inkjet using alkaline coated plastic sheets. But it seemed too easy and I began to wonder why I had never seen something like that for sale. So, I went and looked in the patent database and sure enough this one patent claimed almost any kind of glue.
In fact, the illustations containted a diagram that went like this:
3D Object -> Memory-> Computer-> Printer
Whoa, I thought you couldn't patent obvious designs. That seemed painfully obvious to me.
I think this kind of bullshit is why we're not going to see the fruits of this technology for at least a decade although it's probably doable now.
" Socialism with a dictator IS NOT SOCIALISM. It's a dictatorship."
No, it is a dictatorship that happens to be socialist. Of the countries that are the most socialist, none are democratic in any way.
"Just let the people vote on everything then you dont need a dictator."
First off, you don't need a dictator. Period. Regardless.
Second off, the people should only vote on a limited government. They should not be able to vote on everything: most things should be left to the people, and not be subject to someone majority vote taking your rights away.
If you have everyone voting on everything, you end up with a sort of "Democratic fascism": a horrific totalitarian governments that stomps on everyone, but is supported by a majority vote.
"Thefore, the ideal system is anarchism."
Problem is, it only works when people are asleep. Once you have more than two or three awake, government will form.
"This way, power is shifted to the individual/community/whatever."
If you have community government, anarchism does not exist.
"You can still have democracy within those domains (eg. people within the neighbourhood might use democracy to make decisions")
That is not anarchy in any way. You've just ensured that the oppressive governments will be small, but no less oppressive.
Humanity will always find something to keep it busy, and quality of life will improve for everyone beyond your imagination.
You criticize the Luddites yet your vision hasn't come true either. Fifty years ago, people (in developed countries) said that the world will be so much better off. They had visions of environmentally clean cities, public trasit everywhere, high-tech houses that use solar power, easy life, less worries, and so on. If you looked at a sci-fi book or even scientific speculative articles, you would find what I described. For all intensive purposes, you could have been an author of those articles since your opinion is the same.
Yet none of the forecasts ever came true! People's lives did not get any easier, the world is nowhere near what it was expected to be and so on. For instance, a person works roughly the same amount as they did 20, 30, or 40 years ago (actually they work a LITTLE BIT LESS but it is negligible when you look at the full figures). A person works 9-5 just like they did 30 years ago, even though technology has significantly improved. Why didn't people's lives get easier? How come you aren't working 75% of what you would have 30 years ago? Or conversely, why hasn't your wage gone up by say 25% (while working the same # of hours) over the 30 years (after adjusting for inflation)?
The technology is there. But the (positive) impact on life isn't. Why? Think about it...
Your rosy predictions won't come true..and the predictions you made in your past life never came true either. Luddites may not be right but the truth is closer to them than you!
If you want to know my opinion... the problem isn't technology; it isn't the people either. So what is it? It's the system. The benefits of technology accrues to a small number of people. The rest of society does not benefit (the only time it does is via some side-effect tangential impact).
You are predicting a quality of life improvement via technology. Let me predict the opposite: people's lives won't improve that much in 20 years. You will be just as stressed out, working just as long, etc... Come back to me in 20 years. We'll see who is right...
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
"The reason it hasn't been implemented yet is simple. The companies who have buried the technology are making far too much money on gasoline power to ever change until forced to."
The reason is even simpler, and it does not require what yours does (wild conspiracy theories): IT DOES NOT WORK.
If it really worked, any of a wide variety of agents outside the companies outside the oil cartel would run with it: from closed/outside economics like Cuba and China, to big non-oil industries, to little inventors. Yet, this does not happen. The reason is that it does not work. It's not buried: it is in an imaginary store house with Roswell flying saucers, Thor's Hammer, and the Lost Ark.
"That won't happen because they have lobbyists"
The lobbyists don't affect this, and they can't. If this technology actually worked, they could not stop Castro, Khadaffy, ALCOA, Ben and Jerry, Microsoft, or Jimmy-Joe in his garage from doing whatever they wanted to with it.
Even if we learned to replicate food and water, essentially ending its scarcity, there would be no end of starvation.
Owners of intellectual property of specific meals and water compositions would step forward and demand that the technology be abolished, or at a minimum, demand heavy royalties every time someone hungry was fed with THEIR meal. No Big Mac and Coke for you, sir, unless you pay the McDonalds tax! Because it's their PROPERTY, goddammit. Who cares if the people are hungry and thirsty, theft should not be tolerated. The fact that the starving people are so poor they've never had small change in their pocket (and therefore never would be ABLE to buy the company's meals) is irrelevant, the corporation has to protect its trademarks.
