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An Indian site, YourStory, has an unusually broad ranging interview with Richard Stallman. While much of the background and goals will already be familiar to SN readers, the interview is interesting not only for its scope but also that India is starting to take an interest in these matters.
To know Richard Stallman is to know the true meaning of freedom. He's the man behind the GNU project and the free software movement, and the subject of our Techie Tuesdays this week.
This is not a usual story. After multiple attempts to get in touch for an interaction with Richard Stallman, I got a response which prepared me well for what's coming next. I'm sharing the same with you to prepare you for what's coming next.
I'm willing to do the interview — if you can put yourself into philosophical and political mindset that is totally different from the one that the other articles are rooted in.
The general mindset of your articles is to admire success. Both business success, and engineering success. My values disagree fundamentally with that. In my view, proprietary software is an injustice; it is wrongdoing. People should be _ashamed_ of making proprietary software, _especially_ if it is successful. (If nobody uses the proprietary program, at least it has not really wronged anyone.) Thus, most of the projects you consider good, I consider bad.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:20PM (8 children)
In TOS, they didn't show that many colonies, and the ones they did show made them out to be somewhat primitive, with difficult living for the colonists. On top of that, they were constantly fighting with other empires for control of regions of space where these far-flung colonies were located. So no, real estate was not that common even in highly-unrealistic ST.
In reality, there's likely a vanishing small (if any really) number of planets in this galaxy where people could just land their shuttlecraft and venture out without an environmental suit. There's tons of planets out there, but ones where humans can live? You've got to be kidding. You're not going to find probably any that are compatible with human life the way ours is, complete with vegetation etc. One of the TOS episodes even showed something like this, with a bunch of space-hippies taking over the Enterprise and traveling to "Eden" in the Romulan neutral zone, only to find the grass was acidic and the tree fruit fatally poisonous. Now I suppose if you assume that the "Genesis device" will be invented and used wholesale, that would be a game-changer. Even that movie mentioned that there was a shortage of suitable planets for human colonization, which is why they invented the Genesis device in the first place.
So no, I don't buy it. If I want land that looks like prime real estate on Hawaii, I'm not going to find it in space.
As for TNG, they seemed to show the holodecks as being extremely limited in number, and only the highest officers getting to spend much time there. So even there, the resources are limited.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:28PM
You better get used to living indoors 24/7. I know am.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:05PM (5 children)
Growing food? Manufacturing plants?
Replicators can produce whatever you desire.
...and "waste" becomes input for the next generation of new stuff.
(We're a good portion of the way there already with 3-D printers; the biggest obstacle is archaic "intellectual property" notions.)
Recreation?
A holodeck can produce all the space you could ever want.
...filled with all the cool stuff you can imagine.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:37PM (3 children)
Say... what?
Look, just happens that I'm in need for 500g of glacial acetic acid - would you be so kind to 3D-print it for me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:12AM (2 children)
8-) I suspect that "need" is a stretch.
Right now, we've got -needs- pretty well covered.
I'll admit that -desires- are still a ways off for some folks.
...now, there is that pesky "intellectual property" thing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:20AM (1 child)
Nope, it's a real need. Not a survival level one, I could do it with 30% concentration (instead of glacial), but it is a need.
Granted, I can obtain it by other means than "replication", but since you so kindly offered to 3d print it, I thought I'd oblige...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:39AM
Chemical/drug "printing" is in the works.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a14528/the-chemistry-3d-printer-can-craft-rare-medicinal-molecules-from-scratch/ [popularmechanics.com]
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1190 [sciencemag.org]
It will be interesting to see how far we can get with this technology and how low the barrier to entry can be made (since whiners at the DEA, FBI, and DHS will be trying to clamp down on it).
Note: Acetic acid [wikipedia.org] is one of the molecules that has been detected in outer space. I couldn't find any resources about starting acetic acid or vinegar production on Mars, but I'm sure it will come up eventually once Musk wants some A-1 sauce for his human steak.
Back to the chemical printer concept. There are multiple approaches that can be used to get the chemicals you need. For example, bioengineered yeast could output certain chemicals (morphine!). A recent article about "cyborg bacteria" [soylentnews.org] had them producing acetic acid. You could automate and miniaturize [theguardian.com] the mixing of chemicals on a small scale that is not done by the chemical industry. For a space ship or Mars or Lunar base, you want a box, hopefully smaller than a car, that can produce as many possible chemicals as you might need, autonomously, with little to no chemistry knowledge required. And this is just to create vials of liquid, not replicate any object you desire.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:39PM
Why do I need space? Because I'm human and humans don't usually like being locked up in artificial environments continuously? Why do you think parks exist?
Sure, maybe if one day we build a bunch of enormous Oneill Cylinders, and even a 3D-printer which automatically builds these Oneill Cylinders for us, complete with forests, beaches, etc., space will be basically free too. But that level of technology is really bordering on fantasy at this point. There's going to be a long period of time between when we have automation doing all our crap jobs (food service, manufacturing, etc.) leaving most of our population with nothing to do and in need of a different economic system, and being able to live in robot-made artificial space habitats.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:47AM
where's the "+1 for nerdiness" mod when you need it?