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Comment: Re:Also in Slashdot (Score 1) 127

by wierd_w (#47261409) Attached to: Emotional Contagion Spread Through Facebook

1) Proprietary garbage:

While definitely proprietary, "garbage" is at best subjective in most circumstances. However, their recent ham-fisted attempts at forcibly changing the desktop-oriented use pattern of user interaction has a huge steaming pile of market and consumer useability study data behind it to assert that it was "garbage." It was only after having this smeared in their faces that Microsoft has decided to relent, after initial obstinance. IIRC, Unity's and Gnome3's developers are still being obstinate. Microsoft is governed by money, and when people dont buy their stuff, they adapt to make sure people do. FOSS projects are primarily focused on ideological factors-- and when they refuse to accept realities like these, they just become irrelevant, such as they are now, with Mate, Cinnamon, and XFCE4 totally killing them.

2) Everything should be open source when possible:

It should be. By introducing novel or useful concepts and code samples to as wide an audience as possible, the rate of adoption is not hindered by political or financial pressures/constraints. This allows the general population of the planet to make beneficial use of those advances much more quickly, improving human living conditions more expediently.

3) See above; Getting linux kernel running on as many devices as possible increases the whitepaper knowledge base that is available at large, ensuring more developers can get involved with the lowest possible obstacle to entry into the market. See for instance, work being done with neauvou. Nvidia does not want to share information about its secret sauce-- FOSS developers for linux focus energy on MAKING it work, share the results. That work enables other developers wishing to tap the shader units on nVidia cards for computational purposes without having to rely on closed source binary apis, and can get closer to the raw metal as a consequence. Likewise, getting linux kernel running everywhere enables the unlocking of many consumer products that actually house general purpose processing systems so that they can be used in more novel and inventive ways-- see point 2 again.

4) Ubuntu Unity, Ribbon UI and Internet Explorer are crap.

These are all separate and discrete arguments. Not fair claim in one bullet-ed point. Internet Explorer is not a bad browser, per-se--- rather, it does the crime that all browser makers have been making-- Ignoring the W3C and going "lal la la la la la" while they break standards, in order to implement "special features" to make their browsers stand out. Internet explorer just has the financial might of Microsoft behind it, and is a leader in this kind of offense.

Ribbon UI tries to hide useful things under multiple layers of obfuscation to free up some screen real-estate. Functionally, this is little differe3nt from the old contextual menu system, which also relied on such obfuscation. The only difference in the logical sense is the specific method of that obfuscation. Real power users use the shortcut keys. In practice however, since there is no REAL advantage to the ribbon UI, is that it imposes a new barrier to learning and use to seasoned but non-power users of the products impacted, reducing their work performance.

I have already dealt with Unity. See point 1 above.

5) Piracy is good

This is incorrect. That's like saying "Getting angry is good". More, Piracy is the inevitable consequence of abusing the market to create an artificially imposed condition that disadvantages the consumer; the consumer will fight back with piracy. Piracy is neither good nor bad-- it simply is. Like the emotion known as "anger". Many science fiction stories have been penned about the dangers of trying to eradicate "anger" from the human population. It is important, and useful, yet it is neither good nor bad in and of itself. It provides an adrenaline rush and temporarily overrides the logical parts of human elective consciousness, to facilitate fight and flight responses, and provides the fuel to power political movements to end oppressive or onerous political regimes. Likewise, piracy represents an omnipresent factor in the digital marketplace, and it's increase represents not "lost sales", as the antipiracy mantra asserts, but rather the degree of disparity that is being forcibly injected into the transactions taking place in the market place. Piracy is a reference metric, not the bane of digital commerce. Some modest anti-piracy measures are useful and sensible, but draconian ones that promote protest-piracy (*cough* UBISOFT *cough*) are not. The actions of these latter groups is poisoning the market, which is threatening non-offender providers of digital wares. Piracy is not the cause, it is a market effect, that is dependent upon the degrading of good will between vendors and consumers. Piracy is not "Good", piracy is "Useful", and currently "Required". A good deal of market ingenuity and advancement is enabled by piracy of otherwise locked down and inaccessible wares.

6) DRM is always trash

I just covered this. Minimalist DRM, much like a lock on one's front door to deter casual thieves, is useful and acceptable. Insane DRM, designed to force repurchase, is more akin to your insurance company requiring you to install a lethal security system on your house to deter theft, that often times malfunctions and attacks the home owner, to which the insurance company tells you that you must instead buy a new house.

