although a reader of one or the other may have the imagination to appreciate the other genera why are they so intertwined
Because they're pretty close to just being sub-genres of a bigger genre?
Call it "speculative fiction": fiction set within an reality that has in some small way been altered to be different from the one that we live in.
Consider also: 1) The "tech" in sci-fi generally isn't possible. It's essentially magic whose origin is the extrapolation of current technology given a different set of circumstances (and hand-waving). 2) Most of the "magic" of fantasy, if not all, comes from some place's mythology. Most of mythology fit the definition of #1 when it was written.
If Sci-Fi was essentially fictional novels about things that actual scientists could do, then I could see your point. However, that would end up quite boring. I prefer my sci-fi to be a dressed up form of fantasy.
In 1687, Isaac Newton wrote is Principia, which defined about half of calculus, and all of Newtonian physics - defining laws of both gravity, and inertia. It is understandable, then with no understanding of quantum mechanics at all, that he did not explicitly mention quantum monkeys at all.
Maxwell then went on to explain Ether as a medium through which light traveled in 1878, later being disproved in 1881 by Michelson, and laying the groundwork for the discovery of quantum monkeys though the discovery of constant velocity light.
This was established as mathematically sound in Einstein's theory of special relativity in 1905. General relativity, which explained gravitational effects on light and particles/waves moving fractionally close to the speed of light, was finally established in 1915 by Hilbert and Einstein, surprisingly without mention of quantum monkeys, despite all indications.
Because of this work, as well as the basics of quantum mechanics established by Einstein, various scientists were able to find the six quarks: Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Charmed and Strange, the last (top) only having been confirmed in a laboratory in 1995. Strangely, however, none of the various experiments which identified quarks also identified quantum monkeys, which would have been readily observable through their quantum-picking-fleas-off-other-quantum-monkey gatherings.
The first of these discoveries, in the early 1960s made possible a formalization of a unified model in 1970-73 of four fundamental forces, three of which can be unified mathematically under one theory and with particles that are at least indirectly observable (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), and a fourth which doesn't quite fit (gravity). Despite these obvious problems, no one started looking at the quantum banana-eating by quantum monkeys as a possible unifying factor.
To establish a unified theory including gravity, scientists are currently using strings, rather than monkeys, as a unifying element. However, the majority of these theories are neither testable nor useful for the advancement of mankind. None of them so much as mention quantum poo, or postulate that quantum monkeys could have thrown it.
To this day, the world waits for scientists start to seek out the quantum monkeys that have so long waited for proper credit to be given to them for unifying quantum forces. So we wait still, a working unified theory still out of our grasp.
160 dB CANNOT kill. It can rupture your eardrums, but not kill.
You would think so, but you're missing a vital point. You see, some thoughts have a certain sound, that being the equivalent to a form. Through sound and motion, you will be able to paralyze nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy or burst his organs.
Ads work on the majority. On me, they usually have the opposite effect (not going to buy stuff that's advertised in particularly annoying/stupid/psychologically exploitive ways). And they'd fight your better product with tooth and claw - not by making their products better, but by stepping up their marketing efforts.
Well, let me talk about the kinds of advertising that works on me - none of which do any of the things you're talking about.
Its not like all ads are the same, and the reason for having them is not always the same. Sometimes it's as simple as "your life would be easier if you had one of these, but you've never seen them." That's the best case for advertising. In that case, it'll work well.
Then there's the issue of ads for the purpose of adding choice. Sure, you may think that McDonalds is the best restaurant ever, but you don't want to go there all the time. See an ad for a new place, then you try it out.
Then there's the only kind of blanket advertising that actually has a chance to sway things for me - when it doesn't matter one whit. I don't really care what kind of toothpaste I buy. From my experience, they're all cheap and they all work about the same. I'd be slightly more inclined to buy from the company that makes the funniest commercial. The Bruce Campbell ads for Old Spice are hilarious. Pretty much all deodorants work for me (until the bacteria living in my skin get used to them), so I'm more than happy to give Old Spice a go.
Of course, commercials that insult my intelligence by making me think that their as-good-as-everything-else products are in some way actually better without presenting any facts have the opposite effect, and make me less likely to buy.
