I think it might be, there’s no way Anakin would be able to buy proprietary hardware or software. So either he stole it, which his mother probably would not have allowed. Or he was able to scrap all the parts together because there is a template for humanoid protocol droids that we have also seen round Star Wars. And then the software itself either Anakin programed entirely himself, (which I know he’s very smart, but even that seems a stretch) or he forked it. So it would make more sense that there was an open source catalog of protocol droid software. It also would make more sense due to the fact that a lot of people have droids, but they are not all created equal. I would think many of the droids on Coruscant were proprietary, while many of the droids in the outer rim are open source.
You promised me fleeesh! All I feel is paaaain! Why have you done this to me??
According to a comic released in the early 2000s. Anakin found the husk and most of C3P0’s parts in the junkyard before he rebuilt him.
So how much of him was originally there vs. Rebuilt by Anakin is unknown. But we have seen other protocol droids and they have the same body shapes and parts. But those are the exterior parts. The interior could have been different hardware all together.
Since the universe of Star Wars is a similiar Corporatopia as in Rimworld, maybe there’s SOC-like Personality Cores, that just adapt to the available actuators and sensors (there was a self-learning 4-legged robo-spider 10 years ago already, that teaches itself walking no matter what).
Probably, for there to be scraps you can easily turn into C-3PO, the official droids are also built up from standardised, open-source parts. Like, I’ve reused screws or bolts in an unintended context before, but how much could you build from a dead IPhone?
If the Empire kept more careful control over their education and production, they would probably have an easier time. It’s just that a North Korea-type space opera, where the rebels have no ships, and can only get radios that continuously play Empire propaganda with no off switch, wouldn’t make for good action sequences.
Everything is open source if you can read Assembly! (Replace Assembly with whatever the Star Wars equivalent is, which is probably just Assembly.)
Really awful, undocumented, spaghetti code open source. But sure, technically correct!
I think the reality is that Anakin was written as a tech wizard by writers that saw a lot of technology as just magic that tech wizards can do.
He was able to build a droid out of spare parts not because there was an open protocol droid system that enables technically inclined people to learn how to build their own custom versions. He built a droid because that’s what a child tech genius would do. How did he program it? More tech magic. He’s impressive, you aren’t supposed to understand anything of what he did, it was just a plot device to show what the chosen one was capable of before the Jedi even found him.
Not trying to be a wet blanket, just so much of technology in media is written this way.
Although, nobody ever asks Gandalf to fix their printer or build their app. He gets to dine with kings.
Though he does get asked to go back to middle earth and fix it after dying, and the task was a bit more… involved than the typical printer maintenance job (though a laser printer does have some high voltage dangers tbf).
I agree with you, and the part that always sinks this within SW is that all he did was put together a very commonly used droid from spare parts. Protocol droids are all over the place!
Is it impressive to put together a Honda Civic from spare parts in your spare time? Yes. But it’s also just a matter of collecting the right parts and having the time to assemble them right. No one is inventing anything new, and it always seemed like that was what EP1 was trying to sort of say.
just so much of technology in media is written this way
Especially with star wars, where it’s closer to “space fantasy” than “science fiction”
When I was a kid and thought about robots I never considered their intelligence would require a massive physical infrastructure just to make the best guess of the next word.
It seems shortsighted of science fiction authors to have not predicted the problems we’re currently having with AI. They had decades to think about it. Did any of them predict that people would be using it to cheat on homework, create scams, disrupt social media with spam and terribly off-putting fake images, publish books and songs nobody wrote and nobody wants, all while using obscene amounts of energy? The world doesn’t seem more futuristic or in any danger of getting wiped out by some autonomous AI thing that’s been given access to nukes, both typical major themes. The world to me just feels more empty and boring. It’s just a new tool hucksters can use to defraud people.
Some of the other things the tech oligarchs are pursuing are also cliche themes of science fiction: space exploration, the metaverse, the meta glasses, Musk’s Neuralink. So if AI did not turn out as expected, how’s the rest of this stuff gonna work out?
Did anyone expect that? Like, there was enough different thinkers, and takes, that somebody probably suggested it.
Usually, people gravitated in the opposite direction, though: To be smart, an algorithm has to be beautiful and profound and sublime.
Little did we known he used two swimming pools worth of water everytime he translated for r2d2
This is the loveliest conversation I have seen all week. I have been incredibly burned out with Reddit of late, so this is refreshing.
Lemmy now is what Reddit used to be like in the early days. I hope the enshittification stays away!
It can’t really enshittify, in the original sense of the word, since nobody controls it. It probably will follow the Reddit trajectory up until the admins started to be evil, though.
Look at it from the perspective of 1977 or just before, when the scripts were written. I wasn’t alive back then, but from what you read, it was a time when (real-world) devices came with manuals, schematics, block diagrams, and if they were missing you could probably find them or get them from the manufacturer.
Apple I and II are just hitting the market, with a strong background in DIY culture, and in the unlikely case you had access to one of these (or something like an Altair 8800 etc), you’d probably know how to fix a blown cap with a soldering iron.
Maybe I’m glorifying the past here but, Star Wars was written at a time when things, including computers, were expected to be repairable. So what you’re writing really only makes sense from a contemporary 2020-ies perspective, nobody would have raised an eyebrow at that detail in 1977 … probably.
Hard agree!
Star Wars was explicitly written by a greasemonkey as gritty and grungy in direct contrast to the sleek, clean, computer-controlled future that dominated SF in that era. Droids function much more like custom cars than assembly-line computers with wireless updates.
Even later in our time but earlier in the SW time line, the one example of mass production, the droid army, was comically bad: incredibly dumb, fragile, and incompetent.
Roger Roger
The cannon fodder droids introduced in Phantom Menace are, but the other droids used by the separatists are generally ruthlessly effective.
What’s the design/production philosophy behind those separatist droids? Been a while…
C-3PO is proprietary. How do I know this? George told me it is supposed to be the first warning sign that Anakin is evil.
There are tons of protocol droids in universe. He cobbled scrap bots together. Clever, but he didn’t invent or program it. More like fancy legos
Incorrect. Anakin programmed Threepio with the desire to serve his mother and with the six languages he spoke at the time.
I would agree its more like modification than building from scratch, but he still had to get in there and noodle with everything. Programming was absolutely involved.
I could see this being more like code blocks instead of actual software engineering. He probably found the different language modules and stuck them all in, and then did the equivalent of changes to a config file.
Edit config.txt
“sentience=1”
“British_sassy_butler=1”
anus=ACCESSIBLE
With the other horny prisoners…?
Zere vill be no funny business going on hier in ze horny jail!
He did not “program” 6 languages. Even if he was a super genius and spoke 6 languages, there’s physically not enough time for Anakin to have typed the entire vocabulary and grammar of 1 language, much less 6.
Imo, his “programming 6 languages” was plugging in 6 hardware language modules and running a command to load them.
On the one hand I can understand your meaning there.
On the other, Threepio’s famous boast of “six-million forms of communication” kind of precludes having room for six-million physical modules anywhere in his chassis.
Enter: science-fantasy.
It would have to be a large number of languages per module, but the universe was written in a 20th century kind of way where hardware is single-purpose.
The actual answer is of course that Star Wars isn’t believable, but ignoring that…
from language import *
Does not require access to source code though. Could still be closed source…
What does wookirpedia say… Apparently the 3po protocol droid series was manufactured by a company called cybot galactica. That page confirms that c3po was cobbled together from scrap. I don’t see anything about the cybot company running open source