The value of smiplicity in designs and engineering
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The unbreakable rule in all of The Good Doctor's robot stories and novels was that the Three Laws could not be broken. Ever. They could only appear to be broken; in fact, that was a central feature of his stories. The puzzle was how to explain the robot's behavior. The wuckfits who wrote the screenplay for the movie simply wrote the Three Laws out of the way when they became inconvenient.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
...simply wrote the Three Laws out of the way when they became inconvenient.
There was plenty to dislike about the film, but... In Asimov's own writing, a robot (R Daneel Olivaw if I remember rightly) eventually derived a 0th law (If the robot programmers did their job correctly, the laws would have been 0 based in the first place!) about not allowing any harm to Humanity. As for the other part of the plot - a central "brain", downloading updating detrimental to the performance of individual units... they must have taken that idea from Windows Update! I too loved the I, Robot collection of stories - and cried at the end of Bicentennial Man (book, and the not-all-that-bad-surprisingly-film). Asimov was great at "Hmmm, nice thinking!" stories, so the emotional attachment over a few dozen pages was surprising. Iain.
I have now moved to Sweden for love (awwww). If you're in Scandinavia and want an MVP on the payroll (or happy with a remote worker), or need cotract work done, give me a job! http://cv.imcsoft.co.uk/[^]
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
...simply wrote the Three Laws out of the way when they became inconvenient.
There was plenty to dislike about the film, but... In Asimov's own writing, a robot (R Daneel Olivaw if I remember rightly) eventually derived a 0th law (If the robot programmers did their job correctly, the laws would have been 0 based in the first place!) about not allowing any harm to Humanity. As for the other part of the plot - a central "brain", downloading updating detrimental to the performance of individual units... they must have taken that idea from Windows Update! I too loved the I, Robot collection of stories - and cried at the end of Bicentennial Man (book, and the not-all-that-bad-surprisingly-film). Asimov was great at "Hmmm, nice thinking!" stories, so the emotional attachment over a few dozen pages was surprising. Iain.
I have now moved to Sweden for love (awwww). If you're in Scandinavia and want an MVP on the payroll (or happy with a remote worker), or need cotract work done, give me a job! http://cv.imcsoft.co.uk/[^]
Iain Clarke wrote:
cried at the end of Bicentennial Man (book, and the not-all-that-bad-surprisingly-film)
Agreed. They did a nice job bringing the story to film, and Robin Williams was a surprisingly good choice for the role of Martin.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Are you sure it's one word? ;)
-- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
...simply wrote the Three Laws out of the way when they became inconvenient.
There was plenty to dislike about the film, but... In Asimov's own writing, a robot (R Daneel Olivaw if I remember rightly) eventually derived a 0th law (If the robot programmers did their job correctly, the laws would have been 0 based in the first place!) about not allowing any harm to Humanity. As for the other part of the plot - a central "brain", downloading updating detrimental to the performance of individual units... they must have taken that idea from Windows Update! I too loved the I, Robot collection of stories - and cried at the end of Bicentennial Man (book, and the not-all-that-bad-surprisingly-film). Asimov was great at "Hmmm, nice thinking!" stories, so the emotional attachment over a few dozen pages was surprising. Iain.
I have now moved to Sweden for love (awwww). If you're in Scandinavia and want an MVP on the payroll (or happy with a remote worker), or need cotract work done, give me a job! http://cv.imcsoft.co.uk/[^]
Iain Clarke wrote:
If the robot programmers did their job correctly, the laws would have been 0 based in the first place!
Unless, of course, they wrote the robot logic in VB.NET which starts counting at 1. That also might explain some of the earlier robot issues detailed in I, Robot....
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That's a diagnosis, not an excuse.
Don't attribute to stupidity what can be equally well explained by buerocracy.
My latest article | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
That's a diagnosis, not an excuse.
Don't attribute to stupidity what can be equally well explained by buerocracy.
My latest article | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
Nagy Vilmos wrote:
Put the bird house on the ground. sheesh!
Hmm, might work. But supose you have larger song brids that feed as well. How would they get the food?
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I came up with a soltion to an age old problem:
Q: How can you keep pigions from stealing all the seed?
Requirements:
a. The pegions can't feed at the feeder.
b. The pegions can't feed from the ground below the feeder, where feed is placed and
little birds knock the feed to the ground.
c. The little birds can still feed with no problems.This would be a good interviewing question to test ones ability to solve design and engineering problems. I will post the solution in a few hours, or if someone comes up the same or equaly plausable solution. Hint: I came up with the solution because my Father started going nutz and throwing rocks at the pegions. ~TheArch :-D
Go around the corner to where your Father can't see what your doing and build a second feeder optimized for pigions. Keep it full of whatever seeds are preferred by pigions. Welfare for pigions. ...or... Enclose the feeder in a screened-in patio with the desired birds inside and all others (including the pigions) out in the cold. Welfare for non-pigions. ...or... Get your Father a new hobby that doesn't involve bird-watching.
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Yeah, but what happens when a terrorist steals the robot and makes an assassin out of it?!?!?
TheArchitectmc∞ wrote:
Yeah, but what happens when a terrorist steals the robot and makes an assassin out of it?!?!?
Then you unleash your bigger, more powerful robot killing robot...
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Member 1709723 wrote:
put feeder on island in middle of pool with sharks with freekin' lasers coded to auto fire at pigeon shaped/sized birds ..ha, you call this a challenge...
Haha, I actually thought of this minus the sharks and pond. I was going to use CUDA to do the pigeon shape detector, based on 3D exsisting object libs, and face recginion.
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I came up with a soltion to an age old problem:
Q: How can you keep pigions from stealing all the seed?
Requirements:
a. The pegions can't feed at the feeder.
b. The pegions can't feed from the ground below the feeder, where feed is placed and
little birds knock the feed to the ground.
c. The little birds can still feed with no problems.This would be a good interviewing question to test ones ability to solve design and engineering problems. I will post the solution in a few hours, or if someone comes up the same or equaly plausable solution. Hint: I came up with the solution because my Father started going nutz and throwing rocks at the pegions. ~TheArch :-D
use a net that only allows the little birds through?
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I came up with a soltion to an age old problem:
Q: How can you keep pigions from stealing all the seed?
Requirements:
a. The pegions can't feed at the feeder.
b. The pegions can't feed from the ground below the feeder, where feed is placed and
little birds knock the feed to the ground.
c. The little birds can still feed with no problems.This would be a good interviewing question to test ones ability to solve design and engineering problems. I will post the solution in a few hours, or if someone comes up the same or equaly plausable solution. Hint: I came up with the solution because my Father started going nutz and throwing rocks at the pegions. ~TheArch :-D
solution #1 put the seeds in the flat dish, with an elevated edges, to prevent the seeds from being knocked/spilled to the ground. install the wire mesh (a flat, or a dome-shaped) above that dish, at the right height, to enable only the smaller birds to get to the dish under the mesh. solution #2 put the seeds in the flat dish, with an elevated edges, to prevent the seeds from being knocked/spilled to the ground. install long nails/poles all sticking vertically out of the dish, at the right distances, to enable only the little birds to land on the dish and to walk between the poles.