Hey, I was just talking about the issues associated with automating fast food restaurants, not trying to solve all of society's problems!
As far as the latter conversation goes, though, I find your alarm kind of strange. Isn't a Utopian society where the humans can have lives of leisure because the machines are doing all the work the goal here? It seems that way according to a lot of sci-fi...
Watch how simple that is to solve. you have a touch screen, you choose what you want based on combo or on individual ingredients, in your own language of course, and a robotic female voice reads back what you have chosen and says "If this is correct, please press 1, if incorrect please press cancel and try again" and voila! Its done. and you wouldn't need full industrial bots for the majority of the stuff, a simple assembly line could take care of it. Meat goes on belt through cooker and then rolls out onto bun, bun as it rolls down its own belt gets your choices placed in premeasured doses, it would all be even more perfectly uniform than anything you could ever hope for. a burger in Boston would be EXACTLY the same as a burger in Batesville.
What about the machine to put the bun on the conveyer belt? What about the machine to fold the burger into its wrapper? What about the machine to scoop the fries? What about the machine to pack arbitrary combinations of burgers and fries into bags (while solving the associated 3d, non-uniform-size, variable objects packing problem)?
The cost of the machinery to do all that starts to add up, when you're talking about automating thousands of restaurants. And then what happens when the company decides to add a salad (or other new item type) to the menu?! Not only do they then need [thousands of copies of] a whole new machine -- and have to wait for those thousands of machines to be built, instead of just training the employees of each store in parallel -- but they also have to figure out how to fit it in with the rest of the assembly line.
Also don't forget that all these machines have to be cleaned periodically, and cleaning up the non-automated appliances already takes several employee-hours every night already. If you increase the amount of machinery, you increase the effort needed to keep it clean.
I'm not saying that automating fast food isn't technologically possible; it clearly is. I'm just not convinced that it's as economically advantageous as you'd have us believe.
BTW have you seen the robotic road builder they are testing in i believe its Korea?
Being a civil engineer who worked in fast food (or at least, "fast-casual") restaurants as a teenager, I can tell you that automating road construction is a lot less complex than automating a restaurant (especially a restaurant that serves more than one type of item).
We ALL know that every single fast food joint could be replaced by a modern assembly line tomorrow, yes? its only the government subsidizing the pathetic wages with assistance that allows these companies to employ humans. make them pay a living wage and they would all be robotic by the end of next year.
I'm not entirely convinced of that, for two reasons:
Fast food requires a certain amount of versatility. Not only do the workers prepare food as well as handle customers and clean and maintain both the tables and the machines, but they also have to be able to customize the menu to the customer's request.
By its nature, fast food production cannot be centralized: the stores need to be spread out so that they're close to all the customers. Automating a centralized factory is expensive; automating thousands of distributed restaurants would be prohibitively so.
Increasing the energy in a system (i.e., heating it) increases the volatility of that system. Global warming causes record cold and snow for the same reason that shaking a glass of water causes waves (with peaks and troughs).
The best part about the alternative fuel plate (other than raising awareness), and what makes it worth the extra $35/year fee, is that it also would let me drive my myself in the HOV lanes (or for free in the HOT lane).
It used to have a wildflower plate, until the state started charging $35/year to renew it each year.
Next year, I think I'm going to try applying for an alternative fuel tag -- looking at the application form, it has checkboxes only for "CNG or LPG", E85, or Electricity (no biodiesel), but the law it references reads as though biodiesel would qualify. I didn't think before I was eligible, but looking up the tag info to reply to your post made me realize I might be. Thanks!
Also, if these people are getting degrees, why not make their own jobs rather than expect someone else to make one for them?
Because in some of these fields, at least, the degree isn't the only thing you need to be qualified. For example, as a civil engineer I pretty much can't "make my own job" until I get a PE license, and I can't get a PE license until I spend 5 years working for somebody else.
Okay, so not many Diesel Volvos here (compared to VWs and MBs, which have continued to get imported all the way up to the current model year).
Oh, I see, very clever, make them pull off for a KFC stop, thereby ensuring the supply of fryer oil you need to run your hippymobile.;)
Heh, "hippymobile" is more right than you know -- my car isn't just a VW, it's a Beetle!
The chicken fat feedstock comes from chicken processing plants (not from restaurants) though. Unfortunately, the only biodiesel processor around here using fryer oil feedstock doesn't supply to the public (they supply fuel to the bus system at one of the local universities).
