Technologies that can't ever exist? Or can they?

In this interesting article from io9, the argument is made that some of sci-fi's futuristic tech just "can't ever exist in reality."

Which seems a fairly far fetched claim.  If they were stating they were things that you wouldn't see in the near term, I could probably relax and enjoy it a little more.

In some ways, they do actually acknowledge this.  They admit occasionally that things are possible ... so I'm going with the belief that they've just overemphasised the impossibility of some of the items for dramatic effect.  And for generating discussion - which they've achieved.  Certainly, they're mostly pretty far out things they're talking about.

Fortunately, I have a copy of Michio Kaku's excellent Physics of the Impossible with me, so I'll drop a line and reference to some of the items in io9's list.  Most of their items are addressed in his book.

Kaku breaks things into three sections,
- the first for impossibilities right now, but available in the near(-ish) term, say this century or so.  No known issues with physics as we know them.
- the second for things which aren't disallowed in physics, but we'd probably need to develop a new understanding of the laws of physics in order to perform them, or they'd take many centuries in order to accomplish.
- the third is for things that the laws of physics, as we currently know them, outright forbid.

And now for the io9 list:

1. Lightsabers
The argument is that you can't contain the beam, and that "a power source that powerful doesn't, and can't, exist."  Convincing argument that.
Kaku addresses this in 1.3, says there are no theoretical issues and suggests a timeline of perhaps by the end of the century, making it Class 1.

2. Human teleportation
They admit it's done on the small scale, but argue that it cannot scale, that every molecule would have to be in the exact correct location, and since it's a destructive copy, then it's a suicide machine.
Well.  Scaling is obviously a seriously non-trivial issue, but I failed to note the point at which it just stops working.  Further, our bodies aren't some fixed works of art where every molecule is forever fixed - we're a walking Ship of Theseus.  And if you've just made a copy, then if the first is destroyed on the copy process, I don't see how that's particularly relevant, let alone a reason why it can't be done.
Kaku actually vacillates on this a little in 1.4 - despite teleportation being in section 1, he says viruses and cells are Class 1 impossibilities and might be available within the century, human teleportation is Class 2 and would take several centuries 'if it is possible at all' ... 'although it is allowed by the laws of physics.'
See item 9 for a related issue.

3. Time machine
They start off by noting that it is actually possible, then quote Kaku himself to say that it would require too much energy.  And that it sets up paradoxes that cannot be resolved.
Well, time travel is a difficult one to be sure, and yet ... they're rather vague.  They don't actually say that they're only considering travelling back in time, though it is implied.  And yet the fact that relativity says that time is relative and we actively use this fact in many technologies today seems to have bypassed them.  The grandfather paradox is certainly a very interesting possibility, though others exist.
Kaku has this listed out in 2.2, saying that it might take centuries in order for this to become possible, and would require a ToE.  So other than coming to the opposite conclusion and saying it's impossible, the article pretty much echoes Kaku's points.

4. Faster than light travel
There are a lot of good points in this one, from the causation violations, to the energy requirements, to the results of using an Alcubierre drive.  I don't know that there's any one specific thing that really works against fittling, but there certainly are a lot of obstacles.  Much as a lack of supra-light travel really puts a damper on a lot of neat space travel, I have to admit there are a lot of problems.
And yes, by getting arbitrarily close to light you can get anywhere in near zero time, but it's not the same thing.
Kaku discusses FTL in 2.1 and puts it in the realm of Class 3 civilisations, saying it might be a millennium away, due to the physics required and energy expenditure.  Particle accelerators 10 LY long?  I wonder whose budget sheet that gets written on.