Hmm, why do the words "HIV treatment" spring to mind?
" Your logic is flawed. Totalitarianism is more than that. Simply controlling the economy isn't totalitarian."
It's more than what? If you control the economy, there is little else for you (the government) to control.
"For instance, would you say that USA is more totalitarian than (pick your favourite country) say Brazil "
Probably, but neither government is totalitarian: both of them leave most economic matters up to the people.
"To prove further, what happens under anarchism? Is that more totalitarian or less totalitarian? "
Anarchism is less totalitarian since there is no government, of course. However, why bother to discuss it since anarchy is not a stable system and can vanish within minutes.
"Nazi Germany was totalitarian yet their economy was captialist and they relied on free markets"
Nazi Germany was socialist (hint: see what Nazi the word actually means) and there was much government control of industry. The "captains of industry" served at the whim of the Nazi leaders.
"Similarly, religious fundamentalist countries (say Iran) can be thought of as quasi-totalitarian yet they rely on free markets and hardly anything is centrally controlled (at least on the economic side"
Much of Iranian industry, including the biggest, is the property of the Iranian government.
It would have tremendous effect:
Imagine world where no one upgrades their old 486 just becouse it is impossible to buy 30-pin SIMMs,
Hi-tech corporations would have much harder times than RIAA now have.
Unfortunately, it still not possible to download pizza, so it is to early to speculate about economics of plenty.
"It is not capitalistic, but monopolistic, to controll resources (like information and invention) that are made a limited resource by the force of government and not by natural physical scarsity."
As I pointed out elsewere. Physical items aren't the only things that can be scare. Ideas can be scare because of one undeniable fact. Everything and everyone is different to varying degrees. There are only so many who know how to paint. There are only so many who know how to sculpt. There are only so many who know how to fly. We have the education, and technology to potentially make a world that doesn't require leaders, yet they still exist because we NEED leaders. I do realize that the rallying cry around here is down with IP, maybe arising from some deep-seated feeling of "loss of control". But our differences, and the division of labour is what keeps this world alive. If a homogenious OS environment is a bad thing, then why should a homogenious society be any better?
"Both Marxisim and federally backed monopolistic behavior are very bad. But free-will sharing, planning, and use of resources according to real natural limits without handing over central authority to "enlightened" people is good."
If federally-backed monopolies are bad? Then I suggest you stop using anything that was created by such institutions, like the phone system, roads, utilities. As I metioned a sharing society only works when everyone agrees to share. If you think that a technological solution will change human nature then you're only deluding yourself.
"In each case, only individual liberty can be an end in itself."
A noble goal, thrust against the reality of human nature. Man talks "noble" but sadly can not live up to the majesty of his words.
Imagine civil war where one of sides has ability to produce infinite amount of armor and weapons on demand, have no shortage of fuel (remember cold fusion) etc.
Other side would have to adapt same technology as only means to survive.
More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty?
Unemployment
"abolition of all foreign outsourcing and work visas (if you don't have a green card or citizenship, you don't work for a company headquartered here, period)."
So, someone who can do the job better gets denied the chance if they are a foreigner? No thanks.
"Unionization across the board for all positions."
No, not at all. Let each worker choose whether or not they want to be in the union.
"Abolition of advertising-driven television (it sucks ass, anyway).
Even worse! Outright censorship!
"A firm, solid, religiously-held commitment to the bill of rights"
Except when you want to ignore the First Amendment, like you do with your censorship proposal.
Sounds like a nightmare country, where you censor what you do not like and stomp on worker's rights.
"In general, a capitalist society in which the capitalism has been reigned in by a largely socialist government, "
Yet, you seem to concentrate the most on this "largely socialist government" limiting free speech and worker's rights.
"and the needs of the many far outweighing the needs of the wealthy few."
If it is typical socialism, then the needs of the wealthy few take precedence because they are the government.
" Canada is mostly socialist and it isn't totalitarian."
Canada is not mostly socialist. Most of the economy remains in private hands (popularly controlled).
We should ask our ancient ancestors that question. They started inventing stuff way back before money existed -- hell, one of 'em even invented money! ;p
----------------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
"People don't create things to make a profit. People create things to solve problems."
This is brilliant and pokes at an issue that a lot of people forget.
When profit can be made and assigned to an individual separate from their everyday activities, is this the optimal way to ensure the most inventions get made? For instance, an artist makes a song, a receives copyright and a recording contract, and then spends the rest of their life doing drugs and receiving royalty checks. Has the Copyright system created more ideas or less in this situation?
