The neverending life of a microcontroller
on
History of Video Games
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
What I'd like to see is a technical history of videogames. (There are some, but I want to find a more comprehensive and in-depth one.) I want all the details. I do some work with microcontrollers (AVRs are my new favorite). I'm not the best coder, but I enjoy mucking around in the bits and bytes of assembly language. The old videogames fascinate me, not for the games (I have yet to find a game I enjoy), but for the hardware. In today's world of bigger-faster-better, I think most people don't realize the incredible power of the systems they have. It seems people scoff at anything short of a GHz today, but the power of even a few KHz is simply incredible. When used right, it can do incredible things. (When slowed and bloated, it seems awful, but that's entirely due to the programmers.)
In my assembly class, people like to complain that the 68k chip we're programming is "outdated". They don't understand that "outdated" is a word that has almost no meaning in the embedded world. Remember the Sega Genesis? Neo Geo? Both 68k. Comparable to the processor in my Visor. The processor in the original PONG machines were comparable to what is used in the Nintendo Gameboy, 20 years later. Same processor as is in my TI-85 calculator, for which there is a raycasting Wolfenstein 3D look-alike. Not too shabby.
Anyway. I don't claim to be the most knowledgeable on this stuff, but I think it's very interesting. The workstations of yesterday become the pocket toys of tomorrow. Nothing ever dies, everything has its place. You can't always program in Java, you can't always throw more hardware at it and make the problems go away. Sometimes you have to use skill and ingenuity, and this is something that I admire greatly. I say, Cheers to the old game coders! Remarkable work.
You're completely right -- more optimal algorithms will beat the less optimal ones in this game of chess, probably.
Just one minor nitpick, regarding your comparison of using the bubblesort and the quicksort...
>Quick sort will always win, hands down, because it
>is the far superior algorithm.
I know what you mean by this, but that particular sentence isn't technically correct. There are in fact real occurrences (more common than we tend to realize, I think) when the bubblesort is in fact the superior algorithm. In certain situations involving semi-sorted data, it's hard to beat a bubblesort. Remember, an O(n) algorithm may only beat an O(n^987293487) algorithm after some particular cutoff point, which *could* be effectively infinite (the age of the universe, say) in some cases.
>they're losing around $150 USD per console, and
>they make the money from the games
I assume this is true, since it has been in the past. However, by using the XBox emulator, you're *not* really saving Microsoft anything. It's not like they don't make the machine until you order it. They've made gazillions of them, they've already spent the money, and they're just hoping that you'll give them back all but the last $150 of it.
People... do the right thing. USE THAT EMULATOR! Hehe.;)
I don't know the history of the Simpsons ratings. I did enjoy the couple of episodes of The Tick I saw. But one thing I do know: The Tick is no Simpsons. It just doesn't have the depth to be comparable, IMO.
As so many others have pointed out... how the heck are these aliens supposed to actually get anything meaningful out of this? Assuming they even notice this transmission (forget whether or not they EXIST..), why is it supposed to occur to them that this is a 2-dimensional image? That it is exactly 127 pixels wide? (Yes I noticed the bars down the sides. That's barely even useful, if you know nothing about the incoming signal whatsoever.) That what they see has any meaning at all? Why wouldn't they first assume it to be a serialized language, or a soundclip, or......? I suppose the important thing is that there is a transmission at all, which will say "Hey, somebody out there is broadcasting!" But seriously. If I saw some 5x5 pixel bitmap floating across my holodeck, do you think I'd have any CLUE what it was? As others pointed out.. I'm human. I speak English. And I can't make out squat on that thing! Alright.. I just won't question it. Clearly I don't get this whole SETI thing...
I'll admit I know next to nothing about any of this, but oh well.;) I agree with you that it's probably not feasible. As you say, crosstalk is probably the biggest problem. The way I would attempt to go around this is, rather than trying to actually make all four guns aim and fire at once without disturbing each other (sounds bloody impossible to me) I'd just strobe them one at a time. How well this would work, I don't know.
