It won't be turning off a computer, it'll be killing, or maybe turning off a machine intelligence. It'd be like knocking a human unconcious when you leave them and reviving them when you returned or required them, moments of conciousness disrupted by periods of nothing.
Eventually, Belcher said, her team is hoping to "be able to integrate living cells and electronic materials for neuroprosthetics" that could substitute for damaged nerve systems
If they can substitute for damaged nerve systems what about other applications? The first that springs to mind are prosthetic eyes. The last I heard (1+ year[s] ago)was that they had had some success but at a such low resolution that it was limited primarily to perception of shapes. It could also pave the way for a better version of the bionic ear as well as other biotech. It could even lead to implants similar to those depicted in the reality of Shadowrun. Jacked reflexes, skeletal sheathing/alteration, muscular augmentation, variable frequency optical prostheses, datajacks and implanted weaponry. The optical prostheses have obvious uses as does most of the other stuff but datajacks could be used for more than they are in Shadowrun. A person with irrepairable spinal damage or someone who has perfect cognitive function but has little or no control over their neuro-muscular system could be fitted with a datajack that could provide a degree of control over their bodies or their movement, either as a partial replacement for their spinal cord or as the control interface for a wheelchair or exoskeleton. You could also use it for games like Q3 or UT. "You don't just play the game - you live it! (Pain is an optional extra.)" At any rate I'd be prepared to sign up as a guinea-pig for the experiments as long as I got release equipment at the end. No way I'm getting a datajack until at least the second or thid generation. My wetware's bad enough without people poking wires in it.:)
Another application of the assembly aspect is the construction of nanobots and other nanotech. I'm not going into a discussion of the possible evils of nanobots but I can see this image: Country A builds or grows a batch of deconstructor nanobots which are delivered to Country B. The nanobots are programmed to reproduce themselves at a set rate until a preset limit is reached and have the ability to call others to their programmed target. One day while one of these bots are reproducing an error creeps in. Instead of building a copy that stops reproducing at the preset limit something goes wrong and the copy doesn't have this limit and the error is not registered as such. It continues to reproduce without stoping. Eventually they will cover the Earth if they cannot be stopped. All it would require is one nanobot to be missed and it starts over. The severity of this depends on what the nanobots were programmed to destroy. Copper wiring? Aluminium? Steel? People? Neal Stephenson wrote a book, the title of which I cannot remember. It was about a poor young girl who one-day found a book. Not just any book but a nanotech "Young lady's primer". Esentially it was a nanotech teaching device. The difference was in the actual construction. Instead of todays electrical circuitry it was mechanical. Kind of a vastly superior Babbage engine. To me this seems more feasible than microscopic versions of todays computers. In the book nanobots had been released and had propogated so much that on bad days it meant death to go outside without some kind of respiratory protection (a breathing mask).
Thats enough for now, I've spent far too long on this. When I first saw it there were 2 posts showing at a threshold of 0. This post does contain blatant speculation and a tiny bit of scare-mongering. Any inaccuracies or mistakes are the fault of my insomnia, as is the length and any rambling that occurs.
--- "When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Exactly. The costuming is probably fine. In any case it's too late to be changed. I just think they should have paid more attention to descriptions in the book. Accuracy should be important and encouraged. I allow that there may have been technical considerations when the costumes were designed but I can't think of any. As far as Chani goes I wasn't talking about giving her a callous; my point was the fact that she had one is in my mind an indication that the noseplugs & mouth covering were not as depicted in the photos.
--- "When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
10 feet is approx 3 meters. 135 feet is approx 40.5 meters and 22 feet is approx 6.5 meters. Sorry, I can't help with the weight but 2 pounds is approx 1 kilogram so all it needs is for someone to post 1 ton = ??? pounds. --- "When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Is it just me or are the eyes wrong? I may be wrong but wasn't the spice melange addiction supposed to turn the eyes entirely blue? Whites as well as iris? One thing's certain in my mind - they didn't glow like that!
Did this bloke read Dune? I'm fairly sure that stillsuits were described as being slick. That is anything but slick.
There is no sign of anything that can tighten across the chest.
Those boots are not desert boots that can be "fitted slip-fashion at the ankles".
The thing is too loosely fitting. I don't remember exactly but it seems to me that something that collects and filters expended moisture should be like a second skin. It shouldn't be so loose, especially at the wrists and collar where moisture could escape.
