A 3D Fax Machine

Well, fax machine minus the modem. But that's beside the point, the point is... O____O

Now all we have to do is figure out how to transmit the data through subatomic quantom foam and let the other universe that's developed a way to rebuild on the other side, and we've got time travel!!

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Do you have stairs in your house?

What about his Bobilne, his Samline, and his Johnline?

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Saberopus: omfq musical genuis j00 >mozart
Thrawn42689: Mozart = n00b

It'd be pretty cool if you could import 3d models from games into the printing software.

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

I don't see any reason why you couldn't. You'd just have to convert them to a different format.

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

I've never read that book. What does this thing do? Is it kind of like the replicators in Star Trek?

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Because you're as bored as I am
"This world is made of love and peace!"
"Let's live today, let's live tomorrow, and let's live the day after that, even if it means living in eternal pain."
- Vash the Stampede

It looks like it just cuts thin layers of plastic into the shape they should be and then stacks them. Wouldn't you need like a whole block of plastic just to make one 'print'? That can get expensive.

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Bliss is ignorance.

A very primitive version, but it is a step in the right direction... I've seen one make a coffe cup

From what I remember, it feeds material through a plate in the bottom of the device that has small openings scattered evenly throughout the plate (call it a holy plate if you wish ). Much like how a traditional printer prints a page 1 line (sometimes even half lines) at a time, so does this device create 3d objects 1 layer at a time, starting at the top and pushing it upward with each new layer.

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Try not, do; or do not.

Ever thought about how DEAD you are after being ripped apart at a sub-atomic level?

I mean, sure, you're re-assembled, but that doesn't change the fact that you are a COPY of yourself. And your old self is dead. Finito. Pushing up the tachyons.

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"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-Robert Jastrow

Basically, in the book they tried to build a machine that was essentially a transporter like in Star Trek, but when they turned it on, they discovered that it was capable of also sending objects through time. Sounds cheesy, but there was a lot more too it in the book.

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And everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon...
DSettahr's Homepage | Cantina Cloud

I know. I always laugh when people talk about "how great it would be to have Star Trek-style transporters"...

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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

It'd beat the hell out of having to fly hours on end to reach a destination on the other side of the world if you needed to travel. Copy of my original self or not, it'd be very cool.

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Frogblast the Vent Core!

--End of Line--

Ah, but if you are an exact copy of who you were, and your old self doesn't exist any more, How are you not you? And how could you possibly realize it wasn't you? And if you don't know you're not you, how can you not be you?

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

I vastly prefer the "ID portals" from Earth: Final Conflict... Inter-deminsional teleportation via folding of space. Theres no sub-atomic descruction, no "recreation", only a quick trip through space...



Even if the 'copy' survived, it would *NOT* be you. *You* would be quite dead, but as far as the rest of the world and your 'copy' is concerned, your still alive....

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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

Ive seen one of these before, very cool

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*

Yes. But what is you? The copy would have the exact same genetic makeup, the same memories, scars, feelings, ideas, brain.. it would be exactly the same, just built with different atoms.

I don't actually have a problem with that.. I mean, yes. I die. My consciousness goes kaput. But seconds later, a new consciousness picks up where mine left off, so in a way you don't die.

Unless you're religious. In that case, my argument is null and void for you.

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[19:59] Happy "Liar liar" dud: This is arguably one of the lowest points in my life.
[20:00] Happy "Liar liar" dud: I'm sitting here infront of my two computers wearing shorts and with no shirt, eating potato salad and orange juice, debating the existance of pants.

But if your copy is all of you that exists, how can it not be you? As Happy said, what makes up who you are? in the case of quantum teleportation, what is transfered is the exact information that makes up who you are, it cannot be any different, for the laws of mass and energy conservation will not allow a deviation.

Even if you are religious, think of it like this (i'm still sticking with the quantum stuff, by the way): If the 'copy' is, in every concevable and inconcievable way, exactly the same as the original, but the orginal is still alive, they couldn't have the same soul and thereby, are not the same person, correct? but what if the original completely ceases to exist the exact second the 'copy' comes into being. why could the copy not house the same soul?