As for saving energy, I agree that there'd be no savings from the distance the electrons have to travel. However, the deflecting electromagnets wouldn't have to be nearly as strong as they would on a bigger screen (it seems to me), so you might still save overall.
I used to kick around the idea of networking computers using ultrasonic transducers placed in the water pipes. You might even be able to just modify existing software developed by hams for packet radio (X25). Surf the net from the jon using your TCP-enabled toilet? Huzzah!
I agree with the AC on a lot of points, but anyway.
>On the other side, how do we know that animals are self-aware?
This is usually tested by placing some sort of mark on the animal and putting it in front of a mirror. If the animal genuinely appears to realize that the mark on the animal in front of it is in fact on its own body, the animal is thought to be self-aware. Interesting, though I'm not sure how accurate (or indeed how you could ever conclude anything concrete with it).
>Soon we'll have chips that can act in *exactly* the same way as a cat or dog brain.
I'd say that's a ways down the road, as pointed out by some of the others. If you pick any specific task, it is easy to make a chip or program that flawlessly performs it. The thing is, there's more to a cockroach than running from light, there's more to a cat than sleeping and eating... and it's all that stuff underneath that lies dormant that really makes it what it is. People don't have dogs because they enjoy the feel of their fur, they have them because they believe that there is more going on underneath. That there is all sorts of unnecessary evolutionary baggage which makes them, in a way, like us. (Which is why the Aibo is incredibly dull: there's jack squat going on underneath. There is no mystery, there is no thought of consciousness, no feeling that this is indeed a creature like yourself.) Or maybe I'm blabbering.;)
Actually here at IU where I go to school, they have a system that checks your password against all sorts of crazy things and rejects any sort of matches. It runs your choice backwards and forwards, 1337 speak, in many (MANY) different languages, etc, and if it finds *anything*, it makes you pick another one. Took me forever to come up with something that it didn't reject somehow. I started thinking "Geez, if there are THIS many passwords that I can't use, the search space is probably lower now than it would be brute forcing common words!"
I don't know all the chemistry behind it, but I've been a bit confused about rechargeables too. The whole "nominal voltage" thing -- I've never seen it explained anywhere. For instance, a 1.2v "nominal voltage" NiCD AA is usually around 1.4v on a full charge. (So one of my robots' "12v" battery packs is almost 15v on a full charge.) Even my 12v lead-acid battery is about 14v on a full charge. (Which surprised me. I was assured that the voltage drop between "full" and "empty" on a lead acid battery would be in the tenths of a volt, but I've experienced a range more like 14v-11v.) Anyone care to shed light on this?
I'm going to get modded to oblivian for this, but..
I hate to be a burster of bubbles, but this stuff is going too far. Sure, it's cool that Tilden makes these robots with a handful of transistors. What's not cool is how he goes on about how incredible they are, and implies that he can make them do things he can't. Yeah, that'd be cool if he could make these bugs clean his windows and vacuum his floors, like the article suggests. But how would that happen? It would have to be either so crude that it had to work, or so complex that his dinky little creatures could never do it. Folks, these are Braitenberg vehicles, nothing more. I just get very annoyed with the way he belittles digital computing, and yet has very little to show for things on the analog side.
What he can do in 5 transistors, I can do in 5 lines of code on a microcontroller. (Or 5 transistors, I'm not limited to the digital world. It's the design that matters.) And indeed, if a simple analog circuit can be built easily which solves the problem, it will invariably be superior to a comparable software solution. But the unfortunate fact is, you can't do anything worthwhile at this level of simplicity. Sure, biology is elegant. It's bloody incredible. But saying Tilden's robots are comparable to biology, or that they "learn", or any of the other claims I keep hearing... Yeesh. Let's get a grip, people. Ever heard of the C. Elegans? That's about as simple as biology gets, and yet it is lightyears ahead of anything we've got, digital or analog.