Always look on the bright side of death, Just before you draw your terminal breath.
Life's a piece of (stuff) When you look at it. Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true. You'll see it's all a show. Keep 'em laughing as you go. Just remember that the last laugh is on you. And... That from a song sung from the POV of someone experiencing one of the worst possible deaths imaginable. A joke is always needed. The worse it is, the more you need a joke. Humor isn't a side effect. It's a survival mechanism.
So bring on the dead baby jokes, the afterlife jokes, and, if possible, jokes about undead creatures. I want death to seem a lot funnier right now.
Two people go into the building at the other side of the street.
A few minutes pass.
3 people come back out.
First the biologist notices this. And he promptly declares that they reproduced.
The engineer, a bit more at his senses, states that obviously there simply was an error in the original measurement of people entering the building
But, the mathematician realizes the obvious truth, and announces "You're both wrong. If now one more person enters the building, there will be no-one left inside"
Fixed it. Who told you this joke in it's less funny fashion?
Let me second this one by saying that I started with it when I was seven. It was the "intro" book they were selling at Radio Shack back before radio shack changed their logo from "You've got questions, we've got answers" to "You've got questions, we've got blank stares" - i.e., when they were still employing electricians.
Note that what you'll be able to do when you understand the stuff in this book is very little. You'll be able to make tone generators, and blinking lights.
What good is that? Well, given a basic microcontroller, you'll probably learn enough basic electronics sense to not burn out any of your components, and you'll probably learn enough to be able to read other people's circuit schematics.
That may be all you need of the electronics part to start you down into the exciting world of digital signal processing without a computer, which I have always thought of as the exciting part.
If you're that unlucky that you bought oddball hardware
The problem is that certain *areas* of hardware have no driver standards at all, so you end up with the situation where all the hardware is oddball.
Here are the areas of hardware that I know can cause issues:
USB-based printers USB-based soundcards USB-based scanners firewire-based soundcards firewire-based video capture cards *all* wireless cards, except a very few
Does that seem liks oddball stuff that nobody will buy?
I agree - if you wanted to do something like that today, you'd focus on the other aspects that a spy-action-hero-on-a-budget would do - still a little bit of rigging things where possible, but also a few clever physical tricks, some social engineering, and a lot more clever planning. We don't get the 80s version, but we still get something.
I think that before we do that, we should at the very least fork it and rename it "MurderFS" before we let it go.
Possibly that can be short for "waterLoggedCarEqualsMurderFS", or something. I don't know. Something in the vein of Apple vs Carl Sagan. Turn a vanity name into something that says something about its creator.
So the issue here is a lack of useful larnyx to produce certain vowel sounds.
Since when is language dependent on that? It's just icing.
Try this: Take a balloon or beach ball filled with air. Blow the air into your mouth at approximately the rate that your breathe out while talking (without breathing it in), and use your mouth to shape the air into words.
Entirely without the aid of any voicebox - not even an inferior one - you should be able to produce understandable English. Considering that Neanderthals were probably speaking something much less complex than that, I doubt they'd have had any trouble.
The modern vocal tract makes it *slightly* easier to talk, but really I think that it's really the human equivalent of plumage.
Not on asteroids...reread my comment. The iron-rich asteriods are pretty pure.
Plate tectonics is very well understood. How do you think geologists find mineral deposits? Do you think they just randomly dig a hole and hope for the best??
They look at the geology that surround the area. Plate tectonics give them some clue as to which layer of sediment they get to look at - but only so far as to say "that giant crack there means that sediment layers that were previously really deep are now not". It makes it easier to not have to dig as far in certain places, but what is actually in each layer is determined almost entirely by direct observation and simple coorelation. Existing theories add little to figuring out what goes where.
No. They look for geological features that form or aggregate certain minerals. I learned this in grade school.
I.e., they look for pieces of land that look a lot like other pieces of land, and assume that the same things are going to be underneath. WHY that makes a difference is all theory, and isn't extremely testable because we can't duplicate the timespans involved in our own experiments. It may or may not apply to meteors.