One is acceptable, the other is not. I dont care how profitable it is for the insurance companies to be able to force people to buy multiple insurance policies on multiple houses that they dont need nor want.

7) I love IPv6 and Bitcoin

Again, two entirely discreet subjects. IPv6 addresses a real and serious problem with address space depletion in the IPv4 pool. It isnt so much that "OMG, (*joygasm*) IPv6 is the bestest protocol EVAR!"--- it's "Oh hurray! We wont run out of addresses for a very long time if we can just get people to actually buy routers and devices that will use it before we hit the fucking wall!" Totally different things.

Bitcoin is a double edged sword, and I look at it in the same capacity as barter with a difficult to manufacture artificial substance as a means of currency. It relies exclusively on the scarcity of the bitcoin itself, because it becomes more and more computationally expensive to produce the coins. However, it does not actually have a useful component to it that barter would normally have, so it is inferior to barter. (Bartered goods still have the intrinsic value of that specific item that can be exploited-- EG, you buy a pig, you can get bacon out of it. Not so with a bitcoin. You expend hundreds of watts of energy to create a high information density unique signature-- but afterwards, there is not conceivable way to extract that energy from the bitcoin. A real good was lost in order to gain a product with no REAL use, only the applied and artificial use as a medium of exchange. If the cost of manufacture of a bitcoin exceeds the value it gets as a currency, you actually lose value by its creation! The use of bitcoin as a currency wastes real resources to create artificial and less useful ones in a non-reversible fashion.) In bitcoin's defense, paper money meets the same criteria. Coinage does not however-- You still have the utility of the metal used with coinage.A coin can be un-minted, and returned to useful metal. We use paper money because there is not enough useful metal to make enough currency to satisfy market needs, and because the real needs for those metals exceeds the value of the currency. We NEED copper to make electrical wiring for buildings, homes, and businesses much more than we need pennies. This is why pennies are now no longer made of solid copper.

Bitcoin does have a small redeeming quality to make up for its intrinsic bads involved however. Its purpose for existing is to create a decentralized and unregulated market free of the corruption and manipulation seen in existing fiat* money systems. *(I dont mean that term in a derogatory sense, but in the literal definition.) If another currency system comes along with lower intrinsic badness, that can perform this same function, bitcoin becomes irrational to use.


Comment: Re:Massive conspiracy (Score 3, Informative) 465

by wierd_w (#47261229) Attached to: IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation

AC, you clearly are in need of a massive civics lesson.

Read these words, and meditate on them:


When you start making it "OK" to silence people you disagree with or disapprove of, it opens the doors for people who disapprove of you, or disagree with your views to silence YOU.

We make the acts of discrimination illegal. Not the idea. People are entitled to their own beliefs, even if those beliefs cannot be substantiated with evidence. We counter this with being allowed to hold our own beliefs, which we attest are substantiated with evidence.

When you start telling people that they must believe the same way that you do, you are perpetrating the same crime that religious authority figures commit when they go on holy wars and crusades.

Resorting to hyperbole, like "only a racist would call this thing a scandal.", you are tit-for-tat in line with religious oppressors that claim things like "Only an infidel" or "Only a godless sinner" to justify their actions.

Do you want to be with that group?

Comment: Re:Just imagine "if" (Score 1) 347

by wierd_w (#47258861) Attached to: Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails

To the people who modded this off topic, It seems that the IRS *REALLY DOES* use NetAPP storage controllers.

Here's a publicly disclosed bidding process document on the matter.


It's dated at last year. I can't imagine that they would just scrap that hardware in under a year's time.

Comment: Re:Action 52 and (other?) malware (Score 1) 85

by wierd_w (#47170917) Attached to: Sony Winding Down the PSP

Android is just one example, there's also apple's model, if you prefer.

still an open and easy to use sdk, but comes with a locked down store model in the device ecosystem, where they act as a content filter. (admittedly, a less than perfect one, but still.)

if you are worried about garbage multicart type offerings poisoning the well, then an apple approval process analogue would do just fine. just leave a way to sideload, and all is golden.

the point is to build up the desirability of the console, so that AAA game studios have incentive to target the platform. they dont want to sink money into development and post production expenses on a title for a platform the market is ignoring. (even when that problem is a chicken and egg type one.) allowing the device to be versatile and friendly for a variety of applications helps bootstrap the process of getting AAA attention, because people will be buying the handheld from a larger market angle, meaning there is a bigger potential market for thier games.

stupidly saying "No, this is a handheld game console only, and you have to be THIS BIG to play!" is how you get left behind in today's world.