Yes, analog robotics are very cool. Yes, there is great potential. But BEAM robots? Let's get real. Use the best tool for the job, right? I have yet to see a job for which these devices prove more than mere toys. Somebody prove me wrong.
Actually, I've noticed that my sister's dogs (a Pekinese and a Rottweiler) don't care the slightest bit about my robots. It's quite odd, really. The robot will be approaching them, but they won't even look at it or move until it bumps into them. Of course all my robots use wheels instead of legs, maybe that has something to do with it...
Hm, that's pretty cool that you can apparently hear it on your radio. I've noticed something I assume to be vaguely similar.. I've found that sometimes when I have the stereo (hooked up to the computer) turned up, I can hear strange sounds whenever I do certain things on the computer. For example, it might emit one tone, and then when I move the mouse over a different button or hilite a menu, it will emit a different frequency. I always thought it very strange but didn't think too much about it. Anyone have any good explanations for it? I suppose it's just the CPU interfering with the soundcard.. Oh well. I thought it was cool.;)
Interesting. I have a question though.. If a photon can never go faster or slower than c, then how do they "slow down" when pumped through a medium other than a vacuum? The only thing I could think of was that the photons would have to bounce around, thus travelling a longer distance but still going the same speed. That seems highly implausible though. This has always confused me. Someone once tried to explain it in terms of phonons and hand-waving, but I didn't really buy it (even though most of it was over my head;). Any insights? Thanks.
Your idea is what I would have proposed, too.:) Anyway, they've been doing this stuff forever. It wasn't THAT long ago but they did the same thing with the original b&w QuickCam, among other things. This story got a bit of a yawn out of me, but oh well.
You are correct, sir. Cyan is indeed the two colors, blue and green, together.
Whenever I'm making a color stereo anaglyph, I combine the red channel from one image, with the green AND blue channels of another image (effectively copying the cyan channel). This works because the anaglyph glasses have a red filter over the left eye, and a cyan filter over the right.
Get yourself some anaglyph glasses and check out some of my pics:
Or if you don't have any glasses you can see the non-anaglyph stereograms by crossing your eyes. As far as I know, the crappy little gallery I made has the only existing stereo images of The Matrix.:)
It's a mask that you wear, and when it detects rapid eye movement for 2 minutes, it flashes the light and/or beeps.
Does anyone know a good way I could detect rapid eye movement? Some sort of vibration sensor or something. That makes me think of a piezo or something, but I've never used them and don't know how hard it'd be to get one to detect movement of the eyes. Hmmmmmm... any ideas, anyone?!?
Crap, let me know if you find anything! Just yesterday we were talking about REM sleep in my psychology class, and the professor mentioned that people can be trained to have lucid dreams by having someone watch them sleep, and play a tone (or other stimulus that will reach the person in dreams) while they're in REM sleep. I've had a project in the back of my mind for ages, a "smart alarm clock". Details aren't important, but I thought, if I could build a basic EEG that could detect REM sleep, I could build that into the alarm clock! Lucid dreams, and waking up on time! Realistically I probably can't do it, but anyway, awesome idea..
Unfortunately it appears that Saintsong is only distributing it in
kit form, so you'll have to supply your own socket 370 processor, RAM, hdd, etc.
Reminds me of one of the professors I work with who teaches the chip design classes here. A student mentioned to him that he'd recently built a computer, and the professor thought that was pretty interesting. When he found out that by "built a computer" the student meant he'd done little more than plug the CPU into the ZIF socket all by himself, he replied to me, "Built a computer?! That's Lincoln Logs!"
Yeah yeah, so it's off-topic. Anyhoo. The device does look pretty spiffy. Hey, maybe I could get a job proofreading Saintsong's English.;) Well, back to lurking.
when I think of the consequences this would have on such nice ideas as "free will", I'm really positive that I like the uncertainty of quantum mechanics more.
