The Santa Claus Machine

: Remus Shepherd
: When I think 'Santa Claus Machine', I think of a robot in a red suit.

Yes, just so.

"Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missle!"
--- Santabot

He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
Oh, you'd better not breathe, you'd better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!

--- Futurama, "Santa Claus is Gunning You Down"
(about the Momcorp Santabot that went rogue
for vaguely asimovian issues involving everybody
being put on the "naughty" list)

I can do it, I can run, I can hunt you down
You can try but you can't stop me 'cause I'm gaining ground

--- Vanessa Doofenshmirtz, "I'm Me"

On May 2, 8:32*pm, Wholly Cal wrote:
On May 2, 7:44*pm, Immortalist wrote:

A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

"Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.' Please tell me the
truth, is there a Santa Claus Machine somewhere?"


It might just be a story we tell ourselves till we grow up.

Francis Pharcellus Church: "...Nobody can conceive or imagine all the
wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world."

Yes, O'Hanlon, before he became our newsman he did found a magazine
called "Galaxy".

On May 3, 4:09*am, wrote:
In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote: A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical

...

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In quantum information & compuring it's been posited that running
a quantum computer "backwards" is a kind of "magic machine".
If you write the right kind of program for a QC you can essentially
construct any wavefunction you want -- and it's suggested (e.g. by
R Feynman) that building an appropriate wavefunction is "equivalent"
to making a physical system with the same properties.

Another way to look at "reverse quantum computation" is as a probability
amplifier -- where you try to enhance the probability of a system producing
certain kinds of final states and reducing the probability of other,
"unwanted" states.

One such mechanism has been found -- it's the Grover "database search"
algorithm. It takes a fairly general wavefunction and "amplifies"
that part of the wavefunction that is "wanted" and de-emphasises the
unwanted part. Having to obey some physical restructions means the
"amplification" is not perfect -- but that is pretty much in keeping
with things like filter theory that argue you can't perfectly
filter out unwanted frequences in a mixed waveform, but have to put up
with a curve of some kind that leaves some fraction of the unwanted stuff
in there.

A couple years back I worked on algorithms to perform various kinds of
probability amplification directly, a little bit more general than
the Grover algorithm. They enable you more easily create QC progranms
that do things like play tic-tac-toe or chess perfectly.
(I've written the TTT program, but the chess player requires too much
memory on a conventional computer to properly simulate).

Insofaras small quantum computers have actually been constructed and
performed other intersting things -- like Shor factoring of smallnumbers
(it was up to 5 bits last time I checked a few years back) -- it seems
possible that the "Aladdins Lamp" machine may be possible.

Of course, this seems a great distance from a machine that will build
a Dyson sphere. But a QC may be able to build "magical" materials,
or maybe other "magical" machines like "magic wands".

--
Ever seen film of the Polar bear bashing through the ice to get seal
cubs? *Less ice more food for the Polar Bear
* -- george , 27 Oct 2010 15:55:37 -0700

In my book 'The Cloud Connection' I have vast machines, the size of
aircraft hangars that move through devastated cities scooping up the
remains to produce materials that can be used to rebuild. I also have
the world's largest quantum supercomputer with access to all data and
communication networks, research satellites and labs. it is all
'dynamic memory' constantly creating programs and applications as
required for whatever problem it generates or encounters. There is
also a Soft-Machine military outfit that can adapt to any situation or
condition and nano-computers designed to function within networks to
identify and eliminate viruses and malicious code. This is all very
condensed and sounds weird extracted from the overall narrative flow
of the story where it blends far more naturally into the story. I'm a
subscriber to The New Scientist and regularly read various technology
sites on the web. My ideas are simply an amalgam and extrapolation of
research currently happening. The view I want to express by mentioning
these items here is that Science is already working towards devices
that seem to have 'magical / Aladdin's lamp, Valhalla oven ' or
whatever they may be called, properties - albeit in a specialised
field - be it programs, fabrics, sophisticated recycling. Why only
yesterday did I hear of a machine that could work through various
waste and sort out different materials.
My book 'The Cloud Connection' Is available from all major eBook
stores. and is free to all servicemen in active duty.

On May 2, 8:09*pm, wrote:
In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote: A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical

...

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In quantum information & compuring it's been posited that running
a quantum computer "backwards" is a kind of "magic machine".
If you write the right kind of program for a QC you can essentially
construct any wavefunction you want -- and it's suggested (e.g. by
R Feynman) that building an appropriate wavefunction is "equivalent"
to making a physical system with the same properties.

