[ExI] Vinge finally cracks the NYT

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thursday 28 August 2008, Emlyn wrote:
> >> Now, our 3d printer can make widgets. Assuming it does an ok job,
> >> it has the benefit that you can get designs online from the
> >> iWidget store, or FreeWidget.org, or bittorrent of course. You can
> >> modify it if you like (I'd like my new doorknob in pink). And it's
> >> cheapish to produce because you didn't pay for shipping, or energy
> >> costs, or the overheads of vertically integrated mega corps, just
> >> a feedstock cartridge and possibly the design if you are feeling
> >> like an especially good little consumer. And, this is big, and you
> >> know that no slave labour was involved, and no brown coal was
> >> burned. Your new widget isn't a symbol for Damage.
> >
> > Emlyn, in our other recent discussion you admitted an ignorance to
> > some software tools like apt-get and other software repository hubs
> > out there on the net at the moment (no biggie, just bringing this
> > up for a second). They're currently considering a reimplementation
> > of the apt-get architecture with something called 'debtorrent'.
> > Take a look:
>
> [snip]
>
> I love p2p :-) A p2p auto update system is a cool idea. You could do
> it safely too, couldn't you, with digital signatures?

Yeah, actually APT switched over to pgp or md5 signatures and signing 
and now asks me when there's no signature provided for the packages. 
It's actually kind of annoying ;-) because I haven't configured it yet. 
Heh. I have to answer the questions each time for whether or not to 
install various packages that I type into the shell.

> So it may be in our near future that some amount of server resources
> become effectively free. I don't know how that works economically,
> but I don't know how now works economically either. Or, we're in a
> bubble and it bursts, that happens too iirc.

Ah, well, there's always the boom-and-bust cycle of development. Do some 
work, your big boom, then bust, but you leave everything behind so that 
the cycle can repeat without reinventing the wheel.

> > So what I'm doing with a few others at the moment is working on
> > some of those issues when it comes to manufacturing and design etc.
> > There's a way to use this sort of system to aggregate the self
> > identifying "maker" community (the one that would still exist even
> > without the Make/O'Reilly brand) and have all of the contributions
> > and packages link together in the same way that it works for
> > debian. Except instead of downloading your software, you just
> > downloaded your bread-and-toast machine thingy or I honestly don't
> > know what you would want. Maybe an in vitro meat machine? Perhaps a
> > new doorknob for starters.
>
> Do you think you need a system as powerful for hardware designs as
> you need for software? Software is a special domain, because it has
> incredibly complex dependencies. Hardware models would seem to me,
> otoh, to look more like music or video or text; relatively standalone
> files/sets of files describing the thing. So do you need much more
> than standard p2p or a standard file repository type website for
> that?

Yes. Manufacturing has ridiculously more complicated dependencies. Have 
you ever toured automobile factories, or semiconductor manufacturing 
facilities? The multibillion dollar monsters. Plastic models are one 
thing, but there's so many other materials and interesting properties 
that can't just be boxed into "plastic prototyping" and such. I 
remember reading "The Cambridge Guide to the Material World" which, 
while it doesn't have a manufacturing perspective, showed an 
interesting overview in a Feynmanesque style from quantum theories to 
crystallography and geologies. These all have functional definitions 
that we can capture in our code and programs -- not just lots of 
information sitting on a website like Wikipedia. ;-)

And everything is a 'standard file repository' - even your email inbox, 
so I dunno if it's a fair question you see.

> > There was a site I once saw that was aptly named. One of the
> > biggest distributions of linux in the world is ubuntu at the
> > moment, it's based off of debian and is well known. So, the site I
> > found was something like: http://fabuntu.org/ which tries to be the
> > operating system of the fablab / fab at home idea. But it kind of
> > doesn't take itself as seriously as it should -- just as there's
> > "print servers" there should be "fabrication servers" (on the
> > network) to interface with the machinery (and this is, in fact,
> > what happens on the factory floors. Or at least if the consultants
> > did things correctly ..).
>
> Do you need a whole specialised OS to do fabbing? Why is it not just
> application software + drivers?

Debian is a distribution of the linux kernel plus all of the other tools 
that come with. The drivers are a part of the operating system 
in "kernel space", so the answer is really mixed depending on where you 
draw the line. Generally, yes. You have to interface with the machinery 
and translate from the information in the repositories into executable 
code for the machines (or people reading instructions on a diy 
document) to make whatever it's supposed to be making.

> > Mmm, the biotech is doing well on its own. I'm seeing personally to
> > that, such as through the toolkit I released a while back.
>
> ?

http://biohack.sf.net/

I'll look into your other request.

- Bryan
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