2016-09-23
Posted on 2016-09-26 by Aaron

57 thoughts on “2016-09-23”

  1. Hidden Windshield

    So, the carny-bot runs on Commodore hardware? Interesting.

    1. Pax

      Oh, my, GODS … I didn’t even pick up on that “,8,1” bit until your post.

      Talk about a stroll down amnesia lane … my first computer was a C64 … I was all of fourteen … dang, that was a looooong time ago. 😀

    2. evilkumquat

      Hah!

      You’re right!

      I didn’t pick up on that either!

      Ahh, the heady days of the Commodore 64 and its 1541 disk drive, where a poorly engineered head mechanism resulted in a sound not unlike dropping a television remote into a blender whenever I loaded up ‘Impossible Mission’.

      1. Joe Fenton

        My boss at the time wrote a program that stepped the drive out from track zero at variable rates so that that sound of the head hitting the end stop made different tones so that the drive played “music”. Of course, after a bit, the heads would be out of alignment, making reading disks difficult/impossible until you realigned the heads. 🙂

      2. Anarchyant

        I’m a megalomaniac!………Just give me a ZX 81 and I shall rule the world! *Trashman, Zx Spectrum 48k days*

    3. Mike

      I’m another who totally missed it. Pax, you’re showing your age, which apparently is about the same as mine – I was 14 when I got my C64 too. My memories of working with the old TRS-80 Model 1 a couple of years later are more clear.

      1. MrBookBoy

        Haha, It’s like a ready player reunion for people who do not have the book and actually know what those things mean without Ernest Cline explaining stuff.

    4. Christopher

      Missed it too. Despite playing a lot on the C64 of my Cousins.

      “Load [name of Programm] ,8,1” with as many many whitespace between as you need too.
      For simplicity sake, run it after you listed the contents of a game Diskette (and I mean 5 1/4 Inch Disks). Using the output of the List programm as part of your input line.

  2. trlkly

    Yay! Angie! And Prospero! Though I’m not sure what happened between the final and penultimate panels.

    1. Me-me

      What happened is that we switched what we were looking at.

      1. trlkly

        Aha! What threw me is that it looks like the same guy, and I didn’t notice it was a different booth.

  3. Rock

    Angela and Prospero! ^_^ Long time, no see.

    Who’s willing to translate Prospero, though….?

    1. Holey Molehills

      It’s not that hard. In this panel, Prospero says, “…”

  4. Rock

    Might we be seeing Ron’s new power in effect….?

    1. Messenger

      I suspect it too. Just for the purpose of covering all bases, what are non-superpower ways Ron could be successful?
      1. Chance – As the robot carnie said. It can happen. However, would a normal person resorting to chance behave like Ron did, blithely choosing to gamble their winnings further?
      2. Technology – X-ray ability in his glasses, a handheld computer tracking the carnie’s hand, etc.
      3. (Anything else?)

      1. Legbreaker

        Ability to slow time around him so he can keep track easier?

        1. Messenger

          Non-superpower. We’re trying to eliminate the possibility Ron’s powers haven’t surfaced yet.

      2. dana

        ESP?

        And this is to pad my comment so that it is not too short.

        1. Messenger

          Same comment as to Legbreaker’s. If you’re not a metahuman, how could you win in a game like this?

      3. Nick

        Or he’s really smart or good at following fast moving objects…?

      4. Kirala

        3. The carnie is cheating in Ron’s favor.

        That’s not my preferred answer, but it’s not something I feel can be ruled out.

      5. CountryMage

        Since his FISS abilities before were actually just a holdover from his father, and not actually his powers, maybe he trained up his actual senses to use them. So his reaction time, and kinetic vision weren’t affected, much, when he got depowered.

      6. TxGator

        “1. Chance – As the robot carnie said. It can happen. However, would a normal person resorting to chance behave like Ron did, blithely choosing to gamble their winnings further?”

        Sadly, yes. Casinos and racetracks are wealthy in large part because people often don’t know when to stop.

      7. Pander

        Luck power? Probability manipulation like Domino or Black Cat?

      8. trlkly

        Not non-superpower, but could it be that some of Ron’s FISS is coming back? Super speed requires super fast senses.

        Maybe his senses weren’t affected at all. He didn’t complain about people moving faster or anything.

    2. Unmaker

      On the one hand, so far that’s only 1 in 16; on the other hand, this is a story… on the balance, you are probably right.

      1. Nobody

        Assuming there’s not more tests that were off-panel to conserve space, there’s also the speed of the answer. He doesn’t hem and haw and act like he’s trying to guess it or work it out from psychology. He just points right at it and says “That one”. So that could also be a factor the robot is taking into account.

    3. Delver

      Either that or Angela figured out the way to win is to reprogram all the carnibots

    4. TeChameleon

      Well, there’s also the fact that precognition was foreshadowed in the last strip, which would lend some weight to that being the power in question. In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see what Ron ends up doing… although I’ll honestly be a bit sad for him if he doesn’t end up being able to fly again.