Volvo isn't currently shipping new diesels here (and hasn't for many years). I suppose saying there are none was inaccurate, but there sure aren't many around anymore.
By far, the most common diesels available (other than big trucks) are Volkswagens and MBs because they kept selling them more or less continuously. Mine, for example, is a 1998 model, and people commonly run biodiesel in VWs as new as 2006. (Biodiesel isn't recommended on newest ones, model year 2010+, because they have fancy emissions systems that could get screwed up and the community hasn't decided on a solution yet.)
By the way, there's no need to "convert" to biodiesel; you just pump it and go. You're thinking of burning straight veggie oil (SVO), which requires modifications to the car in order to either heat up the fuel to reduce its viscosity, or to switch fuels mid-drive in order to keep dino-diesel in the injection system at startup/shutdown. SVO entails modifying the car to fit the fuel; biodiesel entails modifying the fuel to fit the car.
This is Slashdot; of course I didn't read the link!
I did now, though, and it was actually pretty interesting. However, he still glossed over the whole "HFCS vs. sugar" issue (and I disagree with his assessment: if the issue is whether fructose is worse for you than glucose -- and that is the issue -- then the ratio of fructose to glucose does matter).
Because (in the short term, at least) pretty much everything you'd buy with BitCoins is purchased over the Internet, and if you're buying online anyway then you might as well buy from the cheapest country.
That's one person's opinion; there are lots of other people who really do prefer soda with sugar instead of HFCS because it's real sugar. Witness the popularity of Pepsi Throwback (and Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew throwback, and Sierra Mist Natural), which I always prefer even though they have exactly the same price, packaging, and country of origin as their "regular" HFCS equivalents.
In fact, I'm much more likely to buy Pepsi Throwback than Mexican Coke because I'm price-sensitive: I'd love it if Coca-Cola started selling real sugar stuff in the US, in cans and 2-liter bottles.
Destroying a particular building containing civilian human shields is still entirely different from indiscriminately leveling an entire city, which is what I was talking about.
I think that, given modern standards for how many civilian casualties are allowed before its considered a war crime, as well as modern precision targeting technology, Dresden-style indiscriminate firebombing would be just as unacceptable as nuclear bombing.
One particularly concerning issue is that filtration events in the future don't need to be events that lead to full-out extinction. We've used most of the easily accessible oil and a fair bit of the easily accessible coal, and those resources were necessary to get to our current tech level. If some event sends our tech level back a few thousand years (or possibly even only a few hundred) it may well be that we won't have the resources necessary to return to a technologically advanced situation.
I wish I hadn't already posted in this thread, because that's a particularly interesting idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I was just talking about the issues associated with automating fast food restaurants, not trying to solve all of society's problems!
As far as the latter conversation goes, though, I find your alarm kind of strange. Isn't a Utopian society where the humans can have lives of leisure because the machines are doing all the work the goal here? It seems that way according to a lot of sci-fi...
What about the machine to put the bun on the conveyer belt? What about the machine to fold the burger into its wrapper? What about the machine to scoop the fries? What about the machine to pack arbitrary combinations of burgers and fries into bags (while solving the associated 3d, non-uniform-size, variable objects packing problem)?
The cost of the machinery to do all that starts to add up, when you're talking about automating thousands of restaurants. And then what happens when the company decides to add a salad (or other new item type) to the menu?! Not only do they then need [thousands of copies of] a whole new machine -- and have to wait for those thousands of machines to be built, instead of just training the employees of each store in parallel -- but they also have to figure out how to fit it in with the rest of the assembly line.
Also don't forget that all these machines have to be cleaned periodically, and cleaning up the non-automated appliances already takes several employee-hours every night already. If you increase the amount of machinery, you increase the effort needed to keep it clean.
I'm not saying that automating fast food isn't technologically possible; it clearly is. I'm just not convinced that it's as economically advantageous as you'd have us believe.
Being a civil engineer who worked in fast food (or at least, "fast-casual") restaurants as a teenager, I can tell you that automating road construction is a lot less complex than automating a restaurant (especially a restaurant that serves more than one type of item).
Not a fan of Burger King's "have it your way" slogan, eh?
More to the point, "fast-casual" places like Blimpie and Moe's Southwest Grill serve inherently customized food.
I'm not entirely convinced of that, for two reasons:
Of course the act of trading affects the price; that's how speculation bubbles form!
As long as they don't paint it with rocket fuel, it'll be fine.