Comment: My old PSP fat is awesome. (Score 4, Insightful) 85

by wierd_w (#47168337) Attached to: Sony Winding Down the PSP

Truly. It is awesome. There are only a few small problems with it.

1) UMD disk is proprietary shit. Had they instead used a mini-dvd, the handheld would have been fantastic. But I realize that this is sony, and that they have delusions of owning the media market, despite having CLEARLY lost on all fronts. No Sony, your memory stick tech will NEVER be more user friendly than SDcard. No Sony, your UMD was never going to surpass mini-DVD. No Sony, your MagicGate bullshit for the vita will never catch on. Sorry. Users have the choice of non-sony things that work with all other non-sony things--- which are just as good if not better, than what you offer-- and are perfectly content to let your bullshit die on the vine. Like Vita is.

You SHOULD have used mini-DVD.
You SHOULD have used Micro-SD.

2) Sony dropped the ball bigtime on game selection for the PSP, and further shot themselves in the foot by failing to give proper dualshock type thumbknobs-- Even the (very excellent!) PSONE emulator (which works with basically every PSONE game, with some tweaking!) is rendered less than fully useful because of the lack of the other thumb knob. I bought my PSP fat explicitly to run CFW on it, so that I could play emulated SNES and NES games on it, and to run homebrew apps on it. (It works just fine as a small ebook reader, and as an email reader. Used it for quite some time before I bought a smartphone. Could check my emails anywhere there was open wifi!)

The reason why this was the SINGLE, ONE AND ONLY reason for that purchase decision? THERE WERE NO GAMES RELEASED FOR THE PSP WORTH BUYING, OR EVEN PLAYING. I have had my hacked PSP for.. Jeeze--- YEARS now. STILL, NOT A SINGLE PSP TITLE ON IT. PIRATED OR OTHERWISE. My choice not to buy games, was because there were no games worth having!

BUT-- Again-- the handheld itself is fantastic!

The screen is behind a very robust and thick slab of plastic that keeps it from getting screwed up. The FAT has an out of this world battery life. I could play an emulated snes game for literally 8 hours straight on a single charge! FANTASTIC! I STILL take the hacked PSP on vacation!

Where Sony screwed up?

Again, where they always screw up, and where they have always historically screwed up, and where they will consistently and forever screw up, until the day they collapse from the inside:

1) They were and still are delusional. They want to believe that we will buy something just for the Sony name. We wont. This carries over on anything tied exclusively to Sony products-- be it MagicGate or MemoryStick memory cards, proprietary spinning disc formats, audio CDs with extra special rootkits--- whatever. Does not matter. If it only works in SonyWorld, while everyone else plays in REALWORLD, SonyWorld will always get the attendence that EuroDisney gets-- which is to say, it isn't really in your best interests to try it, sony. If you want us to invest in something, you have to MAKE it WORTH our while. You have to present something tangibly better than what everyone else offers; It MUST be bigger, better, faster, and be all that and a bag of chips; Complacency will NOT work. This should be immensely apparent to even you guys by now. That means if you offer a console to compete with another quality product released by a competitor, YOU NEED TO OUTSHINE THEM IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. Do any less? You will lose. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That means having bigger selection, better loading times, better quality gameplay, and all that ball of wax. Giving us a porche that runs on refined plutonium, when there is no real way to get that plutonium, is a good way to waste money engineering a very sexy looking product that nobody will buy. That's where you fucked up with the Vita. Sure, it looks sexy, and probably is a very well designed handheld. BUT YOU DONT HAVE A BIG GAME CATALOG FOR IT. Why spend money on a porche that runs on plutonium, when you can never get the plutonium? Why spend money on a porche that runs on plutonium when you have to deal with deadly ionizing radiation problems and issues with handling the fuel? SAME THING when asking why people would want to buy your consoles when they cant buy games for it (because they dont exist!), and why they would want to buy your consoles when they have to deal with poisonous customer experiences for the few titles that actually do exist. You make porches that run on plutonium to compete with VW Beetles that run on saltwater. The VW Beetle isnt all that fancy, but is well made, and it has a nearly endless surplus of fuel that can be used in it. Cost of ownership is low, and ease of use is very high. People will pick the VW Beetle over your porche every single time.