This is something I never understood. Why is it better to be a slave to randomness than a slave to the universe before you? When you really get down to it, that's just the problem (as I see it): nobody can come up with even a vague definition of "free will". If it's randomness, then a geiger counter hooked up to the control circuitry of a robot has free will. If it's deterministic, then the crudest pseudo-random number generator has "free will". (At what point is there sufficient complexity to call it "free will"?)
It can't be nothing more than randomness, because clearly there is no "will" there at all. There is no rhyme or reason, and thus no meaning, and I can't call that "free will". There must be some order to bring meaning to the decisions we make. But order is the result of determinism! But simple determinism gives me no power that randomness didn't. It still leaves all power in the hands of those before me. So what is it? What is free will? A combination of the two? But that still leaves me utterly powerless. Obviously if I sit at home drinking beer all day, I will go nowhere, I must get off my butt to have a fruitful life. But how is this any more than a mere illusion of freedom?
That's what I hate about philosophy: there's no way out!!;)
PS -- I'm no physicist, but I've taken a few intro quantum classes and things. And I gotta say, I still don't quite buy the notion of nondeterminism. But who knows, and in the end, does it really matter? I just wish scientists would be more clear about the fact that everything they say is nothing but hypothesis, with a dash of evidence thrown in. I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow. An infinite number of things could stop that from happening. When I hear scientists spewing their drivel about what they "know" it annoys me so much... (I think the key to the universe is simplicity, and it seems all these guys want to do is make the theories more complex to fit their crappy experimental results. "What?!? That's not what was supposed to happen. I know: there must be a brand new particle that we don't know about, that can do anything, and that is impossible to detect. HAH! Our theory is complete! And look, our experiment even backs it up!") Ok, enough of my ranting...
I can't find it in the Old News section (you know, Slashdot REALLY needs a better search engine than the crap it has now..), but I saw this a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure it was on Slashdot. Anyway, as for "modifying them for Earth gravity", um.. yeah. These things use fans to get around. Do you know how big of a fan you'd need to get this thing to hover like that?!?!?
Slashdot Mirror
What I'd like to see is a technical history of videogames. (There are some, but I want to find a more comprehensive and in-depth one.) I want all the details. I do some work with microcontrollers (AVRs are my new favorite). I'm not the best coder, but I enjoy mucking around in the bits and bytes of assembly language. The old videogames fascinate me, not for the games (I have yet to find a game I enjoy), but for the hardware. In today's world of bigger-faster-better, I think most people don't realize the incredible power of the systems they have. It seems people scoff at anything short of a GHz today, but the power of even a few KHz is simply incredible. When used right, it can do incredible things. (When slowed and bloated, it seems awful, but that's entirely due to the programmers.)
In my assembly class, people like to complain that the 68k chip we're programming is "outdated". They don't understand that "outdated" is a word that has almost no meaning in the embedded world. Remember the Sega Genesis? Neo Geo? Both 68k. Comparable to the processor in my Visor. The processor in the original PONG machines were comparable to what is used in the Nintendo Gameboy, 20 years later. Same processor as is in my TI-85 calculator, for which there is a raycasting Wolfenstein 3D look-alike. Not too shabby.
Anyway. I don't claim to be the most knowledgeable on this stuff, but I think it's very interesting. The workstations of yesterday become the pocket toys of tomorrow. Nothing ever dies, everything has its place. You can't always program in Java, you can't always throw more hardware at it and make the problems go away. Sometimes you have to use skill and ingenuity, and this is something that I admire greatly. I say, Cheers to the old game coders! Remarkable work.
You're completely right -- more optimal algorithms will beat the less optimal ones in this game of chess, probably.
Just one minor nitpick, regarding your comparison of using the bubblesort and the quicksort...
>Quick sort will always win, hands down, because it
>is the far superior algorithm.
I know what you mean by this, but that particular sentence isn't technically correct. There are in fact real occurrences (more common than we tend to realize, I think) when the bubblesort is in fact the superior algorithm. In certain situations involving semi-sorted data, it's hard to beat a bubblesort. Remember, an O(n) algorithm may only beat an O(n^987293487) algorithm after some particular cutoff point, which *could* be effectively infinite (the age of the universe, say) in some cases.