Another way to look at "reverse quantum computation" is as a probability
amplifier -- where you try to enhance the probability of a system producing
certain kinds of final states and reducing the probability of other,
"unwanted" states.

One such mechanism has been found -- it's the Grover "database search"
algorithm. It takes a fairly general wavefunction and "amplifies"
that part of the wavefunction that is "wanted" and de-emphasises the
unwanted part. Having to obey some physical restructions means the
"amplification" is not perfect -- but that is pretty much in keeping
with things like filter theory that argue you can't perfectly
filter out unwanted frequences in a mixed waveform, but have to put up
with a curve of some kind that leaves some fraction of the unwanted stuff
in there.

A couple years back I worked on algorithms to perform various kinds of
probability amplification directly, a little bit more general than
the Grover algorithm. They enable you more easily create QC progranms
that do things like play tic-tac-toe or chess perfectly.
(I've written the TTT program, but the chess player requires too much
memory on a conventional computer to properly simulate).


Have you ever heard of backcasting?

In backcasting techniques (commonly used by professional futurists) a
model is built withholding the most recent data from the human
managing the model. Once the system finds order in past data, say from
the 1980s, it is fed the record of the last several years. If it can
accurately predict the 1993 outcome, based on what it found in the
1980s, then the pattern seeker has won its wings. Farmer: "The system
makes twenty models. We run them each through a sieve of diagnostic
statistics. Then the six of us will get together to select the one to
run live." Each round of model-building may take days on the Company's
computers. But once local order is detected, a prediction based on it
can be spun in milliseconds.

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch22-d.html

.............................

Historical Reconstruction (Backcasting)

Backcasting is required when disputes arise over historical events.
For example, a group of retail customers may claim that certain
wholesale system sales caused an unjustified rise in their cost of
power, or a generator may claim that transmission access was unfairly
denied. Backcasting allows the re-creation of historical events within
a model so that the cost impacts of changes to what actually occurred
(such as allowing transmission access) can be computed. Slater
Consulting has a great deal of experience in Backcasting and provides
expert testimony in support of Backcasting results.

http://slater-consulting.com/histori...nstruction.htm

.....................................

Backcasting is the antonym of forecasting. It entails starting from a
certain Image of the future (say, for the year 2050) and working back
to the present to find out what has to happen to ensure that future
scenario is achieved.

http://www.wau.nl/cool/coolbox/natio...tureimages.htm

............................................

Or we could choose an time, say yesterday, deprive the computer system
of the outcome today, set loose an competition of intuitive pattern
seeking algorithms, select the one that found today's outcome, try and
predict tommorow with it. One of the few known techiques that allow us
to cut through extreme complexity to achieve
'simplicity_without_reductionism'.

While forecasting asks about what future is likely to happen,
backcasting examines how desirable futures can be attained. The
execution of forecasting is to provide a one-time snapshot, while
backcasting employs continuous monitoring. Forecasting uses
*extrapolation* from historical data to converge on the most likely
future while backcasting *interpolates* from the target setting to
diverge in possible futures with regard to freedom of action.

http://edie.cprost.sfu.ca/summer/mail/msg00023.html

In the above example we interpolate from what happened and how it got
there and multiple varying programs that try to get there without
knowing the outcome.

............................................

Backcasting: Forecasting is the process of thinking about the future
as an extension of the present and the past. Products developed
through forecasting are usually characterized by "er" words": faster,
cheaper, smaller, and stronger. Forecasting is a form of extrapolation
that ultimately is self limiting: sooner or later, products developed
based on forecasting will reach plateaus of diminishing returns,
become too complex, carry too much baggage, or suffer sudden
obsolescence caused by power shifts.

Backcasting is the creative process of identifying future customer
needs and core values, and interpolating back from there to current
design strategies. The starting point for the backcasting approach is
the definition of a desired situation at a determined point in the
future. This leads to the development of scenarios that connect our
present status with the desired future point.

Backcasting helps your product team identify, explore and clarify
restrictions in their thinking about new opportunities, and helps the
team to let go of these constraints. Backcasting also provides
alternatives that challenges the solutions generated from
forecasting.

Convergent Design Inc. uses an array of creative problem solving
techniques to take your team through this process, and help them to
begin a new development cycle with the future in mind

http://www.convergentdesign.com/

Insofaras small quantum computers have actually been constructed and
performed other intersting things -- like Shor factoring of smallnumbers
(it was up to 5 bits last time I checked a few years back) -- it seems
possible that the "Aladdins Lamp" machine may be possible.

Of course, this seems a great distance from a machine that will build
a Dyson sphere. But a QC may be able to build "magical" materials,
or maybe other "magical" machines like "magic wands".