What if, instead, an artist made a song and was only able to register with an international global database that they were the author of the song. As the orginal author, people would be willing to pay more to see this individual perform the song, however, everyone would be free to have a copy and/or perform. Would this system not force the artist to devote more time and energy to new and better ideas and result, overall, in more invention? The artist should get credit for their idea, but is it really beneficial or even plausible to give out an infinite monopoly over the REPLICATION of the idea?
When profit is created as the result of some artificial barrier to market, the result is sub-optimal for society as a whole. Furthermore, enforcement of these barriers will prove to be too costly for both technical and idealistic reasons. In short, information wants to be free.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The trick will be to have the assembler 'mine' it's raw materials from its environment (plant matter, atmosphere, ...). Also, wastage will be pretty well zero, so a bare minimum of material will be required.
Once we're able to use good old E=mc^2 both ways, we won't have to worry about getting our materials. Our waste can be converted to our raw materials. as long as we have enough matter (of any type) we could convert it to any other type of matter.
- life expectancy, the ability to survive certain diseases, "miracle" drugs, other medical technology
- communications: the ability to communicate easily to anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, instantly, practically for nothing
- information: the ability to read about and understand anything at all, instantly
- the education level of the general populace
- the ability to travel vast distances quickly and comfortably
Go back another 50 years and the list gets longer and more dramatic. Go back 1000 years and the world was a completely different place."First invent political system, where people are able to really control "their servants", rather than to be controlled by them through mass-media and false per-election promises."
Ah, the myths of mass-media control. Usually, these are created and used by those who want to censor or take over the media. They are utterly invalid, since the media cannot control anyone. People make up their own minds. Often, they are created out of delusions such as "no one agrees with me, it must be because They control the media. They must be stopped!". (The delusional idiots who do this include Noam Chomsky and all those who wine about how the Jews control the media).
"Just now we need both govements to control not publically elected capitalists "
No, it is sufficient to let the free market control the capitalists. Want to limit the power of the lobbyists? Limit the power of government, and they won't have much to lobby for anymore.
Oh boy! Real life-sized rubber tentacles!
There's even a way to manufacture hardware on a peer to peer basis. It's called Hardster. Check it out! Download your own hardware from the net
brrrrrrrrrppp 'Ey Homer...Why don't girls like me?
Apparently, the holo-deck emiters are very flakey. No sooner had I put a cup of coffee on the holder when the emitters went offline - cup holder disappeared and I had hot coffee all over the place...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I got one of those early on, and regret getting it before proper limitations were in place.
Pretty soon, our number was on a junk-hard list, and the entire office in short order was filled with junk-hards such as giant palm-tree promos sent for "Florida Vacations" and free sample inkjet cartridges.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Yes. Read "Lenin: A New Biography" which draws extensively from these papers. Just about everything Stalin got infamous for was started under Lenin.
Also, it is hypocritical for him to complain about the bureacracy, since he made just about every Russian of workable age a part of it.
" yeah but democracy is the only thing which can keep us from being controlled by the capitalists or the political elite."
I'm not controlled by capitalists, and the reason is because I am able to make free-market decisions. The "Democracy" is not "protecting" me from them.
"I mean no matter what, someone controls government. So who should it be, the masses or the elite?"
It should be the masses, but it never is (since government is by definition "elite".
" well Clinton was a moderate in office and in actions."
He governed as a left-winger, from his attempt to have government take over health care to his greedy tax hikes to other places where he thought the government can run our lives better than we can.
Compared to Castro or Chomsky or Pol Pot, he was a moderate, but measured from the center, he was a left-winger.
" The fundamental problem of communism is that it can't calculate a price properly
That is just one of the problems. At least as important is the fact that most of the time, a communist economy was just a tool by greedy despots to get as much power as possible.
They did not care such much about how well price-fixing worked: they just cared that every single thing in the entire country was in their personal treasure box. It then follows that if the economy is set to serve the greed of one single man, whether or not it works hardly matters. People will starve by the millions, and factories will produce windows as thin as 40 watt light-bulb glass, but the power of The Great Father will stay strong, and (if the Great Father gets off on terror) increase.
"Well its never been tried, I mean name one Democracy on the planet. The USA isnt a Democracy either, we are controlled by Capitalist elites"
No, we aren't. All of us are ruled by political elites, even the rich capitalists. They pay the significant proportion of the taxes. If they really controlled, they would pay no taxes.
Also, the capitalists are made accountable by the system. If they don't serve the workers, investors, and customers, they fail. They only get rich when they serve the needs of these people they deal with.