I've read too much to take these ideas at face value. Until we can actually watch it happen, and as long as there are many different widely varied ideas on the subject (which there are, and this simplified intro can't really cover it), I'm going to go with wild speculation for most ore genesis.
Obviously, iron and carbon are much more well understood than most, as they have a huge interaction with life. But that really doesn't cover how we find all these other elements gathering around - even way below the crust, does it?
Ah. Well, blaming uranium deposits on vague forces that we don't really understand seems a lot like wild speculation.
If we're going to engage in that anyway (as we already have with the space elevator and long distance space travel), I'm going to go ahead and say that whatever causes lumps of mostly iron to form so purely might also cause lumps of mostly heavier metals to form in other places in the solar system.
If not, then how about we just collect compressed heavy hydrogen and helium? I mean, if we can make it past these other technological hurdles, fusion should be doable.
The current estimate is that somewhere between 4%-6% of the meteors that fall to earth are mostly iron (enough to call them pure iron ore), and it is speculated that most of the iron *dust* in the topsoil may come from meteor showers.
In total accounting, around 80% of the discovered meteorites are iron (because it doesn't burn up as easily as rock) - which is roughly 300 tons so far.
There is no one solution that is capable of completely supplanting coal.
Build a space elevator, and mine heavy asteroids for fissionable materials.
Assuming we can then make it to the asteroid belt, the supply should be able to more than exceed our need for fuel for the next hundred thousand years.
What you probably mean is that there is no solution using current tech that is capable of supplanting coal. But now you know one that could potentially do the trick, just not yet.
All of these actions are ultimately motivated by the pleasure/high/"emotion" you have learned as a trained response to those actions.
Yeah...until you grow up. Then you're (hopefully) starting to go the other way around. Rather than being motivated by your pleasures, you start causing your (mostly pleasure neutral) motivations to give you pleasure. Start getting a high from self-actualization - such as the pleasure of a job well done, for instance, or the pleasure of knowing and being where you belong.
So we are all addicted to these chemicals.. we are all motivated by the need to placate the brain's desire for these chemicals.
There are food addicts, sex addicts, and probably every other kind of bodily function addict. It is fair to say that being addicted to one thing is very similar to being addicted to something else, but it is NOT fair to say that everybody is addicted to something (even if you can't really quit). Just because any of these determine some of what we find pleasurable doesn't mean that it is this pleasure alone that drives all that we do (which is, by the way, how I would define addiction).
Your use of roads as an analogy for the Internet is EPIC FAIL in my opinion. I agree with the spirit of your arguments, but trying to use roads as an example was a bad idea.
Go somewhere else in the world. Anywhere at all.
The US interstate road system is the largest, and arguably the best in the world. Of course, it's funded pretty much entirely by gasoline sales, so we're having a bit of a struggle switching to other things.
Anyway...I've never seen a dangerous pothole on any road with a speed limit of >55. They're eliminated as soon as they happen. Obviously, I can't speak for everywhere...but this has been my experience traveling in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana...the primary states I go through in a car.
You have no idea how much work is put into the road system on a yearly basis. If the ISPs put that much into maintaining internet links, we'd have a ridiculously reliable internet connection.
If you're happy enough to have all of your sound processing done in software instead of with dedicated DSPs, just make sure that your next motherboard has some manner of digital output -- either optical or coaxial.
Which is why the great grandparent post was talking about input. You can get great sound out of a computer using el-cheapo cards, but inputs? Spend at least $100 for two, and add at least $75 for each additional pair...and even then it may not work with your hardware. Pretty much *every* card on the market has people that complain that they can't it to work. Figuring out what's actually going to work is a nightmare.
I don't see why that has to be so hard. Can't we do the same thing coming into the machines that we do going out?
Obviously there are certain topologies that they can't create, but most things that a printer can make a CNC machine can make as well. A better statement would be "CNC machines have different problems," because clearly they address the same problem - how to make things with a computer.
This will let you make and replace a wide variety of simple parts that have already been designed by someone else. Whole industries could be made around buying the electronics and designs for 'do it yourself' items.
