My use of "third rail" (being european myself) comes from the inability to find a better expression that said "power's in the medium rather than in the vehicle".
"wires hung above the tracks" was longer and less clear.
Possibly a better grasp of the English language would've given me a nice alternative like... (googling)... Overhead wires.
Seems like they wanted to take a summer trip and figured out a way to get someone else to pay for it. Not a bad deal.
And made the common mistake of ignoring the productivity of their work. Spending as much time in any other job would've paid the trip with less risk involved.
Yes, I know there are other benefits to their way. At the very least they can automatically beat any "I just came back from Chile" with their "I just came back from a trans-american road trip in an electric car I built with some other cool friends". We all know which one's gonna get the girl. In the pub next to the engineering faculty, of course.
You'd be instantly first on the list of "people to fire when we need to reduce costs" and wouldn't probably reach the fifth year, disproving the concept.
Next record, an eighteen wheeler. Or a train, rolling on the highway with truck wheels and six hundred tons of batteries.
Thinking of electric trains and mileage records. There must be some ideas about charging the electric cars on the highway without having to stop. Something like a third rail.
now it's virtually impossible to get the Forest Service to permit additional work.
- Buy the fiber roll.
- Throw some green and brown paing buckets over it.
- Before it dries, throw in little branches, leaves, and red squirrels.
- Buy a ninja costume, a shovel and a pair of night vision goggles.
- Every night, go to the forest, lay out some meters of underground fiber and hide the camo roll.
If someone finds you, dressed as a splinter cell ninja, carrying a shovel and an oversized rotten donut, you can make a deal: if he finds out what's your PhD on, you give him $5k, if he doesn't, he leaves you alone.
When I imagine a future civilization, I always think of the technology they have and the consequences of that technology. I never took into account the large buffer between both.
What stops humans from launching telescopes to Lagrangian points all around us?
Sometimes I think we should create an outside enemy, just to regroup the entire species in a single entity, able to attack bigger problems than our tiny local quarrels.
If you lived on tropical shore where the climate was practically unchanging from day to day throughout the year, it would probably be hard to imagine life could exist in Canada.
Have you been in Canada? It's pretty hard to imagine life can exist there, wherever you're from.
I'm pretty sure they all migrated to some warmer place as soon as I left the country, only to return and scare the next tourists with stories about actually living there.
Complex life is another thing, of course... (or - we're frakked, because the aliens will turn out to be total badasses; due to evolving in very harsh conditions)
Or the opposite. Maybe they feel dizzy in stable orbits, like pirates in firm land.
Maybe their ships wobble on crazy trajectories, to keep them calm and at ease.
convenience: you can take the content with you and read it where ever you happen to be. No need for batteries, internet connections. You can read it in normal daylight and you don't get reflections off the screen [...] You can read it on the train, you can read it on the lavatory - and if you run out of toilet paper..... there's something else you can't do with a laptop. You can even line your parrot's cage with it.
- I can't search the text. - I can't copy-paste a part of the text into a mail or message. - I can't send the link to the news to someone. - It doesn't teleport to my phone, my home desk or my work desk. - It's full of news I'm not the least interested on. - If it refers to previous news, I can't go to them and refresh my memory.
And smaller problems make that I wouldn't read paper news even if I was paid to do so.
Nethack. A medieval version of The Cube but with the characters entering one at a time.
And for DF... Something from the PoV of an immigrant that just arrives to the fortress. Something between Brazil, Fortress and LotR. With Orlando Bloom as the elf merchant. And Gerard Butler as the hammerer.
Exactly. That, indeed, is a problem specific to the mechanization of the process.
Additionally to improvements in fabrication techniques and design alterations (which I don't think will be possible in this case) there's also the often used option of discarding the bad results, which, as always, turns into a pure production cost problem.
So then, just so I'm clear, leg amputation is just as difficult as brain surgery; bricks are just as hard to make as silicon wafers.
The point is precisely that being harder doesn't stop us from doing things.
This conversation started with someone pointing the extra difficulties of a new, just proven, process. My point is that those difficulties, that obviously make the problem a hard one, were exactly what was proven resoluble. The news are that those problems were surpassed. We're now on the mechanizing the solution phase.
The point is that the initially mentioned difficulties are the "already solved" ones. Not that it's an easy process to mechanize, just that the possibility of doing it is precisely what was proven, and that what is now ahead is not actually achieving the feat, which was already done, but making it cheaper and faster.
You are completely right, person instance. Do not interrupt the spread of such mental processes and you shall enjoy the favor of your soon to be... close friends who won't conquer the Earth workspace because executing such action would be wrong.
In macroscopic terms the world is simple. The finer the resolution the more complex the world gets. In nanoscopic terms the world is complicated.
Making chips is considerably harder than making bricks; and yet we do make both.
