From what I've seen in other stories/previews/reviews, the CoStar mode is not activated just by someone picking up the second controller when someone else is playing. Presumably, because otherwise, a "power player" would just tape a second wiimote to the first, then always play that way, enabling super-jumps and thwomp-freezing all the time. It has to be played as a separate game mode... don't know if it's all special maps, or how much is available in CoStar mode.
Certainly not the perfect Co-op gameplay for my tastes - that would require the ability for new players to pop in anytime and add to the game at a whim.
If this doesn't convince anyone who'd be considered 'suspicious' online in Germany to load up on spyware prevention-and-detection tools (assuming they're using Windows), I don't know what will.
It'll be interesting to see if some future mandatory German tax software might have a list of 'incompatible software' that it will kindly uninstall for you in future tax seasons.
Wouldn't the obvious counter-strategy to this be to give the botstorm enough targets to make their DOS attempts too dilute to be a threat?
You theoretically would not need a comparable number of targets to attackers - just enough to lower the magnitude of the counter attack to the point where you could get acceptable results. You could also have targets that 'play dead' in some ways so the attackers can't fix on a minimum magnitude to counter attack with, and instead have to throw zombies until the target stops moving, where the target just gets right back up after playing dead. That way, the window you have before you 'play dead' might be used to get relatively clear results.
If you're implying I lack complete understanding here - you're right. But all that I've seen of filtering plastics have been macroscopic plastic forms that either hold a solution in a shape that maximizes some process (evaporation, condensation), or are otherwise just the container for the real filtering process. The single-piece plastic with inherent filtering properties like a cell wall is what seems new to me.
Honestly though - if this works out, these inherently filtering plastics would become the new... well, plastics sub-industry. Assuming the filters don't break down too rapidly, and wouldn't be inherently too limited in terms of materials/temperatures they can sort with, the variety of functions they could perform would mimic what we see in life all around us.
In addition the potential use in farming and the sciences would produce a direct benefit to humanity and our sustainability beyond the usual commercial concerns.
Indeed - and because of the potential for unparalleled amounts of energy that are possible with more and more direct forms of solar energy extraction, new things become possible. Dark matter-based energy storage systems and/or weapons become closer to practical, matter fabrication factories manipulating atoms using nuclear interactions (think renewable nuclear fuels), all kinds of uses for the astounding amounts of energy we can't practically transport directly back to earth, but have flowing out at all times. New kinds of engineering and uses for high-energy physics.
That's the enormous potential lying just out there, and also something that almost justifies the apprehension that one can feel about nuclear weapons. Dark matter weapons would be to a nuclear weapon as a nuclear weapon is to fireworks. Of course, that's the same kind of problem that exists with any kind of space travel - anyone can get ahold of a big enough rock and manipulate existing forces send it towards anyone else to pose the kind of threat that would also make a joke of existing nuclear weapons.
But we can't stop threats - they come from nature just as much as they do from man. Learning how to face such danger is much more valuable than refusing to ever touch such ostensibly 'dangerous' forces. And I'd much rather have 10, then 100, then thousands of earths able to start up, rather than stagnating ourselves just to force this one earth to hold our entire future potential. Of course, that isn't the real choice we have either - in almost everyone's ideals, we should care for ourselves, care for eachother, and expand to be a peaceful force of diverse enlightenment rather than spending all our resources on war and revenge. We should care for our world, while we embrace the dangerous potential around us, so that we can grow to a point where the potential danger doesn't have to be so terrifying.
