Yeah, I know last time I was murdering someone, I grabbed my railgun, jumped off a third story balcony and kept on running, then started shooting while jumping to avoid missle launcher fire.
And if you believe THAT, I've got some lovely beachland in Florida to teach you.
It looks like it was a modbus plus network. We're talking a proprietary physical layer on up, specifically designed for PLCs to communicate with one another.
If there was a communications problem and a PLC blinks out of existence on a mission critical system, it's only the safe thing to fail the entire system to prevent damage to people, the environment, and equipment.
Great news, guys. This is going to be a non-issue. People are freaking out because a digital device is involved, and freaking out because a nuclear power plant was involved, but I do industrial control system and DCS design for a living, and I'll tell you right now, that you simply can't access control networks from the outside. There are seperate, often redundant networks, and even then, depending on the way the plant was designed, we're talking modbus plus or something that PCs don't normally access.
I'm so glad American politicians are still so tragically moronic regarding tech. Baseband signalling at 1Gbps? Broadband. Broadband signalling at 199kbps? Baseband.
You can download BC, but not WoW. I never played the game before until about a month ago and had no account. My brother was complaining and demanding I run out and buy it, so I opened the browser window to the site and clicked "Create an account". It sat there demanding a code, without the option to just buy a code right then and there. I ended up having to run out and buy a box later from a physical store. I wasn't impressed.
I actually sent an e-mail to billing complaining about this, and it turns out that if I head to the Cave of Legolas and defeat the Gnome of Forthcomery using the Blade of C'zulu, I'll get a crystal ball from his loot that I can give to the mysterious NPC known only as Bob back in town, and he'll point me to a completely new and different website and make me sign up for a trial period instead of just taking my goddamned money like I asked.
That same night, I Downloaded and bought Astro Battle 2, and was playing within seconds of getting the urge to play.
Be fair; We WERE talking about comparisons to The Borg, from a universe where there were a number of examples of pure machine life.
Though you're right, it IS, since we're talking fictional things all around, like arguing that superman could beat the flash (He could. What is the flash going to do? Run away?)
No machine yet created by humans have as of yet approached the elegence, efficiency, or versitility of what evolution has shaped over more than a billion years.
We're talking about machine life, so this point is moot.
Almost every living thing is capable of some degree of self-repair. For how much of our modern hardware can you say the same?
If the problem of machine life has been solved, there's no good reason to assume a seperate self-repair mechanism wouldn't be possible.
Man has been designing tools and machines since our cavemen ancestors began forming abstract thoughts. But mother nature has been doing the same with Earth's entire biosphere when the sun was still a teenager.
Yes, this entire discussion does revolve around the fact that there'd have to be machine life before machine life could ever make decisions. If machine life didn't make the decision, then you're not looking at machine life, just modified biological life, which we have today. Are the blind people using prototype artificial retinas cyborgs? People with battery powered false arms? People who have a small electric current run through certain areas of their brain to increase their intelligence? Not at all. They're all biological life, and thus not relevant in the least to the discussion of machine life.
If we're talking about robotic intelligence, we can't just do an end-run around the discussion by making the intelligence itself biological and saying "Machine life doesn't exist".
Do you know how much waste heat your computer puts out? Or are you simply deaf to the noise of that case fan cooling the inside of your CPU? And also, with such a great design, how come each new generation of machines seems to sport their own form factor?
Compare the energy requirements of keeping a computer running to the energy requirements of maintaining a food supply, a breathable atmosphere, climate control, etc etc etc. The heating requirements for ONE ROOM in my house to I can continue to live in it make my little PC look like a light bulb in comparison.
Let me as you: what is the average life time of a typical computer (such as *yours*) between upgrades? Can *your* computer function without a keyboard? mouse? monitor? It ain't growing back like a gecko's tail.
If my keyboard dies, I can replace it. If my mouse dies, I can replace it. No computer I've ever owned has died of age. The mill I work at has equipment that's been running for twice as long as I've been alive without anyone ever having to look at it. If my heart dies, I'm dead. If my arm goes, It's gone.
