HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
id <m0maL4M-0000XwC@crash.cts.com>; Thu, 1 Oct 92 00: 35 PDT
	id AA17919; Thu, 1 Oct 92 02: 56:30 EDT
	id AA13359 for ncrats!ncr-sd!crash!rec-arts-sf-science; Thu, 1 Oct 92 02: 51:31 EDT
	id AA10827; Thu, 1 Oct 92 01: 51:17 -0500
	id AA27544; Thu, 1 Oct 92 01: 51:20 -0500
	(5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA22139; Thu, 1 Oct 92 02: 51:10 -0400
	id AA28185; Thu, 1 Oct 92 02: 51:17 EDT
	id <m0maKCr-0001lmC@tous.oau.org>; Thu, 1 Oct 92 02: 40 EDT
	id <iu84504@pro-magic.oau.org>; Wed, 30 Sep 92 23: 28 EDT
From: gatech!pro-magic.oau.org!mikeu (Mike Ungerman)
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide (and further digressions)
Organization: Pro-Magic [A Proline BBS] Orlando, FL
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 23:27:58 EDT

The subject of transferring someone by matter transformation and whether
the person is the same person when reconstructed as he was when torn down
leads to similar themes in science fiction.

How about making a clone of oneself and then implanting the memory
"recordings" of the original person in the clone?  You could do this if
terminally ill, or even stay alive.  Would the clone be you? Or just
another organism with your memories and feelings?

Or, another similar theme is that of implanting your memory and feelings
into a robot or computer when you die.  Would that robot or computer be
you?

A number of books, movies and tv programs have delt with these issues, but
have treated the clone or robot as if they were the original person.  I
tend to doubt that if the original was to die that in fact the duplicate
would actually cause the orginal to "live on."

What one would seem to want to actually do is to do a brain transplant, ala
some of the flakier horror flicks, so at least "you" continue to "exist."

Mike
-------------
Mike Ungerman
mikeu@pro-magic [a Proline BBS, Orlando, Fl]
Internet: mikeu@pro-magic.oau.org
          ...!osceola.cs.ucf.edu!pro-magic.oau.org!mikeu
Voice: 407-366-5840 | Prodigy: JSNP58A | Compuserve: 71326,31
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: bcr@cernapo.cern.ch (Bill Riemers)
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide (and further digressions)
Organization: CERN, European Research Center for High Energy Physics
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 15:34:47 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.232758.162@pro-magic.oau.org> gatech!pro-magic.oau.org!mikeu (Mike Ungerman) writes:

>  The subject of transferring someone by matter transformation and whether
>  the person is the same person when reconstructed as he was when torn down
>  leads to similar themes in science fiction.

Obcourse, this is an age old philosophy problem, slightly reworded.  It really
boils down to if you consider the mind seperate from the body.  If you consider
the mind seperate, then obcourse s/he is you.  Or, at least as much you as
the person you were yesterday is the same person you are now...  If you don't
consider them separate, whats the beaf.  We all got to go sometime.  At least
this method insures the contuation of not only the species, but any contributions
you personally could have made.

                                     Bill
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: aberigan@nde.unl.edu (A. Berigan)
Subject: Re: Feedback, Boundary Conditions, and Time Travel (long....)
Organization: Ord High School, Ord, NE
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:47:29 GMT

ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles) writes:
>tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas) writes:
>>ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles) writes:

>>> Knowing something about the future or the past is like setting a
>>>boundary condition. It constrains the possible timeline into a set of
>>>timelines that contain that element.

Sorry, I'm firmly in the belief that knowledge has little to do with
time travel and jelly doughnuts.  And if it does, then everyone has a
passive knowledge about the wholeness of time.  Displace a little air in
the past, and the tornado that hit your house as a child never happened.

>>There
>>are no quantum uncertainties about the past (except for quantum systems
>>which have not resolved yet, in which case changing their internal state
>>won't alter anything else).
>>
>>You can't even travel into the past
>>at all under this theory because simply by appearing you'll be changing
>>information about the past (changing the positions of air molecules,
>>blocking and reflecting photons that previously had passed right through
>>your position, etc.).  All this stuff was previously "known" by the
>>universe, so there's no way you can suddenly appear there.