Increasing the energy in a system (i.e., heating it) increases the volatility of that system. Global warming causes record cold and snow for the same reason that shaking a glass of water causes waves (with peaks and troughs).
They don't just pick climate science; they complain about [evolutionary] biology and cosmology too.
<apple_fanboy>The Apple Newton was prior art for Palm Pilots!!!!</apple_fanboy>
Also, the IBM/BellSouth Simon would be prior art for touch on a smartphone.
The best part about the alternative fuel plate (other than raising awareness), and what makes it worth the extra $35/year fee, is that it also would let me drive my myself in the HOV lanes (or for free in the HOT lane).
It used to have a wildflower plate, until the state started charging $35/year to renew it each year.
Next year, I think I'm going to try applying for an alternative fuel tag -- looking at the application form, it has checkboxes only for "CNG or LPG", E85, or Electricity (no biodiesel), but the law it references reads as though biodiesel would qualify. I didn't think before I was eligible, but looking up the tag info to reply to your post made me realize I might be. Thanks!
Because in some of these fields, at least, the degree isn't the only thing you need to be qualified. For example, as a civil engineer I pretty much can't "make my own job" until I get a PE license, and I can't get a PE license until I spend 5 years working for somebody else.
WTF are you talking about? Do you not understand that "USN" means "United States Navy?" If that's not government assistance, I don't know what is.
Okay, so not many Diesel Volvos here (compared to VWs and MBs, which have continued to get imported all the way up to the current model year).
Heh, "hippymobile" is more right than you know -- my car isn't just a VW, it's a Beetle!
The chicken fat feedstock comes from chicken processing plants (not from restaurants) though. Unfortunately, the only biodiesel processor around here using fryer oil feedstock doesn't supply to the public (they supply fuel to the bus system at one of the local universities).
Volvo isn't currently shipping new diesels here (and hasn't for many years). I suppose saying there are none was inaccurate, but there sure aren't many around anymore.
By far, the most common diesels available (other than big trucks) are Volkswagens and MBs because they kept selling them more or less continuously. Mine, for example, is a 1998 model, and people commonly run biodiesel in VWs as new as 2006. (Biodiesel isn't recommended on newest ones, model year 2010+, because they have fancy emissions systems that could get screwed up and the community hasn't decided on a solution yet.)
By the way, there's no need to "convert" to biodiesel; you just pump it and go. You're thinking of burning straight veggie oil (SVO), which requires modifications to the car in order to either heat up the fuel to reduce its viscosity, or to switch fuels mid-drive in order to keep dino-diesel in the injection system at startup/shutdown. SVO entails modifying the car to fit the fuel; biodiesel entails modifying the fuel to fit the car.
First, people convert VWs and Mercs (in the US, at least -- no Diesel Volvos here).
Second, mine smells like fried chicken ('cause I run biodiesel made from chicken fat), thankyouverymuch!
The headline should have been "biofuels replace petroleum..."
This is Slashdot; of course I didn't read the link!
I did now, though, and it was actually pretty interesting. However, he still glossed over the whole "HFCS vs. sugar" issue (and I disagree with his assessment: if the issue is whether fructose is worse for you than glucose -- and that is the issue -- then the ratio of fructose to glucose does matter).
Because (in the short term, at least) pretty much everything you'd buy with BitCoins is purchased over the Internet, and if you're buying online anyway then you might as well buy from the cheapest country.
That's one person's opinion; there are lots of other people who really do prefer soda with sugar instead of HFCS because it's real sugar. Witness the popularity of Pepsi Throwback (and Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew throwback, and Sierra Mist Natural), which I always prefer even though they have exactly the same price, packaging, and country of origin as their "regular" HFCS equivalents.
In fact, I'm much more likely to buy Pepsi Throwback than Mexican Coke because I'm price-sensitive: I'd love it if Coca-Cola started selling real sugar stuff in the US, in cans and 2-liter bottles.
Destroying a particular building containing civilian human shields is still entirely different from indiscriminately leveling an entire city, which is what I was talking about.
I think that, given modern standards for how many civilian casualties are allowed before its considered a war crime, as well as modern precision targeting technology, Dresden-style indiscriminate firebombing would be just as unacceptable as nuclear bombing.
I wish I hadn't already posted in this thread, because that's a particularly interesting idea.
All the nuclear sites around the world that existed in 1883? Yeah, lots of fallout from those...
Send an email to CmdrTaco.
...oh wait.