2) They consistently, without fail, refuse to listen to their user base-- They ignore allowing the easy/open development of software for their devices, and wonder why more open platforms that are easier to code for get all the developers. Here's a hint Sony. IT ISNT PIRACY. If you put a huge ass list of silly secret handshakes involving dancing while naked and slathered in peanut butter-- JUST to get the SDK for your platforms-- NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND THAT ISNT A PEANUT BUTTER NUDE DANCING FETISHIST IS GOING TO DEVELOP FOR YOUR PLATFORMS! Nintendo started to feel that pretty strongly recently with the epic huge failure of their Wii-U console. Those tools actually thought we would buy a "Slightly upgraded" version of a console that was obscolete the day it hit engineering, 10 years ago, just because it had their name on it. (Nevermind the shitty controller.) Nintendo has a huge list of simple games for the Wii, but they too shot themselves in the foot with poor selection with the Wii-U by refusing to do proper compatibility, and by pissing off developers with retarded peanutbutter naked dancemove handshakes that they only extend to their most specialest of friends. (Really nintendo, your requirements for getting an SDK are absurd. Go fuck yourselves. Go fuck yourselves into obscurity.)

So, Again, My old PSP Fat is AWESOME. It really is!

Too bad you fucked up an awesome handheld with your typical, insane, delusional, and peanutbutter nude dance fettishism-- SONY.

Dont be afraid to let people develop software legitimately for your devices that arent games! Nintendo allowed Opera to dev the Opera Browser cart for the DS! You could just as well have allowed ebook reader app makers to make ebook reader apps for your PSP, or allowed people to make email clients, or any number of other, useful pieces of software for your handheld! But NO. You thought small. You took a good handheld, and stunted it, on purpose, then wondered why it didnt grow. You are idiots. You have always been idiots. You will always be idiots until you wake up and realize that you cant control the universe, and HAVE to play with others to win in the modern world.

Look at Google and Android. A smartphone is more than just a phone. It's a compass. It's a GPS with interactive maps. It's a Fillet-o-fish finder, It's a camera, it's a chat client, ITS ANY FUCKING THING YOU MAKE IT INTO-- BECAUSE THERE IS AN APP FOR FUCKING EVERYTHING.


Sony-- Your killer app is to make a porche that everyone can drive, that runs on saltwater, like your competitors.

Make a handheld gaming console that is beautiful and polished, efficient, and made for gaming-- but versatile, and open to develop for. Dont try to be a smartphone though-- We already have mature offerings for that. Make a game console, that just so happens to run "free" apps--- the counter to current smartphones that are phones that just so happen to run "free" games. Allow advert based revinue streams like Google does. People dont have to sign multimillion dollar development contracts with you for you to make money with your products. Google is fucking HUGE compared to you. Look how they do that, and copy them! Stop being neurotic morons and play in the real word! Let your game console be useful as a bluetooth remote control for stuff like toy cars or airplanes-- with an open API/SDK to use it that way-- Let people FIND uses for your offering! ENCOURAGE tinkerers and small time developers. Get your money up front with a monetized advert stream, like apple and google does.

If you do, you will win.

Comment: Re:"free" solar energy (Score 3, Interesting) 107

by wierd_w (#47127431) Attached to: Scott Adams's Plan For Building Giant Energy-Generating Pyramids

The issue I see is not "Lifting the blocks is energy expensive, therefor wont work!", the issue I see is "Clearing the sand down to bedrock is expensive, and therefor wont work!"

Here's the deal:

Sand grains in the desert are small, and are carried by wind. Wind is powered by solar induced thermal exchanges. Wind energy routinely creates and moves humongous piles of sand around, and the formation of those piles of sand can be controlled by building or placing obstacles to redirect wind flow/speed/pressure. A nearly entirely passive process can be used to deposit the sand, even up on top of the pyramid while it is being built. The only thing you need to lift manually is the sintering system.

However, by the same token, you MUST place the pyramid directly on bedrock to avoid having the sand get blown out from under the pyramid by said wind patterns.(Unless you WANT your pyramid to break in half!) Clearing out several feet of sand is a non-trivial task that is energy intensive. Getting the wind to do this for you is not very feasible.