About anything of any size can be constructed with embryological cell
division and exponential growth.

....a famous legend about the origin of chess... When the inventor of
the game showed it to the emperor of India, the emperor was so
impressed by the new game, that he said to the man

"Name your reward!"

The man responded,

"Oh emperor, my wishes are simple. I only wish for this. Give me one
grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for
the next square, four for the next, eight for the next and so on for
all 64 squares, with each square having double the number of grains as
the square before."

The emperor agreed, amazed that the man had asked for such a small
reward - or so he thought. After a week, his treasurer came back and
informed him that the reward would add up to an astronomical sum, far
greater than all the rice that could conceivably be produced in many
many centuries!

We are all like the emperor in some ways - we find it hard to grasp
how fast functions like "doubling" makes numbers grow - these
functions are called "exponential functions" and are actually found
everywhere around us - in compound interest, inflation, moldy bread
and populations of rabbits.

http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-k...hessboard.html

A Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis,
disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return
to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced
agricultural production. Later formulations consider economic growth
limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil
depletion...

....Criticism: Ester Boserup wrote in her book The Conditions of
Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population
Pressure that population levels determine agricultural methods, rather
than agricultural methods determining population (via food supply). A
major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of
invention". Julian Simon was one of many economists who challenged the
Malthusian catastrophe, citing (1) the existence of new knowledge, and
educated people to take advantage of it, and (2) "economic freedom",
that is, the ability of the world to increase production when there is
a profitable opportunity to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

--
Ever seen film of the Polar bear bashing through the ice to get seal
cubs? *Less ice more food for the Polar Bear
* -- george , 27 Oct 2010 15:55:37 -0700

Wayne Throop wrote:
Remus Shepherd
: When I think 'Santa Claus Machine', I think of a robot in a red suit.

Yes, just so.

"Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missle!"
--- Santabot

He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
Oh, you'd better not breathe, you'd better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!

--- Futurama, "Santa Claus is Gunning You Down"
(about the Momcorp Santabot that went rogue
for vaguely asimovian issues involving everybody
being put on the "naughty" list)

I can do it, I can run, I can hunt you down
You can try but you can't stop me 'cause I'm gaining ground

--- Vanessa Doofenshmirtz, "I'm Me"

On every corner there's a giant metal Santa Claus
who watches over us with glowing red eyes
They carry weapons and they know if you've been bad or good
not everybody's good but everyone tries

--- Jonathan Coulton, Chiron Beta Prime

Dave "not his only unconventional Xmas song either, but it's way on-topic here"
DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeableBLINK
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

In alt.philosophy Greg Goss wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it?s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_machine
The guy who first proposed such machines called them "assemblers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembler_(nanotechnology)
If you believe that software can be other than perfect, then there's
the gray goo problem.

While nanomachines may have quick engineering applications, "reverse quantum
computing" is potentially wierder -- (among other things) looking for
machines that manipulate reality directly and not by using classical
forces to push and pull matter into pretty clumps.

Imagine a segment of spacetime that just acts like a Dyson sphere, rather
than creating a huge object from some super-material to capture the energy
from a star.

--
Scientists are always changing their story and as a Conservative, I
have no tolerance for ambiguity.
It proves that all science is lies and the only thing we can trust is
right wing rhetoric.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 14 Jan 2011 14:46 +1100

On May 3, 10:52*pm, Immortalist wrote:
On May 2, 8:09*pm, wrote:









In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote: A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical

...

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In quantum information & compuring it's been posited that running
a quantum computer "backwards" is a kind of "magic machine".
If you write the right kind of program for a QC you can essentially
construct any wavefunction you want -- and it's suggested (e.g. by
R Feynman) that building an appropriate wavefunction is "equivalent"
to making a physical system with the same properties.

Another way to look at "reverse quantum computation" is as a probability
amplifier -- where you try to enhance the probability of a system producing
certain kinds of final states and reducing the probability of other,
"unwanted" states.

One such mechanism has been found -- it's the Grover "database search"
algorithm. It takes a fairly general wavefunction and "amplifies"
that part of the wavefunction that is "wanted" and de-emphasises the
unwanted part. Having to obey some physical restructions means the
"amplification" is not perfect -- but that is pretty much in keeping
with things like filter theory that argue you can't perfectly
filter out unwanted frequences in a mixed waveform, but have to put up
with a curve of some kind that leaves some fraction of the unwanted stuff
in there.

A couple years back I worked on algorithms to perform various kinds of
probability amplification directly, a little bit more general than
the Grover algorithm. They enable you more easily create QC progranms
that do things like play tic-tac-toe or chess perfectly.
(I've written the TTT program, but the chess player requires too much
memory on a conventional computer to properly simulate).