What you're describing is world without CAD/CAM to convert from 3D model into CNC instructions. Fortunately, we don't live in that world. Given a simple part design, a desktop CNC machine, and decent CAD/CAM software, your CNC machine can make your part for you just like a 3d printer could...only, in most cases, better.
Rapid prototyping and even direct-to-manufacture with the selective sintering machines is becoming much more accessible and widespread.
Think of it as mimeograph and dot matrix from 20 years ago vs the mundane throwaway photo-quality walmart variety printers now.
While I agree, I don't think that this particular technology is where it's at.
You should keep in mind that this is essentially a computer controlled glue gun. It requires the use of low-temperature, air pressure thermoplastic, or similar materials.
Those kinds of materials just don't stand up to abuse. You need to be doing this kind of thing at high temperatures and pressures to make it practical, and then it starts to get dangerous. Further, building layer upon layer in this printing fashion does not lend itself to strong bonds within the material.
What can we do at low temperatures that can do this kind of thing? Rather than adding material to objects, the trick is to remove it.
We have computer controlled routers, lathes, and milling machines that can cut through pretty much any kind of metal or wood with accuracy that far surpasses that of the RepRap, and the end result is sturdier.
Its not like the "waste" is even that, either - metal scraps can be melted down and reused, and wood scraps can be made into compost, kindling, paper, or particle board.
A machine that does this is called a CNC machine, and they already exist. You can buy one ready made, or find tons of articles on the internet discussing how to make one - mostly out of parts available at hardware stores, so they end up being between easily available in the $400-$1500 range.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the day the earth stood still. There are no significant special effects that need to be made better.
How about color? I always felt that was a pretty important thing.
Is your statement something you could extrapolate from my post? Not reasonably.
although a reader of one or the other may have the imagination to appreciate the other genera why are they so intertwined
Because they're pretty close to just being sub-genres of a bigger genre?
Call it "speculative fiction": fiction set within an reality that has in some small way been altered to be different from the one that we live in.
Consider also:
1) The "tech" in sci-fi generally isn't possible. It's essentially magic whose origin is the extrapolation of current technology given a different set of circumstances (and hand-waving).
2) Most of the "magic" of fantasy, if not all, comes from some place's mythology. Most of mythology fit the definition of #1 when it was written.
If Sci-Fi was essentially fictional novels about things that actual scientists could do, then I could see your point. However, that would end up quite boring. I prefer my sci-fi to be a dressed up form of fantasy.
In 1687, Isaac Newton wrote is Principia, which defined about half of calculus, and all of Newtonian physics - defining laws of both gravity, and inertia. It is understandable, then with no understanding of quantum mechanics at all, that he did not explicitly mention quantum monkeys at all.
Maxwell then went on to explain Ether as a medium through which light traveled in 1878, later being disproved in 1881 by Michelson, and laying the groundwork for the discovery of quantum monkeys though the discovery of constant velocity light.
This was established as mathematically sound in Einstein's theory of special relativity in 1905. General relativity, which explained gravitational effects on light and particles/waves moving fractionally close to the speed of light, was finally established in 1915 by Hilbert and Einstein, surprisingly without mention of quantum monkeys, despite all indications.
Because of this work, as well as the basics of quantum mechanics established by Einstein, various scientists were able to find the six quarks: Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Charmed and Strange, the last (top) only having been confirmed in a laboratory in 1995. Strangely, however, none of the various experiments which identified quarks also identified quantum monkeys, which would have been readily observable through their quantum-picking-fleas-off-other-quantum-monkey gatherings.
The first of these discoveries, in the early 1960s made possible a formalization of a unified model in 1970-73 of four fundamental forces, three of which can be unified mathematically under one theory and with particles that are at least indirectly observable (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), and a fourth which doesn't quite fit (gravity). Despite these obvious problems, no one started looking at the quantum banana-eating by quantum monkeys as a possible unifying factor.
To establish a unified theory including gravity, scientists are currently using strings, rather than monkeys, as a unifying element. However, the majority of these theories are neither testable nor useful for the advancement of mankind. None of them so much as mention quantum poo, or postulate that quantum monkeys could have thrown it.
To this day, the world waits for scientists start to seek out the quantum monkeys that have so long waited for proper credit to be given to them for unifying quantum forces. So we wait still, a working unified theory still out of our grasp.