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

Well, Star Trek's cannon is very contradictory about exactally how its transporters work...
One explination says the body is deconstructed atom-by-atom and converts it into data, which is then transmitted to the second pad, and reconverted to matter. Theres an episode of Voyager that actully shows such a transporter from the first person; the world turns blood red.

The second explination is *very* scetchy. First of all, it allows one to *exist* inside the 'beam' for an extended period of time, and even be conscious and move around. THeres an episode of TNG that shows Barkley moving around in a shimmering white world...


Now, Im not going to bother digging up links to corroborate this, because I dont really care...


Err, yeah. Anyway. I dont know enough about quantum mechanics to argue this....

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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

[This message has been edited by GBK (edited May 02, 2004).]

Forget all this namby-pamby about whether a copy is you; as soon as you enter a transporter, that is the end of your life. You will never experience anything else. And it's somehow better if other people don't know you're dead, and there's some impersonator running around thinking it's you?

Give me a shuttle, anyday...

What if the transporter screwed up, then there would be 2 yous?

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

Like William and Thomas Riker?

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Try not, do; or do not.

Or what would happen if a fly was in the transporter too and the transporter accidently combined your atoms with the fly! Oh... that would be bad...

...wait... that sounds awfully familer...

-- SavageX



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"...and if you don't like that, then you need to be slugged in the face repeatedly, until my hands are soaked in blood. Have a nice day!"
http://www.savagex.net

On the whole 'copy of you' argument:

Your body is constantly replacing the elements in your body. This is the natural cycle of our metabolic/regenerative/whatever processes. I mean, technically the original you, as in the waste of carbon that left your mother's womb, is good and dead, and probably now part of a pile of pig feces. A charming thought, to be sure.

Really there is no difference between you and a copy of you. The divergence only begins after the copy is made. In order for a transporter device to work it would have to be a perfect copy too - which means everything has to be copied over: from position, orientation, velocity, quantum state - you name it. Even the vapid "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SOUL OMGOMGOMGOMG CLONEZ!!!!" argument won't hold here.

This is just another irrelevant tongue-in-cheek moral quandary that someone dragged onto this forum from the mindless and pointlessly retarded, self-contradictory pile of crap called SD.net.

Hey, I'll take a clone of myself.

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Frogblast the Vent Core!

--End of Line--

... we certainly wouldn't.

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<Outlaw_Torn> you mean your related to that damned sasquatch, Mech?
<MechWarrior> Lets just say the part of the family tree that does fork has bossy the goat in it.

<ubuu> does hitler have a last name?

Whee! quantum mechanics is fun! I'm not going to talk about Star Trek teleporters, since most technology on that show is a load of BS. I'll be sticking with quantum theories, which may actually work. Anyway I'm going to argue some more now:



ALthough i realize this is a joke, I'm going to use it anyway since people might think this could happen: through quantum mechanics, the data transmitted from one point to anouther is exactly that which is originally there, and so if a fly or any other thing got into the teleporter when it acticvated, it would be reconstrctructed in the exact position relative to you that it was to start with. And unless you like to eat flies, it will not be as part of yourself.



This is impossible, and restricted by the laws of mass and energy conservation. In order to have two 'yous', it would require twice the mass and energy that it started out with, and as such cannot happen.



Fine. I'll see you in a few thousand years when you finally make it to alpha centauri, while i've made it there is less then a second.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

Nah, the mass and energy aren't being transfered from one transporter to another. It's just making a copy of you over on the destination transporter, and "getting rid of" the you in the source transporter. Well what if the "getting rid of host person's old body" part of the source transporter was broken. The you in the destiantion transporter wouldn't notice a thing, you'd just go about doing whatever it was you were planning on doing over there. But the source you would just be sitting there like, what the hell, this thing is broken. Then you'd try it again, and pretty soon there is 20 copies of you at the other end, all fighting each other and acting stupid.

