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Strange Places To Find Open Source
itwbennett writes "Open source is about more than code: It's also about tractors, prosthetics, Christmas lights, and the poor old U.S. Postal Service. If you don't believe that open source changes everything, take a gander at Marcin Jakubowski's Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), a set of 50 industrial machines that are required to build and maintain a small, sustainable civilization. The open source aspect covers designs, instructions, schematics, budgets — everything anyone needs to know to build their own machines, and it is all freely available and free to share."
Negroponte should be focusing his efforts more broadly than just a cheap computer. Why has he not filled those 'chuted in tablets with ideas like this. Self directed education is nothing without the seeds of ideas like this.
Unfortunately, the GVCS seems to be missing a core idea of defense, seeing as how it is far easier for people to destroy any good that could be realized.
Where is the Open Source Defense Kit: OSDK? THAT could be the missing piece from our lofty open source ideals.
There wasn't a moratorium on software patents after the introduction of the personal computer, to allow good ideas to surface and everyone to share, before people started glomming onto things. Stand on the shoulders of giants sort of thing, rather than having your legs cut out from under you at every turn.
Open Source would be pretty much universal.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seriously sometimes it's like slashdot's on a 365-day loop...
... i suppose they think magic fairy's produce the parts for the machines the machines can't make. or the fossil fuel made lube and the quality Hydraulic oil that is needed for them to run.. that metal press doesn't look like it can make most of the parts of the other machines and you sure as heck can't print his strength steel with a 3d printer. i also would not want to work on that CNC Precision Multimachine for both the safety hazards of having high speed rotating belts uncovered as well as how weak they will be if they were made by that 3d printer..
It's a hippie version of a bulldozer. PS: I have a D6, a D7 a loader and a grader at my farm - my little "Tonka" toys :P
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
G.E.C.K. anyone?
The things in the kit? Are they things truly envisioned, designed and developed via an open source process or are they heavily leveraging patents of previous eras that have expired. Would the kit be more accurately described as public domain?
There are many major technology areas missing from this list. For example where the heck are you going to get the copper for the windmill and power supplies? There is no mining and refining chain. And I guess this civilization isn't going to be long on medical treatment or drugs. There is no chemistry for drugs, no way to make X-Rays, no cryo for MRI superconducting magnets, etc.
The windmill looks nice but for that to work you need something to baseload the grid. And how do you make concrete from that collection of equipment?
You've got a way to make printed circuit boards, but the components that go on them? Nope.
These third world peasants are supposed to drive tractors and get maimed on punch presses all day? While we first-worlders occupy Wall Street while sipping cappucino?
How about something to enrich their leisure time? An open-source microbrew machine? A ??
I like how the GVCS has all these computer controlled tools too
Forgetting a few things?
Don't get me wrong--I am fully supportive of open source ideals--but the people behind this whole GVCS thing, as it stands, are incredibly naive.
First and foremost, no single place on the planet can currently supply all the resources for maintaining all of that technology. Shit breaks, it wears down, it grinds itself into dust that is flushed away with precious lubricants, lubricants that also becomes prone to chemical degradation and must be replaced. There is no accommodation in the package for the recovery/renewal of these slowly lost materials and thus they would have to be acquired from outside sources periodically.
So many other aspects of life have been overlooked. No accommodations made for healthcare (let alone pharmaceuticals), automotive tooling (you aren't going to be making cars with a 3D printer), variety of foods (you can't grow everything in one climate/soil) and I don't think anyone on that team has done any serious math as far as energy requirements of something as simple as smelting aluminum. The Intalco Aluminum Smelter near where I live shuts down when they don't have direct, CHEAP access to Bonneville Electric's Hydro-generating projects up in the Cascades--they require insane amounts of electricity to even get the arc smelters heated up to operating temperatures (it also takes a couple weeks to do so). That plant was actually paid to shut down during the California energy crisis so power could be rerouted south.
The idea that plastics would be reused for everything is absurd--in the technologies they are discussing on their website, there are probably 100 different kinds of plastic alone, as well as various metal alloys. Where do they suggest they source all of this? Again, little thought is put into recycling everything--a generic "grinder" is not enough. Do you employee people to hand-disassemble everything into it's tiniest material components? What about all the chemicals used to process such components? Where is the chemical processing equipment? Is there some "box" they pour waste into and out comes the plethora of chemicals produced by all the Dow Chemical plants worldwide?