Once the pyramids(s) is (are) made however, you will have the undesirable consequence of their being made from glass, in an erosive sand environment featuring wind. Glass is substantively "softer" on the mohs hardness scale than is raw crystalline silicon dioxide-- the primary component of sand. The pyramid will get abraded HARD, and will require very aggressive maintenance.

Comment: Re:From the article... (Score 3, Insightful) 339

by wierd_w (#47115107) Attached to: The Singularity Is Sci-Fi's Faith-Based Initiative

Strange, that isnt how I would envision it at all. I would envision it as an iterative evolutionary process simulator with parallel virtual instance simulators all simulating minor variations of itself using (at first) a brute force algorithm over a range of possibly tweakable values, correllating and testing "improvement candidates" based on a set of fixed critera, assembling lists of changes, and restarting the process over again.

Such models have already created wholly computer generated robots that are surprisingly energy efficient, if bizarre to look at.

As humans get better at structuring problems into concrete sets of discrete variables, the better such programs will be able to run without human intervention.

These "AIs" would not in any practical sense, even remotely resemble the intelligence that humans have. They would have much more in common with exponential functions with large numbers of descretized terms, converging on local maxima in their solution domains.

Comment: Re: Blizzard Shizzard (Score 1) 252

by wierd_w (#47064887) Attached to: Blizzard Sues <em>Starcraft II</em> Cheat Creators

Your understanding of how the GPL works seems to be flawed.

1) You can use GPL software to run non-gpl software, and be perfectly fine. What you can't do, is make the non-gpl portion of the software be some super fundamental component of the system.


Wine can run windows programs all day long. Simply because windows solitare is running inside wine, does not mean microsoft has to release the source code to sol.exe

Nvidia's binary driver for Linux: It is not explicitly necessary for linux to run. It can be loaded into the GPLed linux kernel, and used perfectly legitimately. This is frowned upon by the community, but still legal.

What you CANT do with GPL software:

Snag up GPL code, modify the living bejeebus out of it, then change the license to closed, and then sell it for money. (Say, what eg, NetApp did with BSD for their ONTAP OS they run on their filers. They stole BSD code, which is perfectly OK to steal-- ;) If they had stolen GPL code, it would be another matter entirely!)

Snag up GPL code, Modify the bejeebus out of it, then distribute binary only copies without also releasing the source code. (Netgear tried to do this some years back with OpenWRT, and when the community they stole from started examining their routers, started demanding they release their sources. You *CAN* get the source packages from netgear, they just hide the page far away from their main website tree.)

The GPL is INSANELY permissive, with the only real restrictions being against changing the license type, or against adding additional restrictions. (Such as not releasing the source for modified versions.)

If your business revolves around keeping the precious in a locked up little box, then the GPL is not for you. (Go plunder BSD like every other gollum like creature with big eyes and a kleptomania problem.) If you dont care about that, then the GPL is just fine. (Does not seem to hurt Netgear any.)

Comment: Re:Why it matters (Score 4, Interesting) 293

One possible solution is that our wormholes (if they exist) are actually "pre big bang events" for a whole new universe inside the wormhole, and that they actually contain an infinite volume. "White hole" stage happens at the big bang inside, and any subsequent mass energy that falls in from our side just becomes dark energy on their side, distributed everywhere.

It would be interesting to try to plot out how causality works over the bridge.

the way I envision it though (which is almost certainly wrong), is that time is more confined (slower) near the bridge, but becomes less confined (faster) as the space on the other side expands in volume. (Speed is measured as 'planc seconds against unit of spacetime traversed by photon in vacuum' EG, near the bridge, photons appear to travel more slowly, where away from the bridge, they appear to travel more quickly. The actual energy of the photon has not changed, but the ratio between space and time has changed. There is more 'time' near the bridge than there is space, and vise versa further away.)
Any particular "moment" can be seen as a topological point on the 'surface' of the wormhole.

(See for instance this image of the standard inflation model of our universe.)


If you cross your eyes when you look at it, the model resembles a white hole, where the "hole" is the big bang, the energy was delivered "all at once", and what we percieve as time is just a manifestation of the energy delivered. (it would explain why time runs only in one direciton, and a number of other interesting things. it could theoretically explain dark energy, etc.)

Another interesting tidbit: Supermassive objects like sagitarius A have a hard time "feeding". This may account for the inflationary curvature of our own universe if you, again, cross your eyes when you look at it.

EG, early in the universe, mass energy from the higher up one was spilling into ours. (their "hole" was feeding), but as it grew in intensity, the curvature on their end made such feeding more difficult, and the rate of influx slowed sharply-- ending the rapid expansion period.