Apparently I'm in agreement with you.

> NO, NO, NO! I understand why you think this way, but it's NOT what I've
>been talking about!
> In the worldview under discussion, I *already* appeared back then. In
>fact, part of the reason history turned out the way it did is because I
>was there to "change the positions of air molecules, block and reflect
>photons, etc."

Your putting your effects before your causes in a single Universe.  No
changes have been made until you do them.  Sure you can travel back to
the "present" and see the effects of your changes, but they weren't
there in the first place.  Indeed, that is not your Universe.  In your
Universe, you ceased to exist the moment you left, never to return.
(The last part I'm still uncertain about that last bit however, and of
course that is unprovable, even with time travel available.)

> History in this view is a static sculpture in four dimensions. Past,
>presnt, and future all 'already' exist, just in directions we can't
>normally perceive or gain access to. Whether this view conflicts with
>free will is another topic.

In such a universe, time travel is an impossibility.  If it is possible,
you throw quantum theory out the window.  Indeed, quantum theory is
already out the window.

>Ray Ingles                  || The above opinions are probably
>ingles@caen.engin.umich.edu || Michigan. Yet.

-- 
aberigan@nde.unl.edu (Greg Berigan)
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3023 rec.arts.startrek.tech:5115
From: ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 92 21:56:01 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: usa

Here's a thought.  Imagine a teleporter that scans you (non-destructively),
and then sends the information to the receiver.  At the source end, you,
unharmed by the scanning, are atomized to provide raw material for the next
incoming passenger.  Naturally, the details of how this works are kept
secret from the general public.

First of all, there is no particular reason to make the atomizing process
painless.  The teleportation company might as well concentrate on making
it cheap (and reliable) to keep costs down, rather than worrying about
pain.

Second, consider taking a ride, late at night.  There aren't many passengers.
The operators are bored, and perhaps inclined to experiment.  They might do
fun things like turn off the atomizer and, er, "play" with the passengers
after the scan is done.  As long as they kill and atomize them eventually,
whose to know?

--Tim Smith
From: vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu (Vadim S. Kaplunovsky)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: A nuclear question...
Date: 6 Oct 92 03:57:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.085516.1763@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> S_TITZ@iravcl.ira.uka.de  
(Olaf Titz) writes:
> ..........
> Surely it is possible. Experience shows that in fact *most*
> engineering inventions are *not* fully understood scientifically. Take
> the transistor effect: At the time it was discovered, there was no
> exact theory how it worked. At that time it was surely imaginable that
> each transistor would emit gamma rays that could kill innocent people
> listening to the radio news...
> 
Nonsense.
Transistor was invented by people who knew the quantum theory of
semiconductance and knew how a PN junction works.  They figured out
that a double PNP junction can amplify currents and went out and made
the device; after a bit of tinkering, it worked as expected.
As to whether it was *imaginable* that transistor would emit gamma
rays (in lethal doses, no less), some people do have a sick imagination,
but nobody with a minimal knowledge of quantum theory could belive this
crap for a second.  

Prior to the 19th century, most engineering advances were indeed ahead of the
scientific theories that explained them.  Many of the 19th century inventions
followed the same pattern, but not anymore.  Most electric and later
electronic devices were invented based upon a sound scientific theory.
Of the top of my head, I can think of very few 20th century engineering
inventions that were put to practical use before the scientists figured
out how they work.

---
Vadim S. Kaplunovsky               | vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu (internet)
Assistant Professor of Physics,    | VADIM AT UTAPHY (bitnet)
University of Texas at Austin.     | UTSPAN::UTAPHY::VADIM (SPAN/HEPnet Decnet)
From: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Date: 4 Oct 92 02:38:42 GMT
Reply-To: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them

In article <1akg1oINNbpd@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.) writes:
>I think it would be more likely, though, that the 3D system would use glasses 
>that alternately 'black out' lenses through use of LCDs. All it would require
>is a receiver in the glasses to sync to the "3-V" set. This is possible with
>today's technology.