"The obviousness is just to obvious, that's why." said Captain Black
"That... that's just stupid. If it's so obvious, you should just call it obvious and reject it." said Yossarian
"Oh, sure. But if we did that, what would be the end result? Everyone would spend all their time trying to force themselves to think of non-obvious things." said Captain Black
"What?! Isnt't that the point of this whole patenting system?!" asked Yossarian
"NO! That's exactly my point - have you ever seen a good invention, I mean a really good invention? What makes you say it's a good invention - I'll tell you, it's because it makes so much sense for the situation its in! The really good inventions are only the ones that are SO obvious you never thought of them before. So, therefore, we decided it's really best that if an invention seems TOO obvious, it obviously must be something we have to encourage, and therefore has to be accepted BECAUSE it was too obvious." said Captain Black
...yes, sort of like IBM looking for a quickie outsourced OS helped to create Microsoft.
But not really.
While IBM created the environment for Microsoft to thrive, Google wasn't aided by being inside Microsoft to give them the advantage of official endorsement. Google thrived on their own merits, and didn't have to pull a switcheroo with an existing product line of theirs to get people to use their main product. The packaging they did do was remarkable in it's lack of crassness - simple text advertisements, relatively clean services for images, maps, and tools, etc.
It's the usual progression to see Microsoft's PR switching to a "Well, we're really just like Google - we're really their buddy, see" approach after the usual dismissive phase.
This is a very well-done video. I really like how it shows the virtual model to illustrate how the system 'sees' itself. Self-reflection of a sort is usually present in most complex programmed systems in one form or another - usually in terms of disjointed status variables and variables for their hard-coded implications. This is neat because the implications can be a little more dynamic.
I hope this becomes a more general library that can be used to help self-reflection of this sort become a more separate part of physical designs. Even if the implications of the physical model aren't dynamic, a standard way of quickly seeing how your model 'sees' itself would help debugging and development in many future projects.
The only problem if it becomes more prevalent would be same one that quantum mechanics holds - people think that 'observer effects' has to involve consciousness, in the same way they'd think that a program's self-reflection would mean that it 'thinks' the same way they do. Neither is true - they're all mechanical terms wrapped in common language. Anything that can record an effect on the world (a falling rock's scratches in another stone would work) is a quantum observer - consciousness has nothing to do with the 'collapsing wave function'. The same here - a bit of self-reflection on the part of a program doesn't mean it's eerie self-corrections are capable of the complexities of our mind. If anything, such mechanical results would imply that our own minds act simpler in some ways than we may think, and that consciousness doesn't necessarily have to be as inscrutable and special as we might want.
"Today, we welcome Richard Taylor, of the Motion Picture Association of America.
As a member of an association of movie makers, his task is to..."...At this point, you can go two ways. First, you could be honest and say that his task is to help garner as much money as possible for his group and the studios that fund them. From that, you'd say, "What I would do if I were in his position, is to figure out how to milk even more money from artists, and to cheapen art as much as possible so that the only thing that filters to the imaginations of the viewing public is more explosions and weak innuendo."
The other approach, is to toe the line of "...his task is to assure that hard-working artists get their fare share, in an entertainment industry that continues to provide for all involved. That's why, what I would do if I were in his position would be to..." and then be honest in the other direction, and explain why there really is no role for an MPAA if all they wanted to do was to protect artists and the things they care about.
I'd really rather not have this 'capability' when using windows, to allow software to hide files/directories on my system through these registry/filesystem techniques.
Is there anything that would break if one was to find a way to nullify this functionality in OS calls?
I'm sure the likes of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and other proponents of accurate popularization of science would have applauded this approach. I'm also sure there's going to be some major stumbling blocks along the way - but this is just the kind of adventure that I see as healthy for the public interaction with science. Go science!
What's the punishment if they don't comply? Who would be the target of the punishment? Who would enforce this punishment?
I ask these questions, because I can't think of an incident in this past term in office where the Bush administration complied with any request that wasn't directly self-serving. Without a meaningful cost that could actually be enacted, I don't see this administration answering to anyone about anything that they wouldn't like to do already.
Ryan Fenton
Fox News Reporter == Journalist?
on
Fox Hacks Fark
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Fox News Reporter == Journalist?