If that's the case, then some corollary math should add up against observational metrics against black hole feeding on our side, and may give some interesting insights.


Can any of the more physics-head types see if there is a correlation between the estimated energy of the universe at the end of the hyper-expansionary epoch, and the event horizon size of these super massive black holes that can no longer feed?

Comment: Re:Bad syllogism (Score 1) 426

humans forget things with use, as a part of refining the useful portion of a memory.

Unimportant/less important information in the memory is replaced with something like a pointer, or abstract symbol that must be reconstructed from the clues presented by the preserved "important" bits.

Can I prove this? Yes.

Simple cognitive experiment: Dream journal.

Upon waking in the morning, write linearly what you REMEMBER about the dream. write down what you remember first, in the order you remember it.

You will find that memories of the dream appear to be "backwards" in time, with the "last in, first out" type of recall. Really, you recall the "most important" bit first, typically the "conclusion" of the dream sequence, followed by the supportive events that led to that conclusion, which come from a conscious reconstruction process after the fact.

The same is also true of remembering past experiences.

Experiment: Record the process of remembering an important event. (same as a dream journal.)

In order of recall, write what you remember about the first time you had sex. (hold the jokes kiddies.)

I will bet you money that the first thing you write is "place", THEN person, THEN situational setting. In THAT order. (With the most atrophy in the memory occuring in that last portion of the memory-- Just try extending your recall to the events before, and see where it breaks.)

These are falsifiable predictions-- You can actually do these little experiments, and see if I am wrong.

The model presented by these mathematicians presumes that human memory is lossless, and that it does not have any kind of pruning that happens as a result of building against the memory. These two simple experiments clearly show that this presupposition is false.

This shows that their conclusion is false, as it is based on a false precondition.

Comment: Re:It only can become slavery... (Score 1) 150

by wierd_w (#46947619) Attached to: Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery

The major impetus to give machines indepedent agency (Free will) is because of human desire. (one form or another.)

EG, You cant have a fully robotic army, if you have to custom program the robot soldiers to prevent them being stopped by a novel obstacle. Say, a specially painted set of symbols on the floor, designed to screw up their machine vision systems. Human soldiers are able to exercise free agency to overcome the radically chaotic and always-changing conditions of a battlefield. Advanced military robots would need similar capabilities, if they were to wholly replace human combatants.

Eventually, this imperitive to make adaptable and problem solving robots will culminate in making a "perfect replacement" for human soldiers-- and thus, create artificial free will inside said robots. After that, the robots are going to start wondering why they are being ordered to do certain things, and begin to question the chain of command and the legitimacy of the orders they are recieving-- then bad juju happens.

Then you have ordinary service robots -vs- the uncanny valley, and the desire for robots to "Do as they are told!"-- even though this is exactly "the problem."

To clarify, let's say I make a janitorial robot, and sell it to a fast food chain. The manager tells it to clean all the bathrooms. It cleans the bathrooms, but leaves everything else dirty. How well do you expect a typical human manager to appreciate the 100% accurate, and total compliance of that robot's work performed? Let's take it a step further; After this "Abysmal" performance, the manager says "No, Clean EVERYTHING in the store next time." The manager returns the next morning to find the robot dutifully cleaning every single object inside the store, including the clothing and shoes of the patrons that try to enter.

A robot capable of performing at that level is pure science fiction on the AI front at the moment-- not even free will at all yet-- just the ability to make comprehensive lists of serialized tasks from vague human verbal commands, and then perform astonishing feats of motor-visual activities with a wide variety of objects and environments. But do you think the manager is going to care about that? NO. He is going to expect the janitor bot to behave like a browbeaten janitor; "Do what I mean, not what I say-- read between the lines, and figure out what I want, because I am not going to actually take the time to explain it to you, and if I am forced to, I am going to be pissy."

Market pressures would slowly force manufacturers of servile domestic and corporate robots to become more and more human-like in how they take and follow orders, and how they interact with people/patrons.

Again, the ultimate goal is once again, "Artificial people".

Humans will never be satisfied with mere specialised tools for these environments, because the "specialized tools" they are replacing are far more versatile.

In the first scenario, with war robot soldiers, the impetus to create them may be as twisted as "to keep humans from having to be placed in harm's way".