Anyway. Carry on, I just had to say something..
>they're losing around $150 USD per console, and
;)
>they make the money from the games
I assume this is true, since it has been in the past. However, by using the XBox emulator, you're *not* really saving Microsoft anything. It's not like they don't make the machine until you order it. They've made gazillions of them, they've already spent the money, and they're just hoping that you'll give them back all but the last $150 of it.
People... do the right thing. USE THAT EMULATOR! Hehe.
I don't know the history of the Simpsons ratings. I did enjoy the couple of episodes of The Tick I saw. But one thing I do know: The Tick is no Simpsons. It just doesn't have the depth to be comparable, IMO.
As so many others have pointed out... how the heck are these aliens supposed to actually get anything meaningful out of this? Assuming they even notice this transmission (forget whether or not they EXIST..), why is it supposed to occur to them that this is a 2-dimensional image? That it is exactly 127 pixels wide? (Yes I noticed the bars down the sides. That's barely even useful, if you know nothing about the incoming signal whatsoever.) That what they see has any meaning at all? Why wouldn't they first assume it to be a serialized language, or a soundclip, or......? I suppose the important thing is that there is a transmission at all, which will say "Hey, somebody out there is broadcasting!" But seriously. If I saw some 5x5 pixel bitmap floating across my holodeck, do you think I'd have any CLUE what it was? As others pointed out.. I'm human. I speak English. And I can't make out squat on that thing! Alright.. I just won't question it. Clearly I don't get this whole SETI thing...
I'll admit I know next to nothing about any of this, but oh well. ;) I agree with you that it's probably not feasible. As you say, crosstalk is probably the biggest problem. The way I would attempt to go around this is, rather than trying to actually make all four guns aim and fire at once without disturbing each other (sounds bloody impossible to me) I'd just strobe them one at a time. How well this would work, I don't know.
;)
As for saving energy, I agree that there'd be no savings from the distance the electrons have to travel. However, the deflecting electromagnets wouldn't have to be nearly as strong as they would on a bigger screen (it seems to me), so you might still save overall.
But like you said.. probably not worth it.
I used to kick around the idea of networking computers using ultrasonic transducers placed in the water pipes. You might even be able to just modify existing software developed by hams for packet radio (X25). Surf the net from the jon using your TCP-enabled toilet? Huzzah!
I agree with the AC on a lot of points, but anyway.
;)
>On the other side, how do we know that animals are self-aware?
This is usually tested by placing some sort of mark on the animal and putting it in front of a mirror. If the animal genuinely appears to realize that the mark on the animal in front of it is in fact on its own body, the animal is thought to be self-aware. Interesting, though I'm not sure how accurate (or indeed how you could ever conclude anything concrete with it).
>Soon we'll have chips that can act in *exactly* the same way as a cat or dog brain.
I'd say that's a ways down the road, as pointed out by some of the others. If you pick any specific task, it is easy to make a chip or program that flawlessly performs it. The thing is, there's more to a cockroach than running from light, there's more to a cat than sleeping and eating... and it's all that stuff underneath that lies dormant that really makes it what it is. People don't have dogs because they enjoy the feel of their fur, they have them because they believe that there is more going on underneath. That there is all sorts of unnecessary evolutionary baggage which makes them, in a way, like us. (Which is why the Aibo is incredibly dull: there's jack squat going on underneath. There is no mystery, there is no thought of consciousness, no feeling that this is indeed a creature like yourself.) Or maybe I'm blabbering.
Good thoughts, thanks..
Actually here at IU where I go to school, they have a system that checks your password against all sorts of crazy things and rejects any sort of matches. It runs your choice backwards and forwards, 1337 speak, in many (MANY) different languages, etc, and if it finds *anything*, it makes you pick another one. Took me forever to come up with something that it didn't reject somehow. I started thinking "Geez, if there are THIS many passwords that I can't use, the search space is probably lower now than it would be brute forcing common words!"