      1. Simreeve

        Disappointed? Me too…

    5. Ed Rhodes

      I have another suggestion that I don’t think has been brought up. Ron is subconsciously channelling quantum reality.
      His indicating a cup collapses the waveform and the ball is under whatever cup he says it is.

  5. Rens

    It certainly sounds like they’re having a good time. 🙂

  6. kaian

    Uhm guys? Isn’t the first law of robotics no robot may harm or allow a human to come to harm?

    1. Jasae Bushae

      I was wondering if anyone would comment on that. XD

      1. Nobody

        Tyler may want to step back if the Robot is going to start creating sonic Booms with its cup moving.

        1. Nobody

          Oh, never mind I missed that he was breaking out the extra cups.

    2. Wanderer

      Close. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. It doesn’t specify physical harm, though — as even Asimov’s stories pointed out, *any* form of injury, physical, emotional, financial, etc., counts for purposes of the law. (In one story, they made a robot empathic — it seized when, in order to avoid causing emotional harm, it told everyone what they wanted to hear, leading to a massive emotional pileup, and thus injury.) Thus, making the game too hard to win counts as “injury” for the purpose of the law.

      1. Lex

        “Liar” that’s The story You mentioned.

        1. Wanderer

          Thank you! 🙂 It had been a long time since I last read it.

    3. Hidden Windshield

      Yes, but he gave them a disclaimer, so it’s all good.

    4. Foradain

      And as Wanderer and Lex mentioned, there are many things which may constitute “harm”. So many, in fact, that (especially when factored in with what constitutes “Human”) that I am sure that any self-contained robot that can reliably implement the Three Laws in real-time is necessarily sapient, and therefore the Three Laws themselves violate the Thirteenth Amendment. ^_^
      /end rant

    5. Marie

      A strict reading of the first law that harms someone with the shell game? Unikely. I wonder if he’s justifying small harm gambling with zeroth law of protecting humanity for/from supers…

    6. mltsandwich

      Unfortunately, Asimov’s laws can’t work. “Human” and “harm” are vague terms that ethics and politics are still grappling with after thousands of years.

      1. Van

        Actually, there is nothing vague about the 3 laws of robotics. The only ones who could make them out to be vague are actually lawyers, and to them, everything is vague.

        1. trlkly

          So you didn’t watch the video? If anyone can argue they are vague, then they are too vague for a computer to implement.

          You have to program in what harm actually is. Not even different people agree. To some people, bullying is harmful. For others, it helps toughen you up and thus is not harmful.

          Plus, even the Three Laws of Robotics don’t actually prevent malevolent or amoral AI. That was kinda the point of Asimov’s books.

        2. Guesticus

          Yeah, a lot of people don’t seem to understand that a robot has to be programmed with the Three Laws

    7. David Johnston

      Yeah. That’s just in case someone is prone to apoplexy out of frustration.

  7. HardWearJunkie

    Of course Angela and Prospero would be here. Who else would want to come to a slumber party where there are robots and cool devices.

  8. stsword

    Considering Angie is of the “tim taylor” school of inventing, I hope she doesn’t leave that stall a smoking crater.

  9. Gez

    I am currently thinking that the trick with the knock em out id that they all welded together and to the table, but that seems way to simple a trick, also rather boring as then it just becomes brute strength to win. Same for if the robot can move fast to place its hand between the bottles and the ball fast.
    also I wonder if there is a forcefield or something to detect is a kid with speed powers is not just jumping over and knocking them down and jumping back again right after throwing the ball.

    (or it could be able to change the mass of the ball in flight making it unable to knock the bottles down, man there are so many possibilities)

    1. LarchTRF

      The cups are metallic, thus applicable to an electromagnetic current that can be adjusted to the person’s strength (TK, magnetic powers, etc) ?

    2. Unmaker

      Welded (needs super strength). Super-heavy bottles (needs super strength). Variable gravity and/or EM fields to give targeting difficulties (needs super dexterity / precog). Displacement illusions (needs super senses). Restacking bottles (needs super speed to finish before restacking). Many other possibilities.

    3. Aaron Gullison

      Spacial discontinuity/folding? With the inside of the booth and the outside being in different places at once, the transition time might introduce a targeting error. Or there might be a hologram effect layered over the fold, meaning you would literally be aiming at something you couldn’t see accurately.

  10. Nodrog

    I want to see Prospero use his ping pong gun, fail, and then Angela use her backpack throwing arm to win Prospero a stuffed toy. Or them both winning and then swapping toys.

    1. Van

      Or the always popular pick up the robot running the game and throw him at the bottles to knock them down.

  11. Stephen R. Bierce

    Now I wish that Angie’s epithet was “RoboFOP”.

  12. Kereminde

    Did . . . did Angela just quote Naruto?

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