I ran across this last year when I wanted to make a jacket that had all sorts of Open Source project logos on it. I went to a sports shop that did custom embroidery to get info. They said they could take a bitmap image and convert it to an appropriate file format "for just a few hundred dollars", then duplicate it to as many shirts/jackets/hats as I wanted for a few bucks each. So apparently the file is everything and the duplication is negligible.
So two points here:
1. How much is that embroidery file worth when creating it is hundreds of dollars and printing is almost free?
2. Where can I get embroidery files for all sorts of Open Source project logos (Like Tux, *BSD Deamon, GNU Gnu, Apache feather, PostgreSQL elephant, KDE Gears, Gnome paw print...)?
And I would presume appropriate trademark/copyright protection would apply to such logos in the same sort of way as patent/copyright would apply to other manufacturing file formats.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
"I'm not even arguing with you about socialism, I want the socialist world to happen"
I don't. I feel I can run my own life better than the government can.
" I'm just saying people in this world are trying their best to prevent it from happening and you wont make it happen without a big fight. "
Yes, and this is why strong socialist governments are typically implemented after mass executions and other terror. There is a very good reason people tend to fight against socialism.
Do you post for the approval of your peers? Are you too afraid to get into an arguement?
And no I didnt think the article was about cold fusion although I admit I couldnt read the article at first because it was slashdotted and someone on here mentioned cold fusion, I took advantage of their mention of cold fusion to talk about cold fusion the energy source because we know that you cannot have something like this without having infinite energy.
"Do what I've just done, but him on your foe list and set them a negative modifier."
Go right ahead, be my guest, but don't give orders to other people, not everyone comes here to agree with everyone else 100% of the time and never get into any debates.
The only reason really I come to a place like Slashdot is because I can post my opinion and get flamed by about 30 people.
Usually those flames turn into debates and sometimes I learn something new. Perhaps you should try it, I'd think without guys like me on the site this site wouldnt be popular, I mean if everyone were timid and just read the article and posted something like "YEAH!! THIS IS GOOD!" and the next person "I AGREE WITH YOU DUDE!", and then the next person "YAY! WE ALL AGREE!"
This site wouldnt have half as many people posting on it, however when that one guy posts something which makes everyone drop what they were doing and read it, and that post draws 30 responses, this is what slashdot is all about.
Alot of my posts do draw 30+ comments, and I usually get a rating of 4-5 on all my posts. I must be doing SOMETHING right.
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"Warning: MEMRI and ADL are dangerous propaganda machines."
"Dude, I think he's a neo-nazi".
Yeah, those Jews are dangerous for daring to speak out. Better put on a brown-shirt and bust some shop windows.
you have to be kidding. 3 quarters of the human race live in the 3rd world. Even in the richest of cities, like, say, New York City, there are massive homeless populations.
It's the Age of Disparity, not Plenty.
Thats why democracy should be LOCAL. There should be no federal government, just a bunch of local governments which operate by Democracy, then have each state vote and combine the votes of the entire country.
Example, if the south is racist, let minorities move to states which arent, and then through economic development and political discussion minorities can negotiate with the few rogue states which decide to be racist, of the rogue states continue to be racist, you can simply cease doing trade with them and force the racists to fend for themselves.
Theres no need for a cival war, you just dont trade with hostile states in the same way we dont trade with hostile countries like Iraq.
. Should civil rights be subject to mob rule? Remember that following 9/11, 80% of the US populace favored using nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Populations were also widely in favor of World War I, and we know how well that went for Europe.
But that statistic is skewed, the population should not even be voting on military issues, that should be left up to the president. The people however should vote for the president via popular vote, the whole point of having a president is so he can decide issues like this.
We do not however need congress, we dont need senate, and career politicians, we just need a President, Mayor, Governor, and things like that, and then we need people who communicate directly with these guys, advisers, who the governor or leader person chooses.
Senators should not outlast the President, the President should choose his senators, and we should choose the president.
So if we vote in a proper President, we will get a proper congress and senate.
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"Even in the richest of cities, like, say, New York City, there are massive homeless populations."
There is plenty of housing and shelter in New York City. If someone is homeless there, it is by choice, and it is not a crisis or failure of the system.
I disagree. The definition I've seen is this:
Hey i dont force my views on others, but you should be pissed off at George Bush if you are a libertarian
Funny, telling me what I should believe sounds like forcing a view to me. Remember, I said SMALL-L, not a full-fledged Libertarian. There's a difference. And BTW, I musn't agree that DEAN is conservative, unless you mean in the traditional sense that he defends the status quo of a large paternal nation-state. And, from all reports, seeks to enlarge the paternal nation-state significantly. I disagree with THAT approach wholeheartedly.