Have you ever heard of backcasting?

In backcasting techniques (commonly used by professional futurists) a
model is built withholding the most recent data from the human
managing the model. Once the system finds order in past data, say from
the 1980s, it is fed the record of the last several years. If it can
accurately predict the 1993 outcome, based on what it found in the
1980s, then the pattern seeker has won its wings. Farmer: "The system
makes twenty models. We run them each through a sieve of diagnostic
statistics. Then the six of us will get together to select the one to
run live." Each round of model-building may take days on the Company's
computers. But once local order is detected, a prediction based on it
can be spun in milliseconds.

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch22-d.html

............................

Historical Reconstruction (Backcasting)

Backcasting is required when disputes arise over historical events.
For example, a group of retail customers may claim that certain
wholesale system sales caused an unjustified rise in their cost of
power, or a generator may claim that transmission access was unfairly
denied. Backcasting allows the re-creation of historical events within
a model so that the cost impacts of changes to what actually occurred
(such as allowing transmission access) can be computed. Slater
Consulting has a great deal of experience in Backcasting and provides
expert testimony in support of Backcasting results.

http://slater-consulting.com/histori...nstruction.htm

....................................

Backcasting is the antonym of forecasting. It entails starting from a
certain Image of the future (say, for the year 2050) and working back
to the present to find out what has to happen to ensure that future
scenario is achieved.

http://www.wau.nl/cool/coolbox/natio...tureimages.htm

...........................................

Or we could choose an time, say yesterday, deprive the computer system
of the outcome today, set loose an competition of intuitive pattern
seeking algorithms, select the one that found today's outcome, try and
predict tommorow with it. One of the few known techiques that allow us
to cut through extreme complexity to achieve
'simplicity_without_reductionism'.

While forecasting asks about what future is likely to happen,
backcasting examines how desirable futures can be attained. *The
execution of forecasting is to provide a one-time snapshot, while
backcasting employs continuous monitoring. *Forecasting uses
*extrapolation* from historical data to converge on the most likely
future while backcasting *interpolates* from the target setting to
diverge in possible futures with regard to freedom of action.

http://edie.cprost.sfu.ca/summer/mail/msg00023.html

In the above example we interpolate from what happened and how it got
there and multiple varying programs that try to get there without
knowing the outcome.

...........................................

Backcasting: Forecasting is the process of thinking about the future
as an extension of the present and the past. Products developed
through forecasting are usually characterized by "er" words": faster,
cheaper, smaller, and stronger. Forecasting is a form of extrapolation
that ultimately is self limiting: sooner or later, products developed
based on forecasting will reach plateaus of diminishing returns,
become too complex, carry too much baggage, or suffer sudden
obsolescence caused by power shifts.

Backcasting is the creative process of identifying future customer
needs and core values, and interpolating back from there to current
design strategies. The starting point for the backcasting approach is
the definition of a desired situation at a determined point in the
future. This leads to the development of scenarios that connect our
present status with the desired future point.

Backcasting helps your product team identify, explore and clarify
restrictions in their thinking about new opportunities, and helps the
team to let go of these constraints. Backcasting also provides
alternatives that challenges the solutions generated from
forecasting.

Convergent Design Inc. uses an array of creative problem solving
techniques to take your team through this process, and help them to
begin a new development cycle with the future in mind

http://www.convergentdesign.com/

Insofaras small quantum computers have actually been constructed and
performed other intersting things -- like Shor factoring of smallnumbers
(it was up to 5 bits last time I checked a few years back) -- it seems
possible that the "Aladdins Lamp" machine may be possible.

Of course, this seems a great distance from a machine that will build
a Dyson sphere. But a QC may be able to build "magical" materials,
or maybe other "magical" machines like "magic wands".

About anything of any size can be constructed with embryological cell
division and exponential growth.

...a famous legend about the origin of chess... When the inventor of
the game showed it to the emperor of India, the emperor was so
impressed by the new game, that he said to the man

"Name your reward!"

The man responded,

"Oh emperor, my wishes are simple. I only wish for this. Give me one
grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for
the next square, four for the next, eight for the next and so on for
all 64 squares, with each square having double the number of grains as
the square before."

The emperor agreed, amazed that the man had asked for such a small
reward - or so he thought. After a week, his treasurer came back and
informed him that the reward would add up to an astronomical sum, far
greater than all the rice that could conceivably be produced in many
many centuries!