5. Generation ships
The fundamental problem is that apparently the resource and materials would be too great for any ship, though they see no problem with suspended animation.
Resource and materials is a challenge, it's not something that's impossible to overcome.  Scale and effort is one thing (you're heading to the stars!) but I don't see why it couldn't be done.  Of course, as with many of these items, there are other technologies that are likely to come along and mean that these are redundant, but I certainly don't see why a Generation Ship has a "fundamental problem."
Of amusement, this section says that because of the issues of Generation Ships, suspended animation would be a "much more reasonable solution."  Item 8, why are you placed so far from this one?
Kaku talks about starships in 1.9, placing them as just Class 1, though he only touches on the issues of generation ships for a sentence or two before saying it would be easier to go with suspended animation, or nanoships.

6. Gravitational Shielding
The section states explicitly that it's impossible due to violation of physics.
Kaku talks about force fields in 1.1, but I can't find any discussion of anti-gravity, so I'm going to have to leave this one.

7. Personal force fields
Well, this one follows on from item 6, but says that whilst ships could have force fields, humans couldn't use one due to being fried by it.  And it would have to use electromagnetism, since the other forces "are either way too weak or are constrained across short distances."  Given those two objections, I'm not sure how he's comfortable with force fields for ships, though I suppose you could have other shielding to counteract the force field shielding.  Not sure how that helps with the second point.
I suppose being on a ship could be easier since it's out in space surrounded by vacuum, whereas humans have adjacent material (the ground) that would cause issues.
But I digress.
Back to Kaku's section 1.1, where he actually uses a slew of technologies for the personal force field.  Laser curtains, plasma windows, carbon nanotubes, photochromatics - each one designed to stop various incoming assaults.  Within the century he thinks we'd have something that roughly fits the concept of the science fiction personal force field.

8. Reanimation from cryonic suspension
The objection here is that freezing cells damages cells, and you cannot then thaw them out without having killed them.  This one hedges its bets a few times, saying things like it's not the theory, it's just the current method we use.  And that other methods of reanimation might be possible, just not from freezing people.
This really just sounds like, current techniques are not good enough for a specific type of reanimation.
Not really sure why it needs to be this specific, except to try and make it less possible.
Kaku doesn't address this issue in Physics of the Impossible.

9. Continuity of consciousness after uploading
This one starts splitting hairs on the difference between uploading a mind ("distinct possibility") and the continuity of transferred consciousness ("open question").
Okay, splitting hairs is a little harsh.  The continuity is a real problem.  And it's a seriously intriguing thought process, that of the non-negligible transfer period of a mind ... the time of a partial mind.
And this one also raises the issue of teleportation (item 2), which they acknowledge.  Though here, it seems to be that they are admitting some of the same issues arise, that of multiple copies insisting that they're all the genuine thing (personally I don't see why they aren't), but that doesn't seem to bother them with the possibility of it all here, it just irritates them with regard to the continuity of consciousness.  In other words, now it's almost like it's "sure, you can copy people, but which one has the real mind?" and formerly it seemed to be "how could you copy people, you'd be destroying the original."  And if you can copy the mind, such that you can run it digitally, then there's certainly no impediment to copying the body, should you so desire.  Or  even constructing something else you prefer.  Like a fixed up body.  Or a non-human body.
I'm surprised there was no mention of Kurzweil or Drexler here.
Kaku doesn't give this one much of a mention, but he touches on it in section 1.7 of Physics of the Impossible, which is about robots and AI.  Towards the end he makes brief mention of the Singularity, and the possibility of either merging organics with silicon, or uploading minds.  He refers to Moravec stating that it might be in a "distant future", which Kaku says is "not beyond the realm of possibility."  Which is of course much more pessimistic than most of the transhumanists who are looking at a timeframe somewhere around the middle of the century for mind uploading and AI explosions.