While I hardly agree with everything Dubya has done (the Patriot Act comes to mind. . .), I'll note that the deficit, as percentage of GNP is nowhere near its' maximum size. Or that the 'Pubs DID manage to force Bubba to balance the budget, for a while. Even so, the deficit was going to come back anyway, thanks to automatic increases in entitlements. 9/11 and the aftermath just pushed it up a year or two. After all, when it comes to finance, ALL politicians are scum: the power of the purse is the easiest way for absolute power to corrupt absolutely. . .
As for Dean being un-electable, let's look at his core constituency: the Hard Left. American Presidential Politics is based on uniting your core faction with as much of the uncommitted Center as you can. Bush's core vote is somewhere between 30 and 40% of the voting populace. Dean's is MAYBE 10%. His outsider message has been seen before. Eugene McCarthy. John Andersen. H.Ross Perot John McCain. NONE have been elected to the Presidency. Add to that his home voter base in Vermont, a hardly-significant electoral state, and I forecast a maximum of 20% of the votes in the Democratic Convention. And, as the cherry on top, please recall that Dean doesn't own the Hard Left: he shares it with the Greens, and they'll support Nader again, the way things look. . .
This is the same situation and I think Dean can win because hes exactly what we need at the moment, a President who works for the people and not lobby groups, special interests and big corperations, and a President who is going to balance the budget and not spend alot.
Y'know, I LOVE idealists. But Dean WON'T balance the budget, his Universal Health Care proposal guarantees that. He CAN'T cut the Defense Budget too far, way too much pork in there for all the Congresscritters. It's not gonna happen.
My guess at who actually has a shot and who doesn't ? Dead in the water: Gephardt, Edwards (who, in fact, may not even get re-elected to the Senate in 2 more years. . .). Never even stood a outside chance: Moseley-Braun, Kunicich (who was revealed to be fundraising overseas, a big no-no). The Pat Paulsen Award for Comic Relief: Al Sharpton. Contenders: Kerry, Lieberman, and Hillary Clinton. And any of the three will lose to Dubya: especially so for Hillary. The Hard Right, and a good chunk of the Middle Right hate her with a passion rarely seen in politics. They might not like Dubya, but they'll be damned if they let (as I've heard her called) "Hitlary" back into the White House. . .
I'm wondering what you mean by a "Fake" conservative. Then again, by classical definitions, today's Conservative Movement is basically Liberal, and today's Liberals are actually hide-bound conservatives who wish to retain the welfare state built in the 60's and 70's. . .
Now, to your last point:
We dont need oil in our cars though.
What do you propose we use instead, and what changes to existing infrastructure are required to implement your proposal ???
Ah...the Culture.... I only wish it was already here....
" They're also fairly "socialist" at least by the standards of people who like to throw around terms like "liberal" as insults."
The word became an insult to most because of the actions of the people who call themselves "liberal". They wrecked the word.
Howard Dean: Karl Rove's Choice to Bring On a Bush Landslide
" The dictatorship arises out of communism's failure to calculate prices because dictatorship is always what humans fall back on when things are going to hell,"
What about all those times when the communist dictator starts out as a dictator (basically, he's a dictator even before communism fails)?
To the dictator, and eventually to the people, the "price problem" does not matter. If the system fails horribly, the dictator controls the media and the police and they basically end up decreeing that it works even though it does not. Those who start to wonder why millions are starving get sent to Siberia if they speak up. does not matter.
There can be no serious discussion with those who label groups opposed to genocide as "propagandists". The hate is all on your side.
"Sieg Heil !"
That is not a troll -- and has less fact problems than what it comments!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"I think history shows that communism works well up to village sized units. (They might have to be isolated from capitalist societies, though.)"
If they have to be isolated and protected in order to work, then they are not anything viable or workable. A truly viable system would not fail when a different system is nearby or even known. I think this is what the good Dr was getting at when he mentioned the kibbutz.
The worst extreme of this view is the Leninist-Stalinist making the self-serving argument that communism would succeed if there were no capitalism (i.e.: communism is the best system if there is no other system available).
First, I have to say Very Good Post!
I think you two are talking about two different types of improvement though. You are talking about happiness, while he's talking about material comfort. You're both correct.
About society working slightly less.. Also remember how many women are now working, that were working in the home before. The amount of people subject to work-related stress is nearly double that of 50 years ago.. Plus, the kids got it worse. Now they're so starved of attention from their parents, they are totally alienated and subject to a massive pop-culture overload from their peers and commercialism. Then you have urbanism, the list goes on and on...