Shouldn't stillsuits have some kind of integrated hood? I seem to remember Liet-Kynes or Paul adjusting a strap across the forehead "tightly, so as to prevent chafing". http://www.scifi.com/dune/gallery/d46.jpg shows a pic of Stilgar but WTF is that thing on his head? It's not what Herbert describes. IIRC he describes stillsuits as having a flap that can be fastened across the mouth, and nose-plugs. Chani is described as having a callous alongside(?) her nose from the tube from the nose-plugs. Nothing is mentioned about that thing on his head that covers his mouth and nose. His clothing is wrong too. Wasn't fremen desert garb described as flowing robes?
There are probably other things wrong but I can't be bothered looking.
It's a shame they've finished shooting or some things could've been corrected if they were willing. Oh well, hopefully I'll like it better than the movie when/if it is shown in Australia.
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a one-to-one adaptation. There'd have to be some adaptation/alteration as far as purely internal dialogue is concerned but I can live with that. Production would probably be difficult. Can you imagine filming the entire book using current methods? Maybe it could be digitally rendered once the tech reaches the point where it's indistinguishable from meat actors. I even know a great pulicity stunt: Instead of rendering it all on one server farm do something like distributed.net or SETI@home and enlist the world in rendering part or all of the movie. Upstream bandwidth definitely, and processor power would have to be better than today's average but maybe do just a few frames as a work unit and it might be workable. Copyright could be handled by encrypting input and output but it could be a nice incentive to have a random frame saved to the users hdd with a watermark. The programmers/animators could provide designators as to what frames could be saved so that scenes could be kept secret if needed/wanted.
I think I'll stop here. My apologies for waffling on but I've been awake for almost 40 hours and my mind is starting to wander and to produce weird thoughts.
I'm done! Thank the gods for that preview button. The text entry area is too damn small though. I think it'd be better if it was 5 or 6 lines taller and maybe 50% wider. It could be made a user option: Big post entry box or small? --- "When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Not quite video cap/editing but a UK mag called Computer Arts reviewed a solid state drive a few years ago. I think it was It was external and had a capacity of around one gig. They tried it as scratch-disk for Photoshop with, IIRC, a 2 or 3 hundred meg file and said it was like working in RAM.
*sigh* Yet another thing for my wish-list.
--- "When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Slashdot Mirror
It won't be turning off a computer, it'll be killing, or maybe turning off a machine intelligence. It'd be like knocking a human unconcious when you leave them and reviving them when you returned or required them, moments of conciousness disrupted by periods of nothing.
It could also pave the way for a better version of the bionic ear as well as other biotech.
It could even lead to implants similar to those depicted in the reality of Shadowrun. Jacked reflexes, skeletal sheathing/alteration, muscular augmentation, variable frequency optical prostheses, datajacks and implanted weaponry.
The optical prostheses have obvious uses as does most of the other stuff but datajacks could be used for more than they are in Shadowrun.
A person with irrepairable spinal damage or someone who has perfect cognitive function but has little or no control over their neuro-muscular system could be fitted with a datajack that could provide a degree of control over their bodies or their movement, either as a partial replacement for their spinal cord or as the control interface for a wheelchair or exoskeleton.
You could also use it for games like Q3 or UT. "You don't just play the game - you live it! (Pain is an optional extra.)"
At any rate I'd be prepared to sign up as a guinea-pig for the experiments as long as I got release equipment at the end. No way I'm getting a datajack until at least the second or thid generation. My wetware's bad enough without people poking wires in it.:)
Another application of the assembly aspect is the construction of nanobots and other nanotech.
I'm not going into a discussion of the possible evils of nanobots but I can see this image: Country A builds or grows a batch of deconstructor nanobots which are delivered to Country B.
The nanobots are programmed to reproduce themselves at a set rate until a preset limit is reached and have the ability to call others to their programmed target.
One day while one of these bots are reproducing an error creeps in. Instead of building a copy that stops reproducing at the preset limit something goes wrong and the copy doesn't have this limit and the error is not registered as such.
It continues to reproduce without stoping. Eventually they will cover the Earth if they cannot be stopped. All it would require is one nanobot to be missed and it starts over.
The severity of this depends on what the nanobots were programmed to destroy. Copper wiring? Aluminium? Steel? People?
Neal Stephenson wrote a book, the title of which I cannot remember. It was about a poor young girl who one-day found a book. Not just any book but a nanotech "Young lady's primer". Esentially it was a nanotech teaching device. The difference was in the actual construction. Instead of todays electrical circuitry it was mechanical. Kind of a vastly superior Babbage engine.