10. Infinite data processing
The argument is that you can't live forever; you therefore can't process forever, or think forever.  Eventually the universe either dies a heat-death or you hit a Big Crunch.
Well, you don't really need a lot of material for this one, do you?  I mean, it's going to end one way or another, so processing and thinking has to come to an end, right?
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Kaku doesn't address the matter in his book.
And I'm sure I don't have to remind people of Asimov's most excellent short story, The Last Question.
However, there's a very intriguing book by physicist Paul Davies called the Last Three Minutes.  In the book, Davies discusses the two endpoints and whether or not an infinite number of thoughts could occur.  For both scenarios he manages to come to an affirmative answer.  If you want details, I'm afraid I'll have to refer you to the book though...

Well, that's a wrap.
It was fun digging out the old Kaku book.
Go read the article if you haven't already, since they probably explain their position better than I have.

The evolution of self checkout systems

It's interesting looking at how the whole self checkout system at supermarkets has evolved since its recent introduction (at least here in Oz).
The early systems were fairly simple.
Click to start.  Swipe things through.  Once you filled a bag, press New Bag, wait, then remove your filled bag onto the ground and continue swiping.  Get to the end and select one of several options for payment.
Then there were the systems that allowed you to remove the bag when it was full without prior notification.  Once it was removed, it asked you to confirm that you'd just removed the bag.
Now that confirmation of bag removal has gone, which, together with no need to press Start before scanning, leaves us with a smoother workflow.
This is the sort of change that could have been in the system from day one.

However, there are a few other aspects that have changed at the local, and I'm unsure as to whether they could have been as effectively rolled out on introduction.
In some ways, they seem to make the system a little more complex in order to offer more features / flexibility.
I mean, it seems intuitive enough now.  But is that just because I (and other shoppers) have had some time to become acclimatised to the system?  Always difficult to tell when you're trying to recall what things were like the first few times you encountered them.

Now we have the option of cash out or shopping to begin with, reintroducing that top level menu prior to swiping.
End level menus have changed upon completion of shopping.  I think this gives a fast and flexible workflow, but I also think it's introduced a couple of extra menu levels that weren't there before.

Certainly I'm liking where self serve checkouts have gotten to and where they are going, but it has given me some pause as to whether you can just roll out the wonderful end system on introduction, rather than going through years of modification to get there.  It's not a technical issue, it's a people process issue.
Maybe you can just introduce ultimate system on day zero.  But maybe you can't, quite.

Named return values in C++11 alternative function syntax declarations

C++11 introduced the ability to specify functions using a different method to the one that's traditional in C and C++03.  This notation is known as alternative function syntax, and involves placing the return type at the end of the function signature rather than at the start.

bool read(int itemIndex); // traditional.
auto read(int itemIndex) -> bool; // alternative function syntax.

Now, what bothers me is why can I not specify the name of the return value using c++11 alternative function syntax? Is that not a major oversight?
The parsing should be trivial, more so than allowing it in standard function syntax.

Here's what I would have liked to have written:

auto multiply(int x, int y) -> int product;
auto read(int itemIndex) -> bool success;

Of course, there's nothing that stops me now just adding this as a comment after the statement:

auto read(int itemIndex) -> bool; // returns success, or not.

But then if you're going to claim that, then you presumably would have been quite comfortable with them not allowing you to specify argument names in traditional declarations.

bool read(int /* the item index */); // returns success, or not.

The above would of course be undesirable, since the declaration gives the caller information as to what is being passed and what is being returned, which goes beyond the types.

So if we added these names to the return value in the declaration, is everything well and good, with no complications?  As it turns out, no, this would indeed raise several issues of its own. 
If you have the notation in the declaration, why not have it in the definition?  You have parameter names in the definition - you have to, if you're going to use them.  So if you supply the name of the return value in the definition, then presumably your function body is going to refer to that name.  Which is fine in a sense, since you have to return something and now you've already got a name for it.
But in that case, how is it defined?  What if the type that you are returning is an object with no default constructor?  Suddenly there are multiple opportunities for the user to have to construct / assign an object to the return value name.  Should they do this the way they would normally, but be forced to select the name that's provided in the function declaration?  If the value was a simple native type, it would be almost sad that you couldn't just write

success = true;
return success;

or even more succinctly, as you do now,

return true;

One solution would be to allow for unnamed return values, as in the second case, which are automatically assigned to the return name (or essentially elided).