Me and some friends are actually thinking about moving out of the city and establishing a self-sustaining colony away from the madness..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Click my sig or go here Dean For America
As you see, hundreds of thousands of Americans donated around $50 to Howard Dean. Thats the only reason Howard Dean is currently winning the primaries, he has the support of the people, I mean he has ALOT of support, far more than Bush, so if fundraising is done properly, Dean should be able to get as much money as Bush with about a million or so supporters.
Currently Dean is at 212,000 supporters, this is more than enough to put him in the lead of all his Democrats who pander to special interests.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The only reason we don't have an economy of abundance right now is because scarcity is enforced. That's right, technology in manufacturing became sufficeint to undermine the purchasing power to validate scarcity pricing during the Great Depression. Look at this this chart; production skyrockets due to everyone using more and better automated equipment, therefor supply increases. This same equipment requires fewer and fewer people to do the same job (man-hours per unit of production), putting people out of work, so they spend less, therfor demand dwindles. Anyone with any basic economics knows that both these factors will reduce price, and in this case a lot! Hence, crash of 1929 and Great Depression. Our distributive mechanism failed to keep up with the times.
Of course, we've appeared to recover since then, but only through massively regulating the economy, as well as, and more importantly, going massively into debt. Scarcity economies require constant growth, especially ones on life support like ours. You have to keep the people working somehow. This is why we have such a huge service industry, as well as workers in monumentally inefficient jobs! We can have machines build a good quality house in a day, and cheaply, but still I see two guys working on one for over 8 months just so they can have paychecks.
It's not neccessary anymore! Even Jeremy Rifkin has pointed out that work as we know it is obsolete, too bad he couldn't see that reforming a dead system won't save it. The trick, once you have an economy of abundance, is to give it away. No lie, it's just freedom of information and peer-to-peer and OSS and all that. Of course, you need a mechanism to do that, and one that will allow people to keep the system operating, and thankfully that's already been done. Technocracy is a purely scientific means of measuring the productive capacity of a nation and optimising the efficiency to a) increase production and therefor income and standard of living, and b) decrease the amount of physical labor involved to produce that abundance. Back in the 1930's it was calculated that we had sufficient productive capacity to provide everyone in North America with a quite high standard of living (some estimates as high as $70,000/year modern equivilent) while only having to work 16 hours a week at a job you like, with benefits such as free education (all levels) and free health care. Imagine what we could do today! They didn't even have computers back then! It was definately an idea ahead of it's time (at least as far as acceptance goes).
It's quite a well thought out and detailed system, despite the brief introduction I can give. But it's worth looking into. It's not really a new political system (in fact it doesn't use politics at all), but more of a technology.
Here are some good short bits about Technocracy, for a good starter. There's also plenty of other info (including FAQ and forums) on that site, as well as lots of archival material here.
All we have to do is make the conscious decision to make this move, and our lives will benefit tremendously. It's the perfect governemnt for all OSS and P2P supporters! All we're doing right now is letting the corps get even more rich and powerful and waiting for the next time the economy collapses. It can't keep growing forever, after all.
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
Good point, I'd forgotten about that. And I was reading Look to Windward the otherday, too.
To be fair, you could go back to the original.
This kind of technology shouldn't be considered much of a threat, yet. If one were inclined to do so, one could simply look on the net for blueprints and make something they wanted from scratch.
So this technology removes the job of going out and purchasing the parts, and then assembling them. Well, maybe the latter. You'd still need to put the raw materials into the printer, and if ink is more expensive than champagne, I don't think many people are going to pay a thousand bucks a month in materials to make a blender or some headphones.
Learn something new.
BBSpot
Most of what you said is meaningless in so far as life is concerned. For instance, information is definitely easily communicated with others but what use is this if it isn't put to "good" use? You'll become nothing more than an information slave. Actually that's what is happening to people.
Similarly, consider education. It's cool and all that most people are more educated now than ever. But look at why that is. How many people go to universities for education, and how many go just to get a job? If employers did not require university degrees (only reason they ask is to cover themselves, and for competitive reasons) then how many people would go to universities? Not many IMO. So, I ask, is the current education really benefitial to humanity? At the rate that the world is going, pretty soon you need a university degree to even replace a lightbulb or to photocopy some documents. Just because the population is educated may or may not mean anything.
I still maintain my original point: humans are not harnessing technology properly. The vast majority of technology is not used properly, and simply benefits a select few...
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty?
Those who profit from scarcity will fight to prevent plenty, just to keep their money train from derailing.
Downloaded pizza already exists, sort of. They call it pizza delivery. Now, if some city decides to extend its plumbing system to include a municipal pizza line. Well.... I'll apply for work at the central works, thank you.