Yeah, that would suck.

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

If you are talking about quantum teleportation, i'm right. in order to tranfer the information, the original must be destroyed. the teleportation effect is caused by the quantum entanglement of two areas of space. In the split second that they are entangled, the original is destroyed and recreated at the other side. it uses no otehr matter or energy to effect this change, other then the energy used to entangle the two areas.

[edit] Forgot to mention: if you are talking about star trek teleportation, i'm not going to argue. i have already expressed my views on that.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

[This message has been edited by Noble Outlaw (edited May 03, 2004).]

And how do you plan to target such a distant posistion? How are you going to transmit the data? Microwaves? If your even a millionth of a degree off, youll be destroyed...


[Not to mention, the amount of time it would take to transmit such a LARGE AMOUNT of data. Even if you could transmit, say 100terabytes per second, the amount of data youd be dealing with would be far, far more. So, the tranmission might take days, perhaps weeks. What if the tranmission is interupted? What if it passes by a source of interference and gets corrupted?... Yeah, I think its safe to say that 'beaming' between planets is just as unlikely as getting there quickly via a shuttle...]


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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

[This message has been edited by GBK (edited May 03, 2004).]

Noble Outlaw is right, from what I have read. I can't remember, nor do I have time to find, my source, but I recall reading that (theoretically) in order for your duplicate to be created, the original /must/ be destroyed.

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[19:59] Happy "Liar liar" dud: This is arguably one of the lowest points in my life.
[20:00] Happy "Liar liar" dud: I'm sitting here infront of my two computers wearing shorts and with no shirt, eating potato salad and orange juice, debating the existance of pants.

The targeting is different, in quantum teleportation, you'd need a console on the other side to complete the entanglement i think. That examle of mine was theoretical and includes the fact that there is a station in alpha centauri. I'm assuming Matthew would still have his reservations, and so my example still stands.

As for how the data is transferred, we have absolutely no idea how it works for quantum teleportation. For all intents and purposes, from the data so far gathered on experiments (yes, quantum teleportation has been demonstated, just at the size of an electron, though) it is instantaneous, and we haven't been able to determine what method it uses to transmit the information.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

[This message has been edited by Noble Outlaw (edited May 03, 2004).]

Yes. I loved those things, and it was the single redeeming quality of the show after the first season ended and the show spiraled into absolute crap.

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Ω of 14

Timeline was a horrible book filled with plot holes and other crazy crap.

The thing you are describing is hardly new, either. 3d printers have been around for quite awhile.

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Ω of 14

Always wondered what having an evil twin or clone would be like, or like an anti-me, that would be weird - it would like vegetables for a start...

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We are all dying to live, yet living to die...

Aye. Well, the show still had promise until season 4. Season 4 was quite bad, and season 5 was terrible. Yet another example of a good show's directors taking the "action oriented" route to ratings.

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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

Better late than a soulless husk of an imitation of a now dead me!

He had much better jokes than the soulfilled husk of you though...

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Roach - Caught in the war of hemispheres.
0 of 14.

Of course it does, that's what happens when you base a story on theoretical physics.

Bobilne eh? Oh the irony...

Anyways, yes, 3D printers have been around for a while; this is, however, the first time I've seen a desktop version.

Just google for "stereolithography"

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Death to all who oppose me!

Um.. i guess i'll take that as a complement, though i'm not sure how i warrented it...

[Edit] And jsut to tell you, Matt, i adressed the soul bit in a previous post, although whether or not you accept it is a different matter.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
Scions of Light[/i]
The Never Ending Story Squared[/i]

[This message has been edited by Noble Outlaw (edited May 03, 2004).]

First of all, it's not a complement, it's a joke. Second, it was aimed at Matthew Pate (whom I assumed wouldn't be offended) and his hypothetical duplicate.

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Roach - Caught in the war of hemispheres.
0 of 14.