Well, actually, even my own biased opinion wouldn't label most Fox employees as 'not journalists' - but everytime I consider the Fox news network as a whole, I just can't think of it as a news network.
we-are-all-made-of-stardust dept... close, but Sagan's line ended with 'star stuff', which is actually more appropriate here.
As to the relative plausibility of comet-seeded or locally-formed progenitors to life, given that reactions propagate, commonly leading to repeating and self-feeding cycles of reactions, the only argument for extra-solar is the added timescale and potential additional area for productive area for pre-life to evolve in.
Given that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life on the earth is nearly that old, and that the universe has only been cool enough to support planets or life for much of that time, I don't believe panspermia buys us that many more orders of magnitude of time to work with.
So, it doesn't buy us time, how about area? Again, I can only guess using very rough psuedo-numbers here, but the matter we could get from previously existing worlds or small super-fertile comets has to come from somewhere previous. Given the expanding nature of the universe, we're generally only going to be getting a pie-slice of potential sources for any life-by-projectile, and each of these sources has to have been fed by enough nuclear sources to make the building blocks of simple pre-life. I can imagine a multiplication of potential sources this way, and even though it would only take one source to seed the whole set... just imagining the mass that actually makes it into out solar system, and then actually hits our earth... that likelihood doesn't seem much stronger than the numbers we think of with abiogenesis via selective pressures here on earth.
[Narrator, Whispering]: We've secretly replaced their expensive patents with useless Forgent crystals. Let's see if they notice.
[Judge, Cringing] Ack! I don't like the taste of this one bit - your claim is denied!
[Narrator, Whispering] Well, there you have it - the legal system can still reject some kinds of landgrabs, when they're wrapped in the form of a patent. We now return you to your regularly scheduled eminent domain rulings.
That's akin to telling the viewers of Fox News that it's important to "stop making fun of liberals, because they've here to stay, and they've made important contributions to the progress of the world at large".
No matter how important a role some group plays towards making something else important work, the nature of humans and comedy are going to have everyone and everything important to everyone mocked constantly. And no matter how bad that paints a picture of the large groups who mock other groups as part of that process - people are going to be mocking eachother as long as mental associations can be made.
The message behind this suggestion seems to be more a message to "act more professional people, you're making us look like bozos". Yes... it's nice to imagine sometimes that a loose community of groups and individuals didn't have to act exactly like the kind of human grouping it is. But we are humans, and Windows IS fun to make fun of, and most of us say that as Windows users.
Yes, Windows has contributed much for everyday users of computers - it has made many things possible that may not have been possible otherwise, and it will continue to be the best path towards many kinds of progress for the everyday use of computers going forward for the immediately foreseeable future... but it's still contains an endless variety of deep flaws that both mock the underlying nature (DRM motivations, artificially segmenting functionality for legal/marketing needs) of the software, and the human nature that lies behind these things, and our reaction to them.
Instead of a party animal and physicist who spent a lot of time drumming, here's a drummer who's taken advantage of the world around him, and is contributing to man's exploration of astrophysics. Very cool.
The old Divx video player is one major example of a product that deserved to die off in the marketplace. Moreover, it certainly deserved to have its name taken by a popular video encoding format. And made into a bit character in a penny arcade.
Yeah, but then the problem arises in the logistics of putting up countless "weak" satellites presumeably in earth orbit, each with high inefficiency. That's a problem that could be solved, by say having nano-machines mine materials from low-gravity sources - but that kind of an idea is still way off.
If you want a reasonable return on the energy and material investment, I'd think that a concentrated return kind of has to be part of the process - which brings up the problem of what materials you can possibly use when dealing with such high energy situations that I mentioned. I'd think that a closer solar orbit returning energy to perhaps an space station near earth would be somewhat safe for the earth itself - but these are huge energies and huge consequences we're dealing with all the same.
Ah, the problems of exploiting a titanic nuclear explosion billions of years ongoing.
I've been on-and-off interested in this subject for years now - the prospect of being able to gather solar energy more directly, even with horribly inneficient technique, would be a complete transformation in terms of our ability to gather energy for human use.
