Re: Soliciting Feedback: OS Design

This topic will quickly be ruled "OT" so I'll get in quick to beat
the gun.:-)

What you are looking to do almost fits in the "perpetual motion
machine" round-bin. Almost.

It violates some basic laws of logic and a whole bunch of economic
ones.

Logic law: A system can never be completely self-aware. The volume of
information data to completely describe any system has to exceed the
system itself. It's a never-ending and growing circle if you add that
self-description data to the system. You do, the system gets bigger
and the data to describe the added self-description grows as well.
Around and around.

Economic laws: So let's say you overcome the above. Some parts of the
self-replicator are made of tool-steel and aluminum, other parts are
made of silicon, copper foil and fiberglass-epoxy.

Objection 1: You have to purchase the diverse raw materials your self-
replicator needs to self-replicate. Some of these materials are of a
special and rare nature. Will you pay significantly less for them
than you you would for the fabricated replacement part?

Objection 2: You pay for a specific function from a mechanism. A
router does a truly crappy job milling tool-steel and a mill suitable
for milling tool-steel makes for a really poor 4' by 8' wood router.
Let's not even touch the pick-and-place function, board etching and
drilling and reflow oven functions to self-replicate electronics. How
much would this "Swiss-knife" machine cost versus one meant for the
task at hand; route wood, mill steel or SMT-mount PCBs?

Objection 3: You don't have a self-replicator turning out copies of
itself when things are going well. You need a copy when the original
breaks. When it's broken, how is it going to turn out a copy of
itself?


About ideas and names: Naming things is the easiest task. For that
reason it should reserved for after you have done the hard work of
actually building your idea and having a working version. Name it
after the work is done, not before. That's good form.

Mariss



--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "Dennis Schmitz"
<denschmitz@...> wrote:

>
> A couple of years back, I saw a project being done out of a

university

> that was a first attempt at a self-replicating robot. The idea was
> that it would use various plastics and metals to create circuits and
> other parts. The idea was far to ambitious to succeed today, but it
> got me thinking.
>
> A first step toward such a thing, and indeed toward a completely

self

> replicating factory might be a machine tool that would ship with
> complete plans to make all of the parts of itself. Sure, this ruins
> the business models of a company that might want to sell them, but
> that's not the point, rather the point is, is it feasible?
>
> A complete machine would need lots of electronics and proprietary

CAD

> software to build, but that can all be bought off-the-shelf, making

it

> conceivable that once you have a machine, you can make more of them
> with it.
>
> Sticking with mechanical stuff (because manufacturing multilayer

PWBs

> is still difficult), what would such a machine look like? How many

of

> the parts could be made with milling and lathe operations? Is free
> motion control software mature enough? What CAD formats should be
> used? How can we reduce the number of different materials required?
> Could enough people get interested in it to create a
> electro-mechanical equivalent of open-source software?
>
> I'm just interested in your thoughts about what it would take to

build

> a basic machine assuming you can buy some stuff like motors and

screws

> and single-board computers.
>
> What about licensing? Would people put up with software that
> occasionally insisted on building a spare part?
>
> Imagine 20 or 100 years out, could this base design evolve into
> something truly automatic, say garage sized, that had the capability
> to create everything necessary to make itself, including
> semiconductors. Assuming it could create all kinds of other stuff,
> from watches to cars, how would this change the world? Do we really
> want to give every tinkerer or psychotic teenager the ability to

build

> a fighter jet or nuke from scratch?
>
> What should it be called? (I'm partial to simple names

like "Factory v0.001")

>
> Sorry if my random Sunday daydreams bore you -- feel free to ignore.
>