To me this seems more feasible than microscopic versions of todays computers.
In the book nanobots had been released and had propogated so much that on bad days it meant death to go outside without some kind of respiratory protection (a breathing mask).
Thats enough for now, I've spent far too long on this. When I first saw it there were 2 posts showing at a threshold of 0.
This post does contain blatant speculation and a tiny bit of scare-mongering. Any inaccuracies or mistakes are the fault of my insomnia, as is the length and any rambling that occurs.
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Exactly. The costuming is probably fine. In any case it's too late to be changed. I just think they should have paid more attention to descriptions in the book. Accuracy should be important and encouraged.
I allow that there may have been technical considerations when the costumes were designed but I can't think of any.
As far as Chani goes I wasn't talking about giving her a callous; my point was the fact that she had one is in my mind an indication that the noseplugs & mouth covering were not as depicted in the photos.
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
10 feet is approx 3 meters.
135 feet is approx 40.5 meters and 22 feet is approx 6.5 meters.
Sorry, I can't help with the weight but 2 pounds is approx 1 kilogram so all it needs is for someone to post 1 ton = ??? pounds.
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Is it just me or are the eyes wrong? I may be wrong but wasn't the spice melange addiction supposed to turn the eyes entirely blue? Whites as well as iris? One thing's certain in my mind - they didn't glow like that!
Also check out http://www.scifi.com/dune/gallery/dd3.jpg for a pic captioned "Costume designer Theodor Pistek supervises Alec Newman (Paul) trying on his Stillsuit."
Short(ish) list of things I noticed:
- Did this bloke read Dune? I'm fairly sure that stillsuits were described as being slick. That is anything but slick.
- There is no sign of anything that can tighten across the chest.
- Those boots are not desert boots that can be "fitted slip-fashion at the ankles".
- The thing is too loosely fitting. I don't remember exactly but it seems to me that something that collects and filters expended moisture should be like a second skin. It shouldn't be so loose, especially at the wrists and collar where moisture could escape.
- Shouldn't stillsuits have some kind of integrated hood? I seem to remember Liet-Kynes or Paul adjusting a strap across the forehead "tightly, so as to prevent chafing". http://www.scifi.com/dune/gallery/d46.jpg shows a pic of Stilgar but WTF is that thing on his head? It's not what Herbert describes. IIRC he describes stillsuits as having a flap that can be fastened across the mouth, and nose-plugs. Chani is described as having a callous alongside(?) her nose from the tube from the nose-plugs. Nothing is mentioned about that thing on his head that covers his mouth and nose. His clothing is wrong too. Wasn't fremen desert garb described as flowing robes?
There are probably other things wrong but I can't be bothered looking.It's a shame they've finished shooting or some things could've been corrected if they were willing. Oh well, hopefully I'll like it better than the movie when/if it is shown in Australia.
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a one-to-one adaptation. There'd have to be some adaptation/alteration as far as purely internal dialogue is concerned but I can live with that. Production would probably be difficult. Can you imagine filming the entire book using current methods? Maybe it could be digitally rendered once the tech reaches the point where it's indistinguishable from meat actors.
I even know a great pulicity stunt: Instead of rendering it all on one server farm do something like distributed.net or SETI@home and enlist the world in rendering part or all of the movie. Upstream bandwidth definitely, and processor power would have to be better than today's average but maybe do just a few frames as a work unit and it might be workable.
Copyright could be handled by encrypting input and output but it could be a nice incentive to have a random frame saved to the users hdd with a watermark. The programmers/animators could provide designators as to what frames could be saved so that scenes could be kept secret if needed/wanted.
I think I'll stop here. My apologies for waffling on but I've been awake for almost 40 hours and my mind is starting to wander and to produce weird thoughts.
I'm done! Thank the gods for that preview button.
The text entry area is too damn small though. I think it'd be better if it was 5 or 6 lines taller and maybe 50% wider. It could be made a user option: Big post entry box or small?
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Not quite video cap/editing but a UK mag called Computer Arts reviewed a solid state drive a few years ago. I think it was It was external and had a capacity of around one gig.
They tried it as scratch-disk for Photoshop with, IIRC, a 2 or 3 hundred meg file and said it was like working in RAM.
*sigh* Yet another thing for my wish-list.
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."