To be honest, after reading much of the website, I couldn't help but think that simply eschewing all of the technology and "going back to the earth" would be a lot easier. Maybe that is why "Farmville" was such a hit--the simple life on a farm appeals to many.
I once mused on the question of what stuff would be required on a planetary colonization ship to seed a civilization such as our own. I gave up when I came to the conclusion that provided that you had no assurance of all the required base resources being present on the planet to be colonized, you pretty much had to bring a planet Earth with you.
that these new units for Civ VI have been leaked, although I can't see how useful they will be against Panzers.
From way back in April.
-deane
Hey, I realize it isn't fashionable to appreciate things around here, but at least use complete quotes.
"The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is an open technological platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small civilization with modern comforts." Emphasis mine.
They're not claiming civilization isn't possible.
But you keep on with your fashionably cynical self.
What's really missing is the catalog of "ingredients" you'd need for this stuff. A more interesting project would be to develop a "cookbook" for technology, and use the most basic pieces possible. This is a start to built non-agrarian technology moving past what the Amish are doing to live at bare minimum.
hello mr stallmen
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Everything is in the "US Imperial" measurement system i.e. inches and stuff. Blech.
Several vendors sell multipurpose Lathe-Mill-Drill 3-in-1 machines.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Hollywood has probably already stolen the idea.
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon beat them to it. One of the protagonists in the book is trying to set up a repository of information called the Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP), which is an open source guide "for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare." The HEAP project includes instructions for a do-it-yourself assault-rifle that can be easily manufactured by a local population.
There's a classic "Build a Complete Metalworking Shop from Scrap" set of books. This set of books really does describe how to build machine tools starting from scrap and hand tools. The author was originally thinking of recovery after a nuclear war, when there would be plenty of scrap around.
In the back of a Volkswagen?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Knowing someone who was involved in that project I'm just sitting back and waiting for the place to crumble. Apparently they're trying to build it by simply stacking blocks on top of each other instead of following any known good practice of house construction.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
you mean like, houses constructed from rock?
funny you should mention that, structures build from rocks are really really sturdy.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Okay, my problem here is related to English not being my primary language.
Imagine Legos. What happens if you build a house out of 2x4s that are all stacked on top of each other, not alternating? Each little 'tower' of 2x4s has nothing to actually attach it to the other little towers on either side of it. Eventually you lean on it wrong and the wall crumbles.
They got rid of their only real construction worker when he pointed this out, since apparently the project leader (an astrophysicist? At least I think that's what I was told his real education was) knows a lot more about how to do this than someone who's built things for a living. So yeah, I'm just waiting for it to fall apart.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
But some are standing on the shoulders of giants. To kick them in the face. Especially other giants. We call that "patent wars".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
A wall built of blocks stacked directly on top of each other forming unconnected adjacent columns can have some strength, depending on its mass and thickness (relative to its height), but will certainly be less strong than a similar block wall constructed in a running bond pattern, or where the columns are glued together or tied together by rebar.
Is that what you were talking about?
(Yes, IAACE)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I was once in the arcade of a Dave&Buster's with my family and one of the picture booths failed to work when my sister was using it with her boyfriend. An employee came over and restarted the machine for her and I was able to watch it boot up. It turned out to actually be running an older version of Fedora (I'm not sure the exact version but it was back when the name was "Fedora Core").
I know that expecting more than a token number of intelligent, informed comments on /. is a faulty expectation. But this thread exceeds my lowest expectations. The GVCS isn't about building modern society from scratch. Thank you to the few commenters who wrote informed, useful comments-- I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates them.
I saw that in one of their videos and couldn't figure out if the wall of unconnected bricks was just storage for them to be used properly later on, or if they were really intending that to be a structural wall. It was so wrong on so many levels. It was unreinforced, it had no running bond or tie pattern in it, there was little to no "mortar" between the bricks, it didn't even look like they had been dried properly. Even with a proper tie pattern and bricks, from what I've read unreinforced masonry is a lousy construction method anywhere that might have an earthquake risk.