Sometimes they flat-out lie.
Strange that truth in advertising doesn't seem to apply to films.
160 dB CANNOT kill. It can rupture your eardrums, but not kill.
You would think so, but you're missing a vital point. You see, some thoughts have a certain sound, that being the equivalent to a form. Through sound and motion, you will be able to paralyze nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy or burst his organs.
Ads work on the majority. On me, they usually have the opposite effect (not going to buy stuff that's advertised in particularly annoying/stupid/psychologically exploitive ways).
And they'd fight your better product with tooth and claw - not by making their products better, but by stepping up their marketing efforts.
Well, let me talk about the kinds of advertising that works on me - none of which do any of the things you're talking about.
Its not like all ads are the same, and the reason for having them is not always the same. Sometimes it's as simple as "your life would be easier if you had one of these, but you've never seen them." That's the best case for advertising. In that case, it'll work well.
Then there's the issue of ads for the purpose of adding choice. Sure, you may think that McDonalds is the best restaurant ever, but you don't want to go there all the time. See an ad for a new place, then you try it out.
Then there's the only kind of blanket advertising that actually has a chance to sway things for me - when it doesn't matter one whit. I don't really care what kind of toothpaste I buy. From my experience, they're all cheap and they all work about the same. I'd be slightly more inclined to buy from the company that makes the funniest commercial. The Bruce Campbell ads for Old Spice are hilarious. Pretty much all deodorants work for me (until the bacteria living in my skin get used to them), so I'm more than happy to give Old Spice a go.
Of course, commercials that insult my intelligence by making me think that their as-good-as-everything-else products are in some way actually better without presenting any facts have the opposite effect, and make me less likely to buy.
Just before you draw your terminal breath.
Life's a piece of (stuff)
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And... That from a song sung from the POV of someone experiencing one of the worst possible deaths imaginable. A joke is always needed. The worse it is, the more you need a joke. Humor isn't a side effect. It's a survival mechanism.
So bring on the dead baby jokes, the afterlife jokes, and, if possible, jokes about undead creatures. I want death to seem a lot funnier right now.
Two people go into the building at the other side of the street.
A few minutes pass.
3 people come back out.
First the biologist notices this. And he promptly declares that they reproduced.
The engineer, a bit more at his senses, states that obviously there simply was an error in the original measurement of people entering the building
But, the mathematician realizes the obvious truth, and announces "You're both wrong. If now one more person enters the building, there will be no-one left inside"
Fixed it. Who told you this joke in it's less funny fashion?
One should also keep in mind that there are more people (besides the author, who is a central figure, for sure) involved in publishing a quality book.
Yes...there are three.
The author(s), the author's editor(s), and the author's SO. This means that there are at least two people, and probably less than five.
Everyone else is there for marketing/publishing.
If we're cutting the fat from to just the creative people, then everyone who isn't them gets cut.
Actually, I find that to be a blessing with paper books (and I generally prefer paper for technical books, even though I own a Sony eReader).
Of course, nothing precludes electronic books having pages to be read manually.
This "screen real estate" idea is also one that'll go by the wayside. I'm sure I'll have five or six book readers once they cost $100 or so.
The only reason to stick with the dead trees forever is because you like the feel, smell, or touch of paper.
But that's as silly a reason as not switching from buggies to autos because you like the smell of horses (hey! Got a car comparison in there!).
Let me second this one by saying that I started with it when I was seven. It was the "intro" book they were selling at Radio Shack back before radio shack changed their logo from "You've got questions, we've got answers" to "You've got questions, we've got blank stares" - i.e., when they were still employing electricians.
It looks a bit different than it did when I read it.
Note that what you'll be able to do when you understand the stuff in this book is very little. You'll be able to make tone generators, and blinking lights.
What good is that? Well, given a basic microcontroller, you'll probably learn enough basic electronics sense to not burn out any of your components, and you'll probably learn enough to be able to read other people's circuit schematics.
That may be all you need of the electronics part to start you down into the exciting world of digital signal processing without a computer, which I have always thought of as the exciting part.