We are all like the emperor in some ways - we find it hard to grasp
how fast functions like "doubling" makes numbers grow - these
functions are called "exponential functions" and are actually found
everywhere around us - in compound interest, inflation, moldy bread
and populations of rabbits.

http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-k...hessboard.html

A Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis,
disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return
to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced
agricultural *production. Later formulations consider economic *growth
limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil
depletion...

...Criticism: Ester Boserup wrote in her book The Conditions of
Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population
Pressure that population levels determine agricultural methods, rather
than agricultural methods determining population (via food supply). A
major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of
invention". Julian Simon was one of many economists who challenged the
Malthusian catastrophe, citing (1) the existence of new knowledge, and
educated people to take advantage of it, and (2) "economic freedom",
that is, the ability of the world to increase production when there is
a profitable opportunity to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe







--
Ever seen film of the Polar bear bashing through the ice to get seal
cubs? *Less ice more food for the Polar Bear
* -- george , 27 Oct 2010 15:55:37 -0700

I clicked and read some of links to 'Backcasting' . a few years back
I completed a Masters in I.S. One of the models we learned about, and
I've used since in various jobs was this one.
W3 - where we were
WWR-Where we are
W2B - where we Want to Be
GT2 - (how are we) Going to Get there.

Backcasting to me sounds like a variation.
Nathan
http://www.softmachine.net

"Immortalist" wrote in message
...

A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material.


The inherent, and intractable, flaw in that idea is the only things
capable of producing 'anything from anything' is a complex
adaptive system such as a brain, intelligence, a forest or a
market system and so on. But the output of such natural
systems will always be emergent, meaning you have to let
the output create what it...will.

The very minute one asks for 'precision' or repeatability
or predictability in the /output/ of a system, is the very
minute the output is limited to only the simplest and least
meaningful things the universe has to offer.

Whether the output is allowed to emerge, or defined
precisely in advance, is the difference between
man-made and natural.

The minute a machine is given the ability to make 'anything'
is the minute it becomes alive, and free to choose for itself.


Jonathan

s



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_machine

NathanM wrote:

In my book 'The Cloud Connection' I have vast machines, the size of
aircraft hangars that move through devastated cities scooping up the
remains to produce materials that can be used to rebuild. I also have
the world's largest quantum supercomputer with access to all data and
communication networks, research satellites and labs. it is all
'dynamic memory' constantly creating programs and applications as
required for whatever problem it generates or encounters. There is
also a Soft-Machine military outfit that can adapt to any situation or
condition and nano-computers designed to function within networks to
identify and eliminate viruses and malicious code. This is all very
condensed and sounds weird extracted from the overall narrative flow
of the story where it blends far more naturally into the story. I'm a
subscriber to The New Scientist and regularly read various technology
sites on the web. My ideas are simply an amalgam and extrapolation of
research currently happening. The view I want to express by mentioning
these items here is that Science is already working towards devices
that seem to have 'magical / Aladdin's lamp, Valhalla oven ' or
whatever they may be called, properties - albeit in a specialised
field - be it programs, fabrics, sophisticated recycling. Why only
yesterday did I hear of a machine that could work through various
waste and sort out different materials.
My book 'The Cloud Connection' Is available from all major eBook
stores. and is free to all servicemen in active duty.


You have something against Veterans?


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 10, 7:05*am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
NathanM wrote:

In my book 'The Cloud Connection' I have vast machines, the size of
aircraft hangars that move through devastated cities scooping up the
remains to produce materials that can be used to rebuild. I also have
the world's largest quantum supercomputer with access to all data and
communication networks, research satellites and labs. it is all
'dynamic memory' constantly creating programs and applications as
required for whatever problem it generates or encounters. There is
also a Soft-Machine military outfit that can adapt to any situation or
condition and nano-computers designed to function within networks to
identify and eliminate *viruses and malicious code. This is all very
condensed and sounds weird extracted from the overall narrative flow
of the story where it blends far more naturally into the story. I'm a
subscriber to The New Scientist and regularly read various technology
sites on the web. My ideas are simply an amalgam and extrapolation of
research currently happening. The view I want to express by mentioning
these items here is that Science is already working towards devices
that seem to have 'magical / Aladdin's lamp, Valhalla oven ' *or
whatever they may be called, properties - albeit in a specialised
field - be it programs, fabrics, sophisticated recycling. Why only
yesterday did I hear of a machine that could work through various
waste and sort out different materials.
My book 'The Cloud Connection' Is available from all major eBook
stores. and is free to all servicemen in active duty.

* *You have something against Veterans?

A guy's got to eat.

But I believe the plan is, they read it aloud towards the enemy...

Due to a lack of specificity, every North Korean soldier has a copy,
and they"ve been drilling...