I must disagree, as I've burned out two monitors, fried a Pentium, and suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure over less than 20 years since I've regularly used a computer. And if you've ever tried using a computer in places with low quality power, (such as parts of India, Africa, South America where outages, power spikes, and brown outs are common) you would know how fickled the hardware inside your box reall is. You want a reliable computer system, you need to invest a *lot* of effort to put together robust and well designed parts. You want a reliable lifeform, you go and pick up some pond scum from any dirty watering hole.
I work with reliably designed equipment every day. It's my job. Look at this from a logical point of view: If you're a robot lifeform, are you REALLY going to design yourself to the same terrible tollerances that humans design their throwaway society?
Most people would think an obsession with computers and technology is sick. Many people would think having a reasonably sized vocabulary is sick.
The law shouldn't exist just because you find someone's behaviour distasteful, because there are plenty of people out there that will label you just the same. It should exist to protect people.
Actually, I don't mind steam et. al. They've got their downsides, but at least I can buy the game. Nothing frustrates me more than heading to a site (World of Warcraft was the latest example), and being told that I've got to go through hell to get a box shipped over the border(Well, in the case of WoW, they wouldn't let me just take my credit card, enter in my number, and download/start playing -- I had to go to some store and buy the box first), and that they outright refuse to just take my money and offer a download.
DRM can be frustrating, but nothing is more frustrating than a company that refuses to take my money.
There is nothing logical about making biological tissue an integral part of perfect machine life. Biological material requires huge amounts of energy to maintain, doesn't function as efficiently or as cleanly as a well designed machine, has a pitiful effective lifetime, and failure of one component WILL destroy the rest of the unit. Machine material is effectively immortal, can run on as much or as little energy as is available, is effectively immortal, and can be designed so no single failure will destroy the rest of the unit.
If our robots become borg, it's because we messed up.
Actually, this isn't really that big in terms of news, imho. Dark Matter has been the top story in most science magazines for at least 6 months now. I'm sure everyone has seen the false colour photograph of the colliding galaxies which "shows" where the dark matter is?
Where I work, our power is shut off by those same old "pull in case of fire" units, except they'll pull the plug on a few megawatts of Motor Control Center.
Makes sure you don't press the big red button, at least!
I can't help but wonder if there's an entire dark matter universe coexisting with ours, filled with dark matter stars, and dark matter planets, and maybe even a form of dark matter life and only tied to this universe through the gravitational force? Ever since I read that they'd confirmed the existence of the stuff, I've wondered if we'd find a twin universe hidden under ours.
Discovering for certain things like that might change the way I look at the universe.
Actually, you say that and it makes me wonder if the larger part of lossage is caused by organised crime. It doesn't matter how many protection devices you put in place if the folks who are just going to resell the stolen goods at full price can just buy or steal the same machine for themselves.
You know, I saw that little orange dot an immediately wanted to diagree with you, but you've got her bang on. Not all movies, even some cult movies, recoup their costs. It's a shame that studios have to deal with the same wierd salary inflation that entertainment mediums in general have to deal with(Really, is spending a quarter of your budget on some hack who can't act really fair?), but they do.
You're talking about a cartel that engages in illegal price fixing, a cartel which uses the government to enforce their pathetic copy protection schemes, and EA. You'd have to be truly moronic to believe that anything short of the near death of an industry would lower prices.
So do you have Instrumentation, Electrical, and Electronic Engineering Technology, or did you swap one of those out for Computer Engineering Technology?:p
This just means that -- as usual -- we're digging our own graves. Does anyone with half a brain honestly think that any of those less expensive countries are going to let themselves be ruled by a banana republic of debtholders and middle managers?
Either way though, in the short run, you can make money doing engineering work in a mine or factory that would make even a New Yorker jealous.
That's all true. I guess it just proves that I'm no farmer.:)
Though a couple of the millwrights I work with are farmers, and they aren't hurting for cash, since they can rake in godlike cash in the winter months.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Correction: Jack Thompson causes violence against Jack Thompson.
If video games never existed, he'd still be attacking angry music. Rappers aren't the saints that gamers are.
Yeah, I know last time I was murdering someone, I grabbed my railgun, jumped off a third story balcony and kept on running, then started shooting while jumping to avoid missle launcher fire.
And if you believe THAT, I've got some lovely beachland in Florida to teach you.