I don't know all the chemistry behind it, but I've been a bit confused about rechargeables too. The whole "nominal voltage" thing -- I've never seen it explained anywhere. For instance, a 1.2v "nominal voltage" NiCD AA is usually around 1.4v on a full charge. (So one of my robots' "12v" battery packs is almost 15v on a full charge.) Even my 12v lead-acid battery is about 14v on a full charge. (Which surprised me. I was assured that the voltage drop between "full" and "empty" on a lead acid battery would be in the tenths of a volt, but I've experienced a range more like 14v-11v.) Anyone care to shed light on this?
I'm going to get modded to oblivian for this, but..
I hate to be a burster of bubbles, but this stuff is going too far. Sure, it's cool that Tilden makes these robots with a handful of transistors. What's not cool is how he goes on about how incredible they are, and implies that he can make them do things he can't. Yeah, that'd be cool if he could make these bugs clean his windows and vacuum his floors, like the article suggests. But how would that happen? It would have to be either so crude that it had to work, or so complex that his dinky little creatures could never do it. Folks, these are Braitenberg vehicles, nothing more. I just get very annoyed with the way he belittles digital computing, and yet has very little to show for things on the analog side.
What he can do in 5 transistors, I can do in 5 lines of code on a microcontroller. (Or 5 transistors, I'm not limited to the digital world. It's the design that matters.) And indeed, if a simple analog circuit can be built easily which solves the problem, it will invariably be superior to a comparable software solution. But the unfortunate fact is, you can't do anything worthwhile at this level of simplicity. Sure, biology is elegant. It's bloody incredible. But saying Tilden's robots are comparable to biology, or that they "learn", or any of the other claims I keep hearing... Yeesh. Let's get a grip, people. Ever heard of the C. Elegans? That's about as simple as biology gets, and yet it is lightyears ahead of anything we've got, digital or analog.
Yes, analog robotics are very cool. Yes, there is great potential. But BEAM robots? Let's get real. Use the best tool for the job, right? I have yet to see a job for which these devices prove more than mere toys. Somebody prove me wrong.
Modders, do your worst.
-David, President, IU Robotics Club
http://www.indiana.edu/~roboclub/index.html
Actually, I've noticed that my sister's dogs (a Pekinese and a Rottweiler) don't care the slightest bit about my robots. It's quite odd, really. The robot will be approaching them, but they won't even look at it or move until it bumps into them. Of course all my robots use wheels instead of legs, maybe that has something to do with it...
Quicktime(player) is a bit bloated IMO
[snip]
I wouldn't even mind if the resulting recompressed mpeg would be 5 times bigger, space doesn't matter to me
Ummmm.... yeah....
(I wonder how much memory it takes just to use X on your system.)
Hm, that's pretty cool that you can apparently hear it on your radio. I've noticed something I assume to be vaguely similar.. I've found that sometimes when I have the stereo (hooked up to the computer) turned up, I can hear strange sounds whenever I do certain things on the computer. For example, it might emit one tone, and then when I move the mouse over a different button or hilite a menu, it will emit a different frequency. I always thought it very strange but didn't think too much about it. Anyone have any good explanations for it? I suppose it's just the CPU interfering with the soundcard.. Oh well. I thought it was cool. ;)
I knew I'd read that before. It cracked me up the first time, well over a year ago.. (Seemed more like 2 years ago, but I could be wrong.) Anyway.
Some site Google found me
Here on Slashdot
Interesting. I have a question though.. If a photon can never go faster or slower than c, then how do they "slow down" when pumped through a medium other than a vacuum? The only thing I could think of was that the photons would have to bounce around, thus travelling a longer distance but still going the same speed. That seems highly implausible though. This has always confused me. Someone once tried to explain it in terms of phonons and hand-waving, but I didn't really buy it (even though most of it was over my head ;). Any insights? Thanks.