Download is'nt the problem. It's the cleaning-up that really is a pain. Give me an auto trash outload system (very discriminating, must take only pizzafest remains, not the rest of the inside of my microhabitation unit (biodegradable, of course)).
Can't be one of 'doze, therefor. Or you'd wake up w/out your insides. Mine are a real mess, don't work well, but I'm still kinda attached to them.
Dat's ok.
I reload, mine.
Recycling ought to be fun, then.
Fear spam !
Really, really, really, really, really, fearrrrrr : spam !
The whole point of a legislative separate from the executive is that the Congress makes laws and spends money, and the President enforces the law and administrates the will of the congress. This distinction has been lost in the last 50 years, but, really, Congress is supposed to drive the nation, not the President.
This is my sig.
Has anyone thought of how much data would need to be transmitted to send a plan of a physical object over the internet? Some people here who are talking about building something "at the molecular level" seem to ignore the fact that you need billions of molecules to make something useful.
Even if the object is to be made of relatively "large" particles (let's say 0.05 milimeters across) that's still 8,000,000 particles for each cubic centimeter of matter.
This eMachineshop is just the kind of thing that I was a bit curious (and maybe concerned) about when I first read this article. Setting up legit machine shops around the nation would be easier and probably cheaper, from a criminal point of view, than buying weapons off the black market. Once that had been done, it would be no great task to send out the newest designs for replicas, or even improvements, of illegal weaponry. Once a shop had the designs, they could start making their own weapons. It would be a perfect front, and in the long run, it would be a time and money saver. Wonder why nobody's doing that already?
Unpleasantries.
I cant wait to see the day where I can search for the ultimate mobile phone and after hours of downloading and printing, discover that my printer made a teapot that some prank renamed as "nokia ultra-elite mobile phone".
We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects[?]
Interesting to think about, but in all likelihood, the fallout will not be as scary as the current RIAA witchhunt -- for two reasons.
One, it's a lot easier for a layperson to design, say, a chair than to write a good song. There will be plenty of designs floating around for freeware versions of most household objects.
Two, song swapping is easy because you can copy the original product very simply. Physical objects are far different in this regard -- there is no way in the foreseeable future to copy them, given the object itself. It's not like you can just snap a picture of your blender, feed it into your computer, and have it print one out for you. Designs will have to start from scratch, and as such, will typically end up rather different from the original.
What scares me is the idea of people trading designs that are a far cry from being UL listed...
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
I hope this desktop manufacturing comes with a warrantee for everything purchased/manufactured in your home. What happens when you order a blender and get a toaster instead?
Downloading roms will just not be the same again.
"Know how much tax MS paid last year? 0$"
You are off by a few pennies. According to Yahoo, Microsoft paid more than $3.5 billion in taxes last year.
Skip the manufacturing printer! Let's go straight to the final result of the product that I would need to print! The example the article cited was manufacturing a blender on the desk. Well, instead of the blender why can't I just get the milk shake I was going to make with my blender!
Sorry, I will use ":-)" next time.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Those communists wern't socialists. Socialism is about caring for society non of the communists of old were socialists because they killed people more or less randomly in there states. at the same time Hitler claimed to be a socialist yet he obviousley wasn't. Communism and Capitlaism are both Extreme economic view while socialism is a view about society. Both communism and capitalism are about put the power into as few hands as possible and are 2 sides of the same coin, socialism is a different coin.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
" Those communists wern't socialists. Socialism is about caring for society"
Do you know what the 2nd S of "USSR" stood for? Each part of it was a "socialist" republic. Care for society? Communists make the same claim. The differences are minor. Hitler, however, was a socialist, but not a communist.
" Hitler claimed to be a socialist yet he obviousley wasn't."
He held to the main part of socialism: government control of the economy.
"Both communism and capitalism are about put the power into as few hands as possible and are 2 sides of the same coin, socialism is a different coin."
No, capitalism is about each individual making economic decisions (that is "many" not "few"). Under socialism/communism, these rights of decision and control are taken away from the people.
What the fellow predicts sounds just like the "nanolathing" process as described and animated in the RTS game "Total Annihilation" and its two sequels. Perhaps Mr. Pescovitz has really just been playing too many hours of TA and is reluctant to confess? ;-)
It's a start...
Sorry, couldn't resist. He doesn't care about content, about objectivity, validity, truth or anything like that. He cares about getting paid for the only thing he knows how to do - for writing crap.
:[
His Reality Check book is unbelievably bad. This article is better, but it is still a load of crap.
Sorry for vulgarity, everyone, I just hate when writers don't have any integrity and make their living writing crap.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Dean is a serious threat The Weekly Standard
Read, the conservaties view Dean as a threat, I dont know where you get the un-electable crap.