It looks like it was a modbus plus network. We're talking a proprietary physical layer on up, specifically designed for PLCs to communicate with one another.
If there was a communications problem and a PLC blinks out of existence on a mission critical system, it's only the safe thing to fail the entire system to prevent damage to people, the environment, and equipment.
Great news, guys. This is going to be a non-issue. People are freaking out because a digital device is involved, and freaking out because a nuclear power plant was involved, but I do industrial control system and DCS design for a living, and I'll tell you right now, that you simply can't access control networks from the outside. There are seperate, often redundant networks, and even then, depending on the way the plant was designed, we're talking modbus plus or something that PCs don't normally access.
I'm so glad American politicians are still so tragically moronic regarding tech. Baseband signalling at 1Gbps? Broadband. Broadband signalling at 199kbps? Baseband.
Broadband and a series of tubes!
You can download BC, but not WoW. I never played the game before until about a month ago and had no account. My brother was complaining and demanding I run out and buy it, so I opened the browser window to the site and clicked "Create an account". It sat there demanding a code, without the option to just buy a code right then and there. I ended up having to run out and buy a box later from a physical store. I wasn't impressed.
I actually sent an e-mail to billing complaining about this, and it turns out that if I head to the Cave of Legolas and defeat the Gnome of Forthcomery using the Blade of C'zulu, I'll get a crystal ball from his loot that I can give to the mysterious NPC known only as Bob back in town, and he'll point me to a completely new and different website and make me sign up for a trial period instead of just taking my goddamned money like I asked.
That same night, I Downloaded and bought Astro Battle 2, and was playing within seconds of getting the urge to play.
Be fair; We WERE talking about comparisons to The Borg, from a universe where there were a number of examples of pure machine life.
Though you're right, it IS, since we're talking fictional things all around, like arguing that superman could beat the flash (He could. What is the flash going to do? Run away?)
I'd take that more seriously if you weren't just getting your kids to pay for 1/8th of everything and anything your government buys. :P
No machine yet created by humans have as of yet approached the elegence, efficiency, or versitility of what evolution has shaped over more than a billion years.
We're talking about machine life, so this point is moot.
Almost every living thing is capable of some degree of self-repair. For how much of our modern hardware can you say the same?
If the problem of machine life has been solved, there's no good reason to assume a seperate self-repair mechanism wouldn't be possible.
Man has been designing tools and machines since our cavemen ancestors began forming abstract thoughts. But mother nature has been doing the same with Earth's entire biosphere when the sun was still a teenager.
Yes, this entire discussion does revolve around the fact that there'd have to be machine life before machine life could ever make decisions. If machine life didn't make the decision, then you're not looking at machine life, just modified biological life, which we have today. Are the blind people using prototype artificial retinas cyborgs? People with battery powered false arms? People who have a small electric current run through certain areas of their brain to increase their intelligence? Not at all. They're all biological life, and thus not relevant in the least to the discussion of machine life.
If we're talking about robotic intelligence, we can't just do an end-run around the discussion by making the intelligence itself biological and saying "Machine life doesn't exist".
Do you know how much waste heat your computer puts out? Or are you simply deaf to the noise of that case fan cooling the inside of your CPU? And also, with such a great design, how come each new generation of machines seems to sport their own form factor?
Compare the energy requirements of keeping a computer running to the energy requirements of maintaining a food supply, a breathable atmosphere, climate control, etc etc etc. The heating requirements for ONE ROOM in my house to I can continue to live in it make my little PC look like a light bulb in comparison.
Let me as you: what is the average life time of a typical computer (such as *yours*) between upgrades? Can *your* computer function without a keyboard? mouse? monitor? It ain't growing back like a gecko's tail.
If my keyboard dies, I can replace it. If my mouse dies, I can replace it. No computer I've ever owned has died of age. The mill I work at has equipment that's been running for twice as long as I've been alive without anyone ever having to look at it. If my heart dies, I'm dead. If my arm goes, It's gone.