They exist.  You can buy them.  Toshiba sells a 3-D NTSC camera.

There is also a mechanism which uses an LCD shutter over a CRT, and the viewers
wear ordinary polarized lenses glasses.

There is also a mechanism which uses a plastic prismatic Fresnel lens on a CRT
so that people can view it without glasses.  I suppose it would be possible to
do this with a barrier strip mechanism as well.  The effect is a lot like 
holographs, which are most commonly used for cheap Jesus pictures sold in
religious bookstores.

Technically speaking, of course, all of these mechanisms are stereograms and
only provide two different images, one for each eye.  The next step after that
is to provide a number of different images giving horizontal parallax.  The 
next step after that is to do vertical parallax as well.

The layered LCD approach or the 3-D tank approach would not be very useful.
One of the main ideas of having a TV in the first place is to get the illusion
of seeing something much bigger than your living room.  Doing the parallax on
the scale of a household appliance would kind of defeat the purpose.

-EMP
From: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:09:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.1aqhuqINN33k
Reply-To: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com () says:

>In article <BvM3r5.FMD@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas) writes:
>>
>>I would much rather have a system without glasses, since I don't want to
>>consumers to accept such a system.
>It's worse than that. I wear glasses all the time, and the only way I 
>can see a 3-d movie is to slip the "glasses" behind my own. I'd expect
>the system you describe to be too bulky to wear with my glasses, and
>therefore useless to me.
>

Not so... in fact, it could be built INTO your glasses, with the LCD layer 
providing not only a 'flicker' in response to the proper TV-IR link, but
also functioning as fast-response photochromatic sunglasses. The additional
bulk of the control circuts and sensor would be minimal... a very small
microchip's worth. Most of the weight would be in the button batteries.

(I wear glasses too... Current 3D methods do nothing but give me a 
 headache with my glasses, or blurry 3D without.)

-- 
 Joe Ellis  o/~ The Synthetic Filker o/~    |     TesserAct Studios
     Internet:   usr6184a@tso.uc.edu        |       P.O. Box 18577
        GEnie:   J.ELLIS22                  |     Fairfield, OH 45018
    All filked up and no place to sing!     |   New Dimensions In Filk!
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3060 rec.arts.startrek.tech:5208
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide
Date: 1 Oct 92 06:41:47 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

omjb1@pool.info.sunyit.edu (Matthew Bauder) writes:

> I rather suspect matter transmission will be done more in lines of a   
> dimensional shift.  The whole enchilada will go at once; no matter conversion
> or breakdown will be involved.  I suspect there is an equation out there,
> somewhere, that includes the three space coordinates, (x,y,z) and time (t).
> Somehow, you stress the equation (maybe by putting energy into it), force
> time to remain constant, and get a change in (x,y,z).   

You're talking about a space fold which bends spacetime?  God forbid if 
two of these things are running at once . . . may bend the fabric of 
spacetime in a way which is Not Good.

----------
Erik Max Francis   Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.  Coming soon:  UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail:  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117  ICBM:  37 20 N  121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP:  ..!apple!uuwest!max   Usenet:  max@west.darkside.com   464E4F5244   |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: advax@reg.triumf.ca (A.Daviel)
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 06:35:00 GMT

In article <yh8qb90r@cck.coventry.ac.uk>, mei172@cch.coventry.ac.uk (guru) writes...
>guru sez:
>	in a lot of SF there's an assumption that 3D television will be as
>	ubiquitous as is 2D now, and I got to thinking, just how would you
>	make one?

For a TV, I'd make a whole wall of replicated transmissive LCD panels, with 
phase-locked solid-state lasers shining through. (There *is* an .sf. in this 
group name, right..) The LCDs have a sub-wavelength resolution, so can be 
used to generate a hologram. I *think* that they can just be all driven in 
parallel - one of them would be like looking through a pinhole in a wall at  
a real 3-D scene, all the information can be seen through it by moving your 
eye around. With lots, you can stand further away. You can view 2 sorts of
holograms; one where your wall appears as a window, and one where the image 
appears in front of the wall. Of course, it could look a bit strange if your 
furniture got in the way - the TV announcers head stuck out the top of your 
sofa, or whatever.