You also make the unwarranted assumption that everyone will want, and will buy, a new hybrid or hydro-car, in a relatively short period of time. 10 years is by far too short a changeover period: I'd think 30 years is more reasonable. After all, people are still driving 1960's-vintage cars out there as classics, and I still see plenty of 1970's-vintage cars on the roads.
We were attacked by TERRORISTS because we use ridiculous forms of energy which supported them. Why cant Bush blame this on the terrorists? He can make up these masterful speeches about Bin Laden and Saddam being on the same team and having nuclear weapons, let him have his same speech writers write some new lines to get people to stop using gas in their cars.
And, recall that quite a few people cannot afford a new vehicle: a quick transition such as you propose would severely impact the lower end of the economic spectrum. By the standards that you appear to espouse as a general case, this is a rather large-turnabout. Somebody convert to to Pat Buchanan last night ???? (g)
I'm a college student, there are millions of me who dont even have their first car. Another excuse.
Pat Buchanan ? No I didnt convert to Republican, I'm independent and always will be. Both parties are evil in my opinion, I vote for the person who benefits me at the time. If I were a religious millionaire I'd vote for Bush.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty?
Mounds of crap, piles of garbage, selfish people buying more shiny blinky glowing thingies to fill out their shallow consumerism-based lives (i.e. SUVs).
"What stops government from spending some money and having this built? "
It's called fiscal responsibility. That is what stops government from wasting money on corporate welfare schemes like this.
"intensive purposes" should be "intents and purposes"
(don't tell me you actually meant intensive.)
The author of the /. article didn't bother to thimk and check on how original this idea is. A cursory check would have revealed a huge industry in desktop manufacturing, including quite a few that will turn solid cad designs into solid prototypes.
MIT folk hacked a cannon bubblejet (I think) to make parts long ago enough for the third or fourth generation product to be on the market today.
Besides the obvious ability to hold in your hand a model of an object you designed, its possible to turn it into plastic of sufficient strength to meet most applications.
And its quite easy to use the model for investment casting and produce a quality part in almost any metal.
But of course, in America we don't think in terms of real products. In American we just make money blowing hot air. Manufacturing in American is dead and no one who wants to be in an exciting field will certainly stay far away from anything having to do with mechanical devices.
The discussion about intellectual property rights is mostly crap and is the result of expecting to just walk into the holodeck and live your dream. Most at fault are the business leaders who don't want to deal with the problem of manufacturing requiring better trained people than windoze or unix code minkeys.
"This is what Bush has done, he has very few allies which are actual people, his only allies are businessmen, and the religious zealots, both of which have only a few states which they control"
First, businessmen and zealots are actual people (not Martians). (I know a lot of people who support Bush, however, and none of them fall into those two categories). Second, if Bush had only their support, he would show up with 8% job approval, instead of the 50% - 60% that he commands.
Your perception of Bush is not based on reality, and your Dean Uber Alles view is similarly unrealistic.
The only thing you have right is your SIG, in which you link Dean to "Economy Stupid" policies.
"We could upgrade our trains and use maglev technology, would require our gov spend a few billion dollars to build the tracks but its possible."
Better yet, shut down Amtrak, and return the money to the people it was taken from in the first place. Keep the government out of the railroad business.
Stupid Person: I just knocked everything down
Stupid Person: I should print another remote
Stupid Person's Mother: Okay Son!
Many Thanks,
Luke
No more MP3's. People will start trading record groove files. Down load and 'press' your own 45's!
Who's with me?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the age challenged, a 45 is a record...it was a little bigger than a CD but served the same purpose. (except for hanging it from the rear view mirror...which you should not do anyway as it does not look cool)
Thats all for today, class.
Next weeks vocabulary lesson will include such terms as:
Album and 'b' side
and in math we will cover fractions:
33 1/3
In art class...well of coarse:
cover art
Thank you and remember to do your homework!
Actually i didn't (that's a first for /. not claiming total knowledge)but calling a cow a pig doesn't make it one and calling yourself a socialist doesn't mean your are"
The overwhelming majority of socialists are of the USSR, Cuba, Red China (leninist/stalinist/maoist variety. Seems that these kind are the "cows" and the rest are pigs.
"Under the Capitalist bus government power is consentrated with Bush his advisers and the CEO's of those "
No, power is concentrated with the executive, judicial, and legislative branch. Not the CEO's
"Neither of these governments are socialist Bush's because he is for big buisness "
No, he is not. He is for the people (of which a few organize into big business). The Red Chinese government is typical socialism, as when countries are the most socialist there is much "cruelty to the masses".