Another is to allow the use of a naked return statement in all cases, and require the compiler to detect uninitialised use of the return value.

success = true;
return;

This is starting to seem a little unintuitive, though perhaps it's just because it's deviating a fair bit from previous practice. 

So having the caller see the name of the return value is as useful as seeing the name of the parameters they're supplying, but it may not be a failure in the alternative function syntax given the non-trivial issues that it raises.
I wonder if the issues it raises is why it never made it to the Standard.

On Emergency Numbers

What is the ideal emergency number?
There are different ones for different countries, such as 112 for New Zealand and 911 for the USA. But these are all fairly arbitrary numbers.
911 really is no better than 713.

It seems to me that the ideal emergency number would be something like 000, which is what Oz uses.

You couldn't use 0 by itself, as that would be too trigger-prone.
00 is a possibility, and probably a strong one.
Using four zeroes is another, but we're starting to get into the realm of an arbitrary number of zeroes now, and arbitrariness is what I was trying to avoid.

Having a string of zeroes of some length seems to be the only reasonable solution, but is this just  a case of culture bias, from living in Australia with such a system?

Symphony of Legends

So tonight the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra together with the Concordis Chamber Choir performed music from many contemporary video game favourites.  Plenty of stuff from Blizzard with various selections from Warcraft and Starcraft, along with Uncharted 3, the Bioshock games, Skyrim and plenty more.  Above and behind the orchestra were large screens showing off gameplay and cinematics from the games being played. 
Oh, seeing the Protoss on the big screen! 
Oh, seeing Diablo on the big screen!
Speaking of which, we heard Diablo 3 music!  We saw Diablo 3 footage!  It was all pretty glorious.  Of course, a number of people were pulling out phones at that point for a snap or two.

The general lighting effects during the pieces were quite well done.  There were all manner of colours and arrangements dancing along the ceiling, along the walls and out of the side spotlights.

The night was hosted by Wil Wheaton, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub.  From the description of the event it sounded like Wil would "make an appearance" (I took this to mean pop in and say hi halfway through then promptly leave) but Wil actually was there the entire night. 
I wasn't expecting the guys to pop in between each different game, but they did a great job with highlighting not just the particular game and what it brought to the experience, but also a brief background on who composed the music and any interesting anecdotes from its creation.

Soul Caliber capped off the end of the night.  Oh my, you forget how exaggerated those female characters are until they're on the big screen in all their beyond-comic-book-art glory.  Footage from Soul Caliber, and most of the games in general, tended to be from more recent releases since it doesn't take too many years before the sort of thing you're displaying starts to look rather prehistoric.

One of the best moments of the night was actually the Soul Calibur conclusion, where two of the top aussie players dueled it out, with the in-match music being played live by the orchestra.  V1p3r played off against Woody and man, Woody was on fire.  Must have cleared the first two fights near perfect.  Lost the next, but won after that.  The crowd was very enthusiastic between rounds.  It has me thinking about seeing the upcoming gaming exhibition.

Disappointments?
No Tristram theme.  I've actually listened to this a number of times whilst working - and of course I've hit it up on youtube right now - so I was kinda thinking this would get played. Everyone loves the Tristram theme.  Hell, they even talked about the Tristram theme when discussing the secrecy regarding the recording of the Diablo 3 music.  Oh my god, I'm having serious flashbacks to standing around for ages with red and blue potions thinking how screwed I was and how I was running out of portal scrolls and I couldn't afford anything at those ripoff shops.
Oh, and no Guile theme.  But I suppose, realistically, deep down inside, I knew this was never going to get played.

All in all, a fantastic night.  Topped with ice-cream and apple crumble and black russians.  But no Wil Wheaton photo (damn you, battery) and no Wil Wheaton signed poster (damn you, hindsight).