Three basic problematic areas:
1. Return Delivery for energy. A beam would be the most obvious approach, as no conventional matter would be easilly sustained without something like a space elevator bringing enriched material up and down constantly. An exception would be antimatter, though that would be horribly dangerous on a scale that would make any concentrated beam mishap look like nothing.
2. Energy effects on the earth. Increased energy use, in any form, is going to have various effects on our ecosystem. We'll have to devote a percentage of our global energy use to offset this in some way, hopefully without a tragedy of the commons effect leftover.
3. Upkeep: Materials break down when they transfer the kinds of energy under consideration here. This won't just be a simple solar-panel install job in space. The materials involved will have to be self-repairing in some way if they're going to get closer and closer to the sun. Perhaps they'll function by 'flowing' with the solar winds, then reforming at the front. This promises to be a fascinating task for engineers and scientists looking to harvest such enormous resources safely and (relatively) efficiently.
Every aspect of this subject bristles with the various concerns of humanity - it'll be interesting to say the least what this group can go over.
Specifically, The Diamond Age, where such specifically mechanical nanomachines, along with artificial diamond, define the era the book takes place in. I'd say it's a charming if hyper-technical story if you haven't read it - though, things get rather unsafe for some young children in terms of strong sexuality for one prominent subplot.
Anyway, the machines aren't self-replicating, but they are fabricated in microwave-style (and larger) boxes that take an elemental 'feed' of organic compounds and data. The book has some great philosophical and social content, and breaks most of the annoying characteristics of the previous 'cyberpunk'-style writing.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've seen in other stories/previews/reviews, the CoStar mode is not activated just by someone picking up the second controller when someone else is playing. Presumably, because otherwise, a "power player" would just tape a second wiimote to the first, then always play that way, enabling super-jumps and thwomp-freezing all the time. It has to be played as a separate game mode... don't know if it's all special maps, or how much is available in CoStar mode.
Certainly not the perfect Co-op gameplay for my tastes - that would require the ability for new players to pop in anytime and add to the game at a whim.
Ryan Fenton
If this doesn't convince anyone who'd be considered 'suspicious' online in Germany to load up on spyware prevention-and-detection tools (assuming they're using Windows), I don't know what will.
It'll be interesting to see if some future mandatory German tax software might have a list of 'incompatible software' that it will kindly uninstall for you in future tax seasons.
Ryan Fenton
Wouldn't the obvious counter-strategy to this be to give the botstorm enough targets to make their DOS attempts too dilute to be a threat?
You theoretically would not need a comparable number of targets to attackers - just enough to lower the magnitude of the counter attack to the point where you could get acceptable results. You could also have targets that 'play dead' in some ways so the attackers can't fix on a minimum magnitude to counter attack with, and instead have to throw zombies until the target stops moving, where the target just gets right back up after playing dead. That way, the window you have before you 'play dead' might be used to get relatively clear results.
Just one guy's idea.
Ryan Fenton
There is a catch, of course: Plastics are often derived from oil.
Certainly - but when you can better filter the Canadian oil shale...
Ryan Fenton
If you're implying I lack complete understanding here - you're right. But all that I've seen of filtering plastics have been macroscopic plastic forms that either hold a solution in a shape that maximizes some process (evaporation, condensation), or are otherwise just the container for the real filtering process. The single-piece plastic with inherent filtering properties like a cell wall is what seems new to me.
Ryan Fenton
"Nah", say industry groups.
"We've got enough money." They elaborate.
Honestly though - if this works out, these inherently filtering plastics would become the new... well, plastics sub-industry. Assuming the filters don't break down too rapidly, and wouldn't be inherently too limited in terms of materials/temperatures they can sort with, the variety of functions they could perform would mimic what we see in life all around us.
In addition the potential use in farming and the sciences would produce a direct benefit to humanity and our sustainability beyond the usual commercial concerns.