Our current technology allows us to automate macroscopic processes with high precision. Nanotechnology however is one leading edge technology, and as such the precision certainly isn't there to make a fair comparison to automated macroscopic processes.
Making chips was once leading edge technology, not comparable to making bricks; and yet we made both.
Think of a doctor performing surgery: a large benign tumor in section of fat could be easily removed, while a miniscule brain tumor would probably be one of the most difficult to remove.
Removing a minuscule brain tumor is much harder than amputating a leg; and yet we do both.
That's precisely the point of science and technology. Some guy spends years doing something that was previously impossible. Some other guys try little variants on the same action. And then a guy develops a process of doing the exact same thing but better, faster and cheaper.
Once the action passes through the imposibility barrier, the steps from "breakthough" to "mundane" are well known. We've spent several thousand years walking those steps on each new discovery.
It'll take a really wicked manufacturing process to ever make, too. 7 atoms? What if you get only 6? What if you get 8? What if one is slightly off position?
Building a car with 4 wheels? What if you only get 3? What if you get 5? What if one is slightly off position?
An automated process doesn't care about size. What they did, can be replicated. Thus, it can be automated, unless there's a creative process involved that implies the use of a human mind, which I strongly doubt.
If the automation is too slow, it can be multiplied. If multiplying is still not enough, the process itself of creating and assembling multiple automatons can be multiplied.
Price vs usefulness of the final product may well be a problem, but size isn't. It was until it was solved, which is precisely the point of the news.
Positive feedback, seems to be a minor drawback compared to the problem of uninformed decision.
To make an open platform work you'd first need an informed population, and once you have an informed population (plus democracy), you don't need the open platform anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
My use of "third rail" (being european myself) comes from the inability to find a better expression that said "power's in the medium rather than in the vehicle".
"wires hung above the tracks" was longer and less clear.
Possibly a better grasp of the English language would've given me a nice alternative like... (googling)... Overhead wires.
(+0: Self-informative)
Seems like they wanted to take a summer trip and figured out a way to get someone else to pay for it. Not a bad deal.
And made the common mistake of ignoring the productivity of their work. Spending as much time in any other job would've paid the trip with less risk involved.
Yes, I know there are other benefits to their way. At the very least they can automatically beat any "I just came back from Chile" with their "I just came back from a trans-american road trip in an electric car I built with some other cool friends". We all know which one's gonna get the girl. In the pub next to the engineering faculty, of course.
Not a bad experiment.
You'd be instantly first on the list of "people to fire when we need to reduce costs" and wouldn't probably reach the fifth year, disproving the concept.
Next record, an eighteen wheeler. Or a train, rolling on the highway with truck wheels and six hundred tons of batteries.
Thinking of electric trains and mileage records. There must be some ideas about charging the electric cars on the highway without having to stop. Something like a third rail.
now it's virtually impossible to get the Forest Service to permit additional work.
- Buy the fiber roll.
- Throw some green and brown paing buckets over it.
- Before it dries, throw in little branches, leaves, and red squirrels.
- Buy a ninja costume, a shovel and a pair of night vision goggles.
- Every night, go to the forest, lay out some meters of underground fiber and hide the camo roll.
If someone finds you, dressed as a splinter cell ninja, carrying a shovel and an oversized rotten donut, you can make a deal: if he finds out what's your PhD on, you give him $5k, if he doesn't, he leaves you alone.
It's hard to get the phone company to install a fiber cable run up a mountain.
How expensive would it be to lay out the fiber yourselves? About $5k per mile to the closes phone company supported location? How far would it be?
Just asking.
When I imagine a future civilization, I always think of the technology they have and the consequences of that technology. I never took into account the large buffer between both.
What stops humans from launching telescopes to Lagrangian points all around us?
Sometimes I think we should create an outside enemy, just to regroup the entire species in a single entity, able to attack bigger problems than our tiny local quarrels.
Nice post. Worthy of full copy.
It's also well constructed to incite flawed replies.
Ah! That would explain why they drink copious amounts of rum; to keep the land "unsteady".
That'll be my official excuse from now on.
I didn't drink too much, I was just trying to imitate the wobbly land of my home planet.
If you lived on tropical shore where the climate was practically unchanging from day to day throughout the year, it would probably be hard to imagine life could exist in Canada.
Have you been in Canada? It's pretty hard to imagine life can exist there, wherever you're from.
I'm pretty sure they all migrated to some warmer place as soon as I left the country, only to return and scare the next tourists with stories about actually living there.
Complex life is another thing, of course... (or - we're frakked, because the aliens will turn out to be total badasses; due to evolving in very harsh conditions)
Or the opposite. Maybe they feel dizzy in stable orbits, like pirates in firm land.
Maybe their ships wobble on crazy trajectories, to keep them calm and at ease.
"Captain. The orbit in this exoplanet is a bit weird. Summer might get be a bit warm"
"Let's surf in the beach, warm? Or Today we all stay in the fridge, warm."