If you're that unlucky that you bought oddball hardware
The problem is that certain *areas* of hardware have no driver standards at all, so you end up with the situation where all the hardware is oddball.
Here are the areas of hardware that I know can cause issues:
USB-based printers
USB-based soundcards
USB-based scanners
firewire-based soundcards
firewire-based video capture cards
*all* wireless cards, except a very few
Does that seem liks oddball stuff that nobody will buy?
I agree - if you wanted to do something like that today, you'd focus on the other aspects that a spy-action-hero-on-a-budget would do - still a little bit of rigging things where possible, but also a few clever physical tricks, some social engineering, and a lot more clever planning. We don't get the 80s version, but we still get something.
It's time we forget ReiserFS and move on.
I think that before we do that, we should at the very least fork it and rename it "MurderFS" before we let it go.
Possibly that can be short for "waterLoggedCarEqualsMurderFS", or something. I don't know. Something in the vein of Apple vs Carl Sagan. Turn a vanity name into something that says something about its creator.
Of course, he could also just be wrong.
So the issue here is a lack of useful larnyx to produce certain vowel sounds.
Since when is language dependent on that? It's just icing.
Try this: Take a balloon or beach ball filled with air. Blow the air into your mouth at approximately the rate that your breathe out while talking (without breathing it in), and use your mouth to shape the air into words.
Entirely without the aid of any voicebox - not even an inferior one - you should be able to produce understandable English. Considering that Neanderthals were probably speaking something much less complex than that, I doubt they'd have had any trouble.
The modern vocal tract makes it *slightly* easier to talk, but really I think that it's really the human equivalent of plumage.
Iron deposits are the result of cyanobacteria
Not on asteroids...reread my comment. The iron-rich asteriods are pretty pure.
Plate tectonics is very well understood. How do you think geologists find mineral deposits? Do you think they just randomly dig a hole and hope for the best??
They look at the geology that surround the area. Plate tectonics give them some clue as to which layer of sediment they get to look at - but only so far as to say "that giant crack there means that sediment layers that were previously really deep are now not". It makes it easier to not have to dig as far in certain places, but what is actually in each layer is determined almost entirely by direct observation and simple coorelation. Existing theories add little to figuring out what goes where.
No. They look for geological features that form or aggregate certain minerals. I learned this in grade school.
I.e., they look for pieces of land that look a lot like other pieces of land, and assume that the same things are going to be underneath. WHY that makes a difference is all theory, and isn't extremely testable because we can't duplicate the timespans involved in our own experiments. It may or may not apply to meteors.
You might want to have a look at this wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis
I've read too much to take these ideas at face value. Until we can actually watch it happen, and as long as there are many different widely varied ideas on the subject (which there are, and this simplified intro can't really cover it), I'm going to go with wild speculation for most ore genesis.
Obviously, iron and carbon are much more well understood than most, as they have a huge interaction with life. But that really doesn't cover how we find all these other elements gathering around - even way below the crust, does it?
Ah. Well, blaming uranium deposits on vague forces that we don't really understand seems a lot like wild speculation.
If we're going to engage in that anyway (as we already have with the space elevator and long distance space travel), I'm going to go ahead and say that whatever causes lumps of mostly iron to form so purely might also cause lumps of mostly heavier metals to form in other places in the solar system.
If not, then how about we just collect compressed heavy hydrogen and helium? I mean, if we can make it past these other technological hurdles, fusion should be doable.
The current estimate is that somewhere between 4%-6% of the meteors that fall to earth are mostly iron (enough to call them pure iron ore), and it is speculated that most of the iron *dust* in the topsoil may come from meteor showers.
In total accounting, around 80% of the discovered meteorites are iron (because it doesn't burn up as easily as rock) - which is roughly 300 tons so far.
There is no one solution that is capable of completely supplanting coal.
Build a space elevator, and mine heavy asteroids for fissionable materials.
Assuming we can then make it to the asteroid belt, the supply should be able to more than exceed our need for fuel for the next hundred thousand years.
What you probably mean is that there is no solution using current tech that is capable of supplanting coal. But now you know one that could potentially do the trick, just not yet.