For studio work, you would use a hologram setup and illuminate everthing with 
3 colored lasers. For outside broadcast, set up several 2-D cameras and 
synthesize a hologram image using a computer. Computer-synthesized holograms 
have been around for a while - you just fourier-transform your original and
photoreduce a big plot.

--
Andrew Daviel, Vancouver, Canada 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Reply-To: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale, California
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 18:39:12 GMT

In article <BvM3r5.FMD@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas) writes:
>be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.) writes:
>
>> [...]
>>I think it would be more likely, though, that the 3D system would use glasses 
>>that alternately 'black out' lenses through use of LCDs. All it would require
>>is a receiver in the glasses to sync to the "3-V" set. This is possible with
>>today's technology.
>
>I would much rather have a system without glasses, since I don't want to
>wear glasses whenever I watch TV.  I think you'd have trouble getting
>consumers to accept such a system.
It's worse than that. I wear glasses all the time, and the only way I 
can see a 3-d movie is to slip the "glasses" behind my own. I'd expect
the system you describe to be too bulky to wear with my glasses, and
therefore useless to me.
From: tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Constant mutations
Keywords: Hello
Date: 6 Oct 92 01:54:47 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

ins450m@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au (T.F. Eccles) writes:

> [...]
>What is the 'chance' (as a generality, not a compuation) that a 
>set of genes will change slightly to produce a blue-eyed baby from
>two double-brown eyed parents (and how many paternity suits....hmmm :))

Absolutely infinitesimal.  The error rate in DNA copying is phenomenally
low.  Something like only one base-pair error in copying the entire strand.
Add to that the fact that the gene for eye color is probably many hundreds,
if not thousands of base-pairs long.  Mutating from a brown-eyed gene
to a blue-eyed one would require many many highly specific errors.

Much more likely is the possiblity that both parents carried recessive
blue-eyed genes and the baby simply got those instead of the brown-eyed
ones. :^)  (I think the example you were looking for is where the baby
has brown eyes when the parents were both blue-eyed. :^)
                   ^^^^^
                        (What's the probability of *that* happening!?!? :^b)

>Or to put it another way, what's to stop a species of ape making the
>same changes as exist in our past, and head towards a homo-sapiens
>species.....

Simple probability.  The mutation was so unlikely in the first place that
it is incredibly unlikely for it to happen again in the near future.  By
the same token, of course, it is not IMpossible for it to happen again;
and given enough time (another 6 billion years, perhaps?) it even becomes
likely.  Your assertion that mutations are assumed to occur only once is
incorrect.  They could occur again, but we're not usually worried about
that possibility.  Remember also that there are significant evolutionary
forces acting *against* the emergence of another intelligent species.  In
other words, mutations towards intelligence could be happening right now,
but they are being selected against.
-- 
___-Tom_Maciukenas_(tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu)______________________________

"S.E.T.E.C. : Special Extra-Terrestrial Earthling Counter"
"A turnip cures Elvis = Universal Studios"                -- from "Sneakers"
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3070 sci.physics:15871
From: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:59:55 GMT
Reply-To: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them

In article <1992Oct6.134530.17333@cas.org> sdr57@cas.org writes:
>Just a nit-pick.  The plastic-covered color pictures which give a
>three-dimensional appearance are not holographs - they are
>XOGRAPHs (tm). XOGRAPHY (tm) is a process developed in the
>sixties by Cowles Communications and Eastman Chemical.

One good nit deserves another!  XOGRAPH is a trade name, not a descriptive
word.  They are also correctly called "holographs."  NOT "holograms," but 
"holographs."