Your idea is what I would have proposed, too. :) Anyway, they've been doing this stuff forever. It wasn't THAT long ago but they did the same thing with the original b&w QuickCam, among other things. This story got a bit of a yawn out of me, but oh well.
You are correct, sir. Cyan is indeed the two colors, blue and green, together.
:)
Whenever I'm making a color stereo anaglyph, I combine the red channel from one image, with the green AND blue channels of another image (effectively copying the cyan channel). This works because the anaglyph glasses have a red filter over the left eye, and a cyan filter over the right.
Get yourself some anaglyph glasses and check out some of my pics:
http://php.indiana.edu/~dgsharp/gallery.html
Or if you don't have any glasses you can see the non-anaglyph stereograms by crossing your eyes. As far as I know, the crappy little gallery I made has the only existing stereo images of The Matrix.
From www.m-w.com:
Etymology: Greek myriad-, myrias, from myrioi countless, ten thousand
Date: 1555
1 : ten thousand
2 : a great number
Close, but it seems "a myriad of" is fine..
Hey, that's pretty cool. And much simpler than a built-in EEG! I think this is the device you're referring to:
NovaDream
It's a mask that you wear, and when it detects rapid eye movement for 2 minutes, it flashes the light and/or beeps.
Does anyone know a good way I could detect rapid eye movement? Some sort of vibration sensor or something. That makes me think of a piezo or something, but I've never used them and don't know how hard it'd be to get one to detect movement of the eyes. Hmmmmmm... any ideas, anyone?!?
Crap, let me know if you find anything! Just yesterday we were talking about REM sleep in my psychology class, and the professor mentioned that people can be trained to have lucid dreams by having someone watch them sleep, and play a tone (or other stimulus that will reach the person in dreams) while they're in REM sleep. I've had a project in the back of my mind for ages, a "smart alarm clock". Details aren't important, but I thought, if I could build a basic EEG that could detect REM sleep, I could build that into the alarm clock! Lucid dreams, and waking up on time! Realistically I probably can't do it, but anyway, awesome idea..
Nope.
Yeah yeah, so it's off-topic. Anyhoo. The device does look pretty spiffy. Hey, maybe I could get a job proofreading Saintsong's English. ;) Well, back to lurking.
This is something I never understood. Why is it better to be a slave to randomness than a slave to the universe before you? When you really get down to it, that's just the problem (as I see it): nobody can come up with even a vague definition of "free will". If it's randomness, then a geiger counter hooked up to the control circuitry of a robot has free will. If it's deterministic, then the crudest pseudo-random number generator has "free will". (At what point is there sufficient complexity to call it "free will"?)
It can't be nothing more than randomness, because clearly there is no "will" there at all. There is no rhyme or reason, and thus no meaning, and I can't call that "free will". There must be some order to bring meaning to the decisions we make. But order is the result of determinism! But simple determinism gives me no power that randomness didn't. It still leaves all power in the hands of those before me. So what is it? What is free will? A combination of the two? But that still leaves me utterly powerless. Obviously if I sit at home drinking beer all day, I will go nowhere, I must get off my butt to have a fruitful life. But how is this any more than a mere illusion of freedom?
That's what I hate about philosophy: there's no way out!! ;)
PS -- I'm no physicist, but I've taken a few intro quantum classes and things. And I gotta say, I still don't quite buy the notion of nondeterminism. But who knows, and in the end, does it really matter? I just wish scientists would be more clear about the fact that everything they say is nothing but hypothesis, with a dash of evidence thrown in. I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow. An infinite number of things could stop that from happening. When I hear scientists spewing their drivel about what they "know" it annoys me so much... (I think the key to the universe is simplicity, and it seems all these guys want to do is make the theories more complex to fit their crappy experimental results. "What?!? That's not what was supposed to happen. I know: there must be a brand new particle that we don't know about, that can do anything, and that is impossible to detect. HAH! Our theory is complete! And look, our experiment even backs it up!") Ok, enough of my ranting...
Of course if NASA was really smart, they'd talk to people who've already done this stuff, and simply license their tried and true technology...