All of these actions are ultimately motivated by the pleasure/high/"emotion" you have learned as a trained response to those actions.
Yeah...until you grow up. Then you're (hopefully)
starting to go the other way around. Rather than being motivated by your pleasures, you start causing your (mostly pleasure neutral) motivations to give you pleasure. Start getting a high from self-actualization - such as the pleasure of a job well done, for instance, or the pleasure of knowing and being where you belong.
So we are all addicted to these chemicals.. we are all motivated by the need to placate the brain's desire for these chemicals.
There are food addicts, sex addicts, and probably every other kind of bodily function addict. It is fair to say that being addicted to one thing is very similar to being addicted to something else, but it is NOT fair to say that everybody is addicted to something (even if you can't really quit). Just because any of these determine some of what we find pleasurable doesn't mean that it is this pleasure alone that drives all that we do (which is, by the way, how I would define addiction).
Your use of roads as an analogy for the Internet is EPIC FAIL in my opinion. I agree with the spirit of your arguments, but trying to use roads as an example was a bad idea.
Go somewhere else in the world. Anywhere at all.
The US interstate road system is the largest, and arguably the best in the world. Of course, it's funded pretty much entirely by gasoline sales, so we're having a bit of a struggle switching to other things.
Anyway...I've never seen a dangerous pothole on any road with a speed limit of >55. They're eliminated as soon as they happen. Obviously, I can't speak for everywhere...but this has been my experience traveling in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana...the primary states I go through in a car.
You have no idea how much work is put into the road system on a yearly basis. If the ISPs put that much into maintaining internet links, we'd have a ridiculously reliable internet connection.
It doesn't matter.
If you're happy enough to have all of your sound processing done in software instead of with dedicated DSPs, just make sure that your next motherboard has some manner of digital output -- either optical or coaxial.
Which is why the great grandparent post was talking about input. You can get great sound out of a computer using el-cheapo cards, but inputs? Spend at least $100 for two, and add at least $75 for each additional pair...and even then it may not work with your hardware. Pretty much *every* card on the market has people that complain that they can't it to work. Figuring out what's actually going to work is a nightmare.
I don't see why that has to be so hard. Can't we do the same thing coming into the machines that we do going out?
CNC machines solve different problems.
Obviously there are certain topologies that they can't create, but most things that a printer can make a CNC machine can make as well. A better statement would be "CNC machines have different problems," because clearly they address the same problem - how to make things with a computer.
This will let you make and replace a wide variety of simple parts that have already been designed by someone else. Whole industries could be made around buying the electronics and designs for 'do it yourself' items.
What you're describing is world without CAD/CAM to convert from 3D model into CNC instructions. Fortunately, we don't live in that world. Given a simple part design, a desktop CNC machine, and decent CAD/CAM software, your CNC machine can make your part for you just like a 3d printer could...only, in most cases, better.
Rapid prototyping and even direct-to-manufacture with the selective sintering machines is becoming much more accessible and widespread.
Think of it as mimeograph and dot matrix from 20 years ago vs the mundane throwaway photo-quality walmart variety printers now.
While I agree, I don't think that this particular technology is where it's at.
You should keep in mind that this is essentially a computer controlled glue gun. It requires the use of low-temperature, air pressure thermoplastic, or similar materials.
Those kinds of materials just don't stand up to abuse. You need to be doing this kind of thing at high temperatures and pressures to make it practical, and then it starts to get dangerous. Further, building layer upon layer in this printing fashion does not lend itself to strong bonds within the material.
What can we do at low temperatures that can do this kind of thing? Rather than adding material to objects, the trick is to remove it.
We have computer controlled routers, lathes, and milling machines that can cut through pretty much any kind of metal or wood with accuracy that far surpasses that of the RepRap, and the end result is sturdier.
Its not like the "waste" is even that, either - metal scraps can be melted down and reused, and wood scraps can be made into compost, kindling, paper, or particle board.
A machine that does this is called a CNC machine, and they already exist. You can buy one ready made, or find tons of articles on the internet discussing how to make one - mostly out of parts available at hardware stores, so they end up being between easily available in the $400-$1500 range.