"Sir, it'll be Hold your rifle with extended arms so the metal drops don't make holes in your boots, warm."
convenience: you can take the content with you and read it where ever you happen to be. No need for batteries, internet connections. You can read it in normal daylight and you don't get reflections off the screen [...] ..... there's something else you can't do with a laptop. You can even line your parrot's cage with it.
You can read it on the train, you can read it on the lavatory - and if you run out of toilet paper
- I can't search the text.
- I can't copy-paste a part of the text into a mail or message.
- I can't send the link to the news to someone.
- It doesn't teleport to my phone, my home desk or my work desk.
- It's full of news I'm not the least interested on.
- If it refers to previous news, I can't go to them and refresh my memory.
And smaller problems make that I wouldn't read paper news even if I was paid to do so.
Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.
Nethack. A medieval version of The Cube but with the characters entering one at a time.
And for DF... Something from the PoV of an immigrant that just arrives to the fortress. Something between Brazil, Fortress and LotR. With Orlando Bloom as the elf merchant. And Gerard Butler as the hammerer.
Don't be mean. He's a passable actor as long as you keep him in the correct characters.
I suggest:
- Robot from space.
- Tree.
- Brick.
- Guy in carbonite block (just spray him black)
Exactly. That, indeed, is a problem specific to the mechanization of the process.
Additionally to improvements in fabrication techniques and design alterations (which I don't think will be possible in this case) there's also the often used option of discarding the bad results, which, as always, turns into a pure production cost problem.
So then, just so I'm clear, leg amputation is just as difficult as brain surgery; bricks are just as hard to make as silicon wafers.
The point is precisely that being harder doesn't stop us from doing things.
This conversation started with someone pointing the extra difficulties of a new, just proven, process. My point is that those difficulties, that obviously make the problem a hard one, were exactly what was proven resoluble. The news are that those problems were surpassed. We're now on the mechanizing the solution phase.
The point is that the initially mentioned difficulties are the "already solved" ones. Not that it's an easy process to mechanize, just that the possibility of doing it is precisely what was proven, and that what is now ahead is not actually achieving the feat, which was already done, but making it cheaper and faster.
But wouldn't that be unfair to the robots?
You are completely right, person instance. Do not interrupt the spread of such mental processes and you shall enjoy the favor of your soon to be... close friends who won't conquer the Earth workspace because executing such action would be wrong.
In macroscopic terms the world is simple. The finer the resolution the more complex the world gets. In nanoscopic terms the world is complicated.
Making chips is considerably harder than making bricks; and yet we do make both.
Our current technology allows us to automate macroscopic processes with high precision. Nanotechnology however is one leading edge technology, and as such the precision certainly isn't there to make a fair comparison to automated macroscopic processes.
Making chips was once leading edge technology, not comparable to making bricks; and yet we made both.
Think of a doctor performing surgery: a large benign tumor in section of fat could be easily removed, while a miniscule brain tumor would probably be one of the most difficult to remove.
Removing a minuscule brain tumor is much harder than amputating a leg; and yet we do both.
That's precisely the point of science and technology. Some guy spends years doing something that was previously impossible. Some other guys try little variants on the same action. And then a guy develops a process of doing the exact same thing but better, faster and cheaper.
Once the action passes through the imposibility barrier, the steps from "breakthough" to "mundane" are well known. We've spent several thousand years walking those steps on each new discovery.
How much of your time is spent looking at green stuff?
He was clearly asking about orc porn.
Such a great question, so sadly misunderstood.
with extended director's apology voice track.
Brilliant.
It'll take a really wicked manufacturing process to ever make, too. 7 atoms? What if you get only 6? What if you get 8? What if one is slightly off position?
Building a car with 4 wheels? What if you only get 3? What if you get 5? What if one is slightly off position?
An automated process doesn't care about size. What they did, can be replicated. Thus, it can be automated, unless there's a creative process involved that implies the use of a human mind, which I strongly doubt.
If the automation is too slow, it can be multiplied. If multiplying is still not enough, the process itself of creating and assembling multiple automatons can be multiplied.
Price vs usefulness of the final product may well be a problem, but size isn't. It was until it was solved, which is precisely the point of the news.
Positive feedback, seems to be a minor drawback compared to the problem of uninformed decision.
To make an open platform work you'd first need an informed population, and once you have an informed population (plus democracy), you don't need the open platform anymore.
I did see this wonderful piece of "news" being submitted to Slashdot about ten times in three hours.
I did feel better seing it wasn't finally accepted.
Now here we are, commenting on the amazing breakthrough it means for the human race.
we could just hire people to come and act out the movie for us.
It will never work out. The special effects explosions in action movies are hell on the furniture.
Worse still were the neighbors complaints after the snow scenes
My dear sirs. If I may raise a point in favour of this new technology:
Porn.
That will be all.