-EMP
From: meltsner@crd.ge.com (Kenneth J Meltsner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Date: 6 Oct 92 12:40:43 GMT
Reply-To: meltsner@crd.ge.com
Organization: GE Research and Development Center



In article <yh8qb90r@cck.coventry.ac.uk>, mei172@cch.coventry.ac.uk
(guru) writes:
|>	Now, the 3D camera. This is a tad more tricky, but possibly the
|>	easiest way is to use a normal 2D camera with a very fine-pitch laser
|>	(or similar) rangefinder to measure distances from the lens.

Check out V. Michael Bove's dissertation at MIT (ca. 1989), in which
he describes the use of a camera with a beam-splitter and two lens of
different depths of field.  Some messy math is used to pull out the
distances of objects, given their relative sharpness in the two
images.  It worked pretty well, especially if the background was a
patterned wallpaper.

Given a lot of computational power, this could be done in real time,
or the two images could be stored and processed off-line.

I don't have a citation for a journal version of the work.
===============================================================================
Ken Meltsner                        | meltsner@crd.ge.com (518) 387-6391
GE Research and Development Center  | Fax:  (518) 387-7495
P.O. Box 8, Room K1/MB207	    | Nothing I say should be attributed
Schenectady, NY 12301               | to my employer, and probably vice-versa
================ Materials and Manufacturing, World O' Stuff ==================
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Niven & Pournelle
Date: 29 Sep 92 00:59:29 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Distribution: na
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Sep21.231426.17885@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
|In article <Buy7LA.HxA@mail.boi.hp.com> ahill@boi.hp.com writes:
|
|>> Of course, 2 million years ago, Sol was not the nearest star to Alpha
|>> Centauri, not by a long shot.  Typical random velocities of stars are
|>> around 30 km/s, which would put the two stars about 200 light years
|>> apart 2 million years ago.
|
|Anyone who can build a RAIR starship can trivially build a large
|space telescope.  An apodized space IR telescope about 10-20 meters
|in diameter could detect oxygen lines from the atmospheres
|of earth-like planets around nearby stars (this was pointed out
|in a paper in Nature a few years ago.)
|
Good idea.  Then there is the fact that the resolving power of a 2 A.U.
imaging interferometer is simply unbelievable.  (I believe I calculated it
once and got the result that one could map the continents on Earth from
Alpha Centauri).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: bturner@hpcvusc (Bill Turner)
Subject: Re: A nuclear question...
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 21:44:02 GMT

Andres C. Gaeris (agae@larch.lle.rochester.edu) wrote:
>   Hans Bethe in his book _The Road to Los Alamos_ (which is a collection
> of popular articles on a wide range of topics) has written an article
> with a detailed calculation easy enough to follow for the non-expert about
> a hypothetical atmospheric chain reaction. I believe that this article
> was written around the same time that the Trinity test was done. Of course
> Bethe concluded that a runaway atmospheric reaction was factually impossible.

Also his comments in an interview in the latest issue of Scientific
American.

--Bill Turner (bturner@cv.hp.com)
HP User Interface Technology Division, Corvallis
From: sdr57@cas.org
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: 3D-TV. How would you do it?
Date: 6 Oct 92 13:45:30 GMT
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio

In article <11002@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) writes:
>
>There is also a mechanism which uses a plastic prismatic Fresnel lens on a CRT
>so that people can view it without glasses.  I suppose it would be possible to
>do this with a barrier strip mechanism as well.  The effect is a lot like
>holographs, which are most commonly used for cheap Jesus pictures sold in
>religious bookstores.
>
Just a nit-pick. The plastic-covered color pictures which give a
three-dimensional appearance are not holographs - they are
XOGRAPHs (tm). XOGRAPHY (tm) is a process developed in the
sixties by Cowles Communications and Eastman Chemical.

Holograms use interference patterns.
******************************************************************************
Renegade academician. They're a dangerous breed when they go feral,
academics are...a chemist, too.
		    -(James P. Blaylock in "Lord Kelvin's Machine")

My organization hasn't agreed with any of my opinions so far, and
I doubt they'll start now.

Stanley "Ya nee speon" Roberts
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science