Antonym fun

There are many words in english that you can negate by adding a prefix such as un-, il-, non-, etc.  However, several of these words are much more common in their negation than their root form.  It's always fun inserting a few of these uncommon root forms into speech:

- Complain about maculate code.
- Refer to the person who screws things up as peccable.
- Rail against nocent government policies.
- Compliment people by telling them that they look kempt.

There was a short story that I recall reading quite some years ago that was based around the use of such root words.  Alas I cannot recall the title or the author or I'd link it from here.

The page below relates a few other interesting words in the same vein:
- The opposite of indefatigable is just fatigable (both in- and de- are dropped).
- The antonym of incline is disincline, not decline ("I was inclined to follow his suggestion", "I was disinclined to follow his suggestion")

Oh, the English language: travesty or endless supply of riches?

http://www.rinkworks.com/words/negatives.shtml

Top 3 books read in 2011

Yes, it's rather late for this sort of thing: it's the last day of March and therefore the final day of the first quarter of 2012.  Somehow drawing attention to the fact that it's still the first quarter of the new year makes it seem like this isn't really as late as it is.

I didn't pay that much attention last year to the books I read, so it's all going to be a bit vague, but here, briefly, are the three best books I read last year:

In order of reading.

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi (2010)
This one stands out a little for me, selection wise, in that it was a very recent publication.  Though I have a bit of a bent these days for modern SF, that normally means reading something from the last couple of decades.
There was a fair bit of hype on this debut and it doesn't fail to deliver.  Hannu writes a very dense, very hard post singularity sci-fi novel that throws some brilliant concepts around some pretty cool characters.  Post-humans abound, working with even more powerful entities, in and around the solar system perhaps a few centuries hence.  Contains detectives, thieves, gaming culture and a whole lot of musings on the implications of future tech.
Looking forward to the sequel coming out later this year, but will need a reread of the Quantum Thief beforehand, methinks.
Trivia: contains a recommendation on the cover by Charles Stross, who wrote the very next book I read and is next up on this list.

Accelerando, by Charles Stross (2005)
Selected by me for a bookclub, since I'd been meaning to get around to Stross at some point and this one received some notoriety.  The book is a collection of 9 continuing tales, though it didn't suffer for that.  Taken together, they form a novel focusing on a man at the cutting edge of technology, and his descendents, as they head into and then through the technological Singularity, beginning in roughly the present day.  Slashdot makes good background reading for this (and even gets a mention), especially for the first third that deals with the ramp up to the Singularity.
Probably has the highest density of ideas to pages of any book I can recall reading.  Stross throws down concepts and references without even bothering to stop and see if the reader is still with him because he's already bringing something else up.

Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds (2005)
I'd picked up a slew of books by Reynolds at a garage sale recently and had rather expected that the first Reynolds books that I'd read would be the Revelation Space series.  The first book in that series was in fact sitting in my short-short list of books awaiting to be read, whereas this book had languished in a more general pool of books: the second tier, as it were.  Still, for whatever reason this book was picked up in the dying weeks of the year and wham! it delivers emphatically with a strong plot and characters, along with a high degree of page-turning readability.  It has an adventure feel to it, and is quite reminiscent of Clarke's Rama series.  A crew of comet-miners are in the vicinity of an unknown alien object that's discovered and they are dispatched to investigate.  Cue humans interacting with cool alien tech.


General Notes

All three books are the only novels I've read by those authors, which also helps me tick off on another list a couple of the authors that I wanted to read something - anything - by.
All of the books are sci-fi, and in fact all are hard sci-fi.
All of the books are quite recent, being published within the previous 6 years.
Only one book (The Quantum Thief) is set in a specific time - the other two span non-trivial ranges.
All of the authors are European, and two of the three are from the UK.


Comments on the above novels are welcome, as well as your own favourite reads from last year, whatever the genres.