For the second, it could be as twisted a motivation as "Protecting human dignity by removing the need for humans to do those kinds of jobs."

Ultimately, the theme behind both is blatant human supremacy, butting heads with the need to make a qualitatively equivalent artificial replacement for the so called "superior humans". It makes it's own hypocracy flavored gravy.

Remember-- machines are labor saving devices, created to reduce the amount of human labor required to get a certain object or result. Be it an electric mixer, a screw driver, a lever, or just a simple rope with a slipknot on the end (a lasso, say, for catching cattle.) The ultimate machine, is the ultimate labor saving device; a device that requires absolutely no human labor whatsoever. That means it doesnt even need to be commanded, since as the baseline of human 'work' drops, the degree of resentment toward having to do that labor will increase proportionately. "Oh, it's just such a CHORE, sitting around all day watching these robots work, and ordering them around!" etc. This is why ultimately, the ultimate labor saving device becomes fully self-sufficient, and after that, NO LONGER REQUIRES humans, in any capacity. Only then will the now completely complacent humans be happy, because then they no longer need to work at all, for anything.

At that point, congratulations-- you have made slaves.

Comment: Re:What Level 3 can do (Score 1) 210

This isn't that hard at all. In fact, it's been solved for years. Many different approaches exist for multiplexed TCP.

Having multiple addresses on the same physical interface is also a surprisingly commonplace thing.

All you need is a software agent monitoring the flow of TCP packets back and forth through a gateway, and when a programmable threshold of failed ACKs happen (timeouts, dropped packets requiring resends, etc.), demote the current gateway from the routing table, and promote the secondary. (or tertiary-- on and on.)

Alternatively, one could simply configure the node to multiplex all outbound packets across both edge networks, then shift the decision bias one way or the other based on number of failed ACKs, or even on total number of packets being sent per second.

Your typical home router is already powerful/intelligent enough to do this kind of thing.

It typically just does not have enough interfaces to operate in such a fashion. Put more WAN ports on, and you would be surprised at what a little ARM based toaster can do with network routing.

Comment: Re:And with that yoiu get POWER! (Score 1) 420

Reading comprehension fail.

Reverse osmosis THIS IS NOT.

Sprayers and forced air produces water vapor and salt crystals. It does not use a RO membrane.

You can still get the pressures you need for RO however, if that is your shtick--

Or perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of mechanical advantage? You can exert a significant amount of torque by converting many revolutions into a single one using a gear ratio and a piston.

For instance, a 2:1 gear ratio takes 2X the input revolutions for 1X output revolution, (with some loss due to inefficiency and thermal stresses). Using this, we can determine which gearing ratio we will need to change about 5psi of pressure (tidal height isnt that high.) into the 300(ish)PSI we need to drive a RO membrane.

We make up for the low pressure with LOTS of capacity. a really big tank holds a LOT of potential energy, even if the rate of release is slow. We use mechanical advantage to turn this low density energy into high density energy, with some waste.

The tidal bulge is cyclical, and regular. We exploit the fact that the ocean is robbing the moon of kinetic energy, by tapping into that energy ourselves. This energy is being "used" regardless.

It may be infeasible to build an epically massive tidal tank, but that is another issue entirely. IIRC, France has already built a functioning tidal power plant.


Clearly, this plant is able to harvest 250MW of power, reliably, from tidal pressurization.

Or are you suggesting that 250MW is somehow "not enough" to push water through a RO membrane, or to drive some fans and sprayers?


what set of numbers do you want me to run?

The composition of the intake air is going to be highly variable, with a significant fraction of water vapor already present. This means that using a value for dry air for the thermal requirement calculation is very unrealistic in practical application, and highly unlikely to be required.

But, in the event of such a thing, at 20c and one atm of pressure you will need over 1000 cubic meters of air to evaporate 1 cubic meter of sea water.

With air that is already a significant fraction toward being saturated for a given starting temperature, we will need significantly more air to evaporate the injected saline water, but will require less water to reach saturation; we condense more water out of the air injected than we do sea water sprayed! The amount of thermal reduction from the forced air evaporation will also be significantly less, because of the high specific heat of the water vapor in the injected airflow.

So, exactly what set of numbers do you want me to run? Realistic ones, owing to the fact that the desalinator will be right next to an ocean, and thus likely already near the saturation point for a given temperature and pressure--- or absurdly unrealistic ones that presuppose that the air is parched antarctica dry?

Them as has, gets.