I must disagree, as I've burned out two monitors, fried a Pentium, and suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure over less than 20 years since I've regularly used a computer. And if you've ever tried using a computer in places with low quality power, (such as parts of India, Africa, South America where outages, power spikes, and brown outs are common) you would know how fickled the hardware inside your box reall is. You want a reliable computer system, you need to invest a *lot* of effort to put together robust and well designed parts. You want a reliable lifeform, you go and pick up some pond scum from any dirty watering hole.
I work with reliably designed equipment every day. It's my job. Look at this from a logical point of view: If you're a robot lifeform, are you REALLY going to design yourself to the same terrible tollerances that humans design their throwaway society?
Most people would think an obsession with computers and technology is sick. Many people would think having a reasonably sized vocabulary is sick.
The law shouldn't exist just because you find someone's behaviour distasteful, because there are plenty of people out there that will label you just the same. It should exist to protect people.
Actually, I don't mind steam et. al. They've got their downsides, but at least I can buy the game. Nothing frustrates me more than heading to a site (World of Warcraft was the latest example), and being told that I've got to go through hell to get a box shipped over the border(Well, in the case of WoW, they wouldn't let me just take my credit card, enter in my number, and download/start playing -- I had to go to some store and buy the box first), and that they outright refuse to just take my money and offer a download.
DRM can be frustrating, but nothing is more frustrating than a company that refuses to take my money.
There is nothing logical about making biological tissue an integral part of perfect machine life. Biological material requires huge amounts of energy to maintain, doesn't function as efficiently or as cleanly as a well designed machine, has a pitiful effective lifetime, and failure of one component WILL destroy the rest of the unit. Machine material is effectively immortal, can run on as much or as little energy as is available, is effectively immortal, and can be designed so no single failure will destroy the rest of the unit.
If our robots become borg, it's because we messed up.
Actually, this isn't really that big in terms of news, imho. Dark Matter has been the top story in most science magazines for at least 6 months now. I'm sure everyone has seen the false colour photograph of the colliding galaxies which "shows" where the dark matter is?
Considering almost anyone here works with stuff that sounds like bullshit to 99% of the population, I'm ready to give CEOs the benefit of the doubt.
the control engineer inexplicably paniced
Please tell me you meant operator. I don't think my heart could take it if you actually meant control engineer.
Where I work, our power is shut off by those same old "pull in case of fire" units, except they'll pull the plug on a few megawatts of Motor Control Center.
Makes sure you don't press the big red button, at least!
I can't help but wonder if there's an entire dark matter universe coexisting with ours, filled with dark matter stars, and dark matter planets, and maybe even a form of dark matter life and only tied to this universe through the gravitational force? Ever since I read that they'd confirmed the existence of the stuff, I've wondered if we'd find a twin universe hidden under ours.
Discovering for certain things like that might change the way I look at the universe.
Math pulled out of a PR guy's ass causes an estimated 90 trillion dollars in damage every year!
Actually, you say that and it makes me wonder if the larger part of lossage is caused by organised crime. It doesn't matter how many protection devices you put in place if the folks who are just going to resell the stolen goods at full price can just buy or steal the same machine for themselves.
You know, I saw that little orange dot an immediately wanted to diagree with you, but you've got her bang on. Not all movies, even some cult movies, recoup their costs. It's a shame that studios have to deal with the same wierd salary inflation that entertainment mediums in general have to deal with(Really, is spending a quarter of your budget on some hack who can't act really fair?), but they do.
You're talking about a cartel that engages in illegal price fixing, a cartel which uses the government to enforce their pathetic copy protection schemes, and EA. You'd have to be truly moronic to believe that anything short of the near death of an industry would lower prices.
So do you have Instrumentation, Electrical, and Electronic Engineering Technology, or did you swap one of those out for Computer Engineering Technology? :p
This just means that -- as usual -- we're digging our own graves. Does anyone with half a brain honestly think that any of those less expensive countries are going to let themselves be ruled by a banana republic of debtholders and middle managers?
Either way though, in the short run, you can make money doing engineering work in a mine or factory that would make even a New Yorker jealous.
And racism.
(Hey, not all of the racism is 'It's trendy to have a white boyfriend'.)
That's all true. I guess it just proves that I'm no farmer. :)
:)
Though a couple of the millwrights I work with are farmers, and they aren't hurting for cash, since they can rake in godlike cash in the winter months.