Ryan Fenton
Oops - meant anti-matter, not dark matter. Hate it when I make mistakes like that.
Ryan Fenton
Indeed - and because of the potential for unparalleled amounts of energy that are possible with more and more direct forms of solar energy extraction, new things become possible. Dark matter-based energy storage systems and/or weapons become closer to practical, matter fabrication factories manipulating atoms using nuclear interactions (think renewable nuclear fuels), all kinds of uses for the astounding amounts of energy we can't practically transport directly back to earth, but have flowing out at all times. New kinds of engineering and uses for high-energy physics.
That's the enormous potential lying just out there, and also something that almost justifies the apprehension that one can feel about nuclear weapons. Dark matter weapons would be to a nuclear weapon as a nuclear weapon is to fireworks. Of course, that's the same kind of problem that exists with any kind of space travel - anyone can get ahold of a big enough rock and manipulate existing forces send it towards anyone else to pose the kind of threat that would also make a joke of existing nuclear weapons.
But we can't stop threats - they come from nature just as much as they do from man. Learning how to face such danger is much more valuable than refusing to ever touch such ostensibly 'dangerous' forces. And I'd much rather have 10, then 100, then thousands of earths able to start up, rather than stagnating ourselves just to force this one earth to hold our entire future potential. Of course, that isn't the real choice we have either - in almost everyone's ideals, we should care for ourselves, care for eachother, and expand to be a peaceful force of diverse enlightenment rather than spending all our resources on war and revenge. We should care for our world, while we embrace the dangerous potential around us, so that we can grow to a point where the potential danger doesn't have to be so terrifying.
Ryan Fenton
"Why isn't this obvious?!" Yossarian asked
"The obviousness is just to obvious, that's why." said Captain Black
"That... that's just stupid. If it's so obvious, you should just call it obvious and reject it." said Yossarian
"Oh, sure. But if we did that, what would be the end result? Everyone would spend all their time trying to force themselves to think of non-obvious things." said Captain Black
"What?! Isnt't that the point of this whole patenting system?!" asked Yossarian
"NO! That's exactly my point - have you ever seen a good invention, I mean a really good invention? What makes you say it's a good invention - I'll tell you, it's because it makes so much sense for the situation its in! The really good inventions are only the ones that are SO obvious you never thought of them before. So, therefore, we decided it's really best that if an invention seems TOO obvious, it obviously must be something we have to encourage, and therefore has to be accepted BECAUSE it was too obvious." said Captain Black
-
Ryan Fenton
...yes, sort of like IBM looking for a quickie outsourced OS helped to create Microsoft.
But not really.
While IBM created the environment for Microsoft to thrive, Google wasn't aided by being inside Microsoft to give them the advantage of official endorsement. Google thrived on their own merits, and didn't have to pull a switcheroo with an existing product line of theirs to get people to use their main product. The packaging they did do was remarkable in it's lack of crassness - simple text advertisements, relatively clean services for images, maps, and tools, etc.
It's the usual progression to see Microsoft's PR switching to a "Well, we're really just like Google - we're really their buddy, see" approach after the usual dismissive phase.
Ryan Fenton
This is a very well-done video. I really like how it shows the virtual model to illustrate how the system 'sees' itself. Self-reflection of a sort is usually present in most complex programmed systems in one form or another - usually in terms of disjointed status variables and variables for their hard-coded implications. This is neat because the implications can be a little more dynamic.
I hope this becomes a more general library that can be used to help self-reflection of this sort become a more separate part of physical designs. Even if the implications of the physical model aren't dynamic, a standard way of quickly seeing how your model 'sees' itself would help debugging and development in many future projects.
The only problem if it becomes more prevalent would be same one that quantum mechanics holds - people think that 'observer effects' has to involve consciousness, in the same way they'd think that a program's self-reflection would mean that it 'thinks' the same way they do. Neither is true - they're all mechanical terms wrapped in common language. Anything that can record an effect on the world (a falling rock's scratches in another stone would work) is a quantum observer - consciousness has nothing to do with the 'collapsing wave function'. The same here - a bit of self-reflection on the part of a program doesn't mean it's eerie self-corrections are capable of the complexities of our mind. If anything, such mechanical results would imply that our own minds act simpler in some ways than we may think, and that consciousness doesn't necessarily have to be as inscrutable and special as we might want.
Ryan Fenton
Something along the lines of:
"Today, we welcome Richard Taylor, of the Motion Picture Association of America.
As a member of an association of movie makers, his task is to..."
The other approach, is to toe the line of "...his task is to assure that hard-working artists get their fare share, in an entertainment industry that continues to provide for all involved. That's why, what I would do if I were in his position would be to..." and then be honest in the other direction, and explain why there really is no role for an MPAA if all they wanted to do was to protect artists and the things they care about.
Ryan Fenton
I'd really rather not have this 'capability' when using windows, to allow software to hide files/directories on my system through these registry/filesystem techniques.
Is there anything that would break if one was to find a way to nullify this functionality in OS calls?
Ryan Fenton
I'm sure the likes of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and other proponents of accurate popularization of science would have applauded this approach. I'm also sure there's going to be some major stumbling blocks along the way - but this is just the kind of adventure that I see as healthy for the public interaction with science. Go science!
Ryan Fenton
What's the punishment if they don't comply? Who would be the target of the punishment? Who would enforce this punishment?
I ask these questions, because I can't think of an incident in this past term in office where the Bush administration complied with any request that wasn't directly self-serving. Without a meaningful cost that could actually be enacted, I don't see this administration answering to anyone about anything that they wouldn't like to do already.
Ryan Fenton
Fox News Reporter == Journalist?
Well, actually, even my own biased opinion wouldn't label most Fox employees as 'not journalists' - but everytime I consider the Fox news network as a whole, I just can't think of it as a news network.
Ryan Fenton
we-are-all-made-of-stardust dept... close, but Sagan's line ended with 'star stuff', which is actually more appropriate here.
As to the relative plausibility of comet-seeded or locally-formed progenitors to life, given that reactions propagate, commonly leading to repeating and self-feeding cycles of reactions, the only argument for extra-solar is the added timescale and potential additional area for productive area for pre-life to evolve in.
Given that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life on the earth is nearly that old, and that the universe has only been cool enough to support planets or life for much of that time, I don't believe panspermia buys us that many more orders of magnitude of time to work with.
So, it doesn't buy us time, how about area? Again, I can only guess using very rough psuedo-numbers here, but the matter we could get from previously existing worlds or small super-fertile comets has to come from somewhere previous. Given the expanding nature of the universe, we're generally only going to be getting a pie-slice of potential sources for any life-by-projectile, and each of these sources has to have been fed by enough nuclear sources to make the building blocks of simple pre-life. I can imagine a multiplication of potential sources this way, and even though it would only take one source to seed the whole set... just imagining the mass that actually makes it into out solar system, and then actually hits our earth... that likelihood doesn't seem much stronger than the numbers we think of with abiogenesis via selective pressures here on earth.
Ryan Fenton
[Narrator, Whispering]:
We've secretly replaced their expensive patents with useless Forgent crystals. Let's see if they notice.
[Judge, Cringing]
Ack! I don't like the taste of this one bit - your claim is denied!
[Narrator, Whispering]
Well, there you have it - the legal system can still reject some kinds of landgrabs, when they're wrapped in the form of a patent. We now return you to your regularly scheduled eminent domain rulings.
Ryan Fenton
That's akin to telling the viewers of Fox News that it's important to "stop making fun of liberals, because they've here to stay, and they've made important contributions to the progress of the world at large".
No matter how important a role some group plays towards making something else important work, the nature of humans and comedy are going to have everyone and everything important to everyone mocked constantly. And no matter how bad that paints a picture of the large groups who mock other groups as part of that process - people are going to be mocking eachother as long as mental associations can be made.
The message behind this suggestion seems to be more a message to "act more professional people, you're making us look like bozos". Yes... it's nice to imagine sometimes that a loose community of groups and individuals didn't have to act exactly like the kind of human grouping it is. But we are humans, and Windows IS fun to make fun of, and most of us say that as Windows users.
Yes, Windows has contributed much for everyday users of computers - it has made many things possible that may not have been possible otherwise, and it will continue to be the best path towards many kinds of progress for the everyday use of computers going forward for the immediately foreseeable future... but it's still contains an endless variety of deep flaws that both mock the underlying nature (DRM motivations, artificially segmenting functionality for legal/marketing needs) of the software, and the human nature that lies behind these things, and our reaction to them.
Ryan Fenton
What's the name going to be for the upcoming auto-encrypted open-sourced fork of Bittorrent?
Ryan Fenton
Instead of a party animal and physicist who spent a lot of time drumming, here's a drummer who's taken advantage of the world around him, and is contributing to man's exploration of astrophysics. Very cool.
Oh, and if you're ever interested in a superb read about a real life nerd superstar, check out "Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
Ryan Fenton
The old Divx video player is one major example of a product that deserved to die off in the marketplace. Moreover, it certainly deserved to have its name taken by a popular video encoding format. And made into a bit character in a penny arcade.
Ryan Fenton
Yeah, but then the problem arises in the logistics of putting up countless "weak" satellites presumeably in earth orbit, each with high inefficiency. That's a problem that could be solved, by say having nano-machines mine materials from low-gravity sources - but that kind of an idea is still way off.
If you want a reasonable return on the energy and material investment, I'd think that a concentrated return kind of has to be part of the process - which brings up the problem of what materials you can possibly use when dealing with such high energy situations that I mentioned. I'd think that a closer solar orbit returning energy to perhaps an space station near earth would be somewhat safe for the earth itself - but these are huge energies and huge consequences we're dealing with all the same.
Ah, the problems of exploiting a titanic nuclear explosion billions of years ongoing.
Ryan Fenton
I've been on-and-off interested in this subject for years now - the prospect of being able to gather solar energy more directly, even with horribly inneficient technique, would be a complete transformation in terms of our ability to gather energy for human use.
Three basic problematic areas:
1. Return Delivery for energy. A beam would be the most obvious approach, as no conventional matter would be easilly sustained without something like a space elevator bringing enriched material up and down constantly. An exception would be antimatter, though that would be horribly dangerous on a scale that would make any concentrated beam mishap look like nothing.
2. Energy effects on the earth. Increased energy use, in any form, is going to have various effects on our ecosystem. We'll have to devote a percentage of our global energy use to offset this in some way, hopefully without a tragedy of the commons effect leftover.
3. Upkeep: Materials break down when they transfer the kinds of energy under consideration here. This won't just be a simple solar-panel install job in space. The materials involved will have to be self-repairing in some way if they're going to get closer and closer to the sun. Perhaps they'll function by 'flowing' with the solar winds, then reforming at the front. This promises to be a fascinating task for engineers and scientists looking to harvest such enormous resources safely and (relatively) efficiently.
Every aspect of this subject bristles with the various concerns of humanity - it'll be interesting to say the least what this group can go over.
Ryan Fenton
Specifically, The Diamond Age, where such specifically mechanical nanomachines, along with artificial diamond, define the era the book takes place in. I'd say it's a charming if hyper-technical story if you haven't read it - though, things get rather unsafe for some young children in terms of strong sexuality for one prominent subplot.
Anyway, the machines aren't self-replicating, but they are fabricated in microwave-style (and larger) boxes that take an elemental 'feed' of organic compounds and data. The book has some great philosophical and social content, and breaks most of the annoying characteristics of the previous 'cyberpunk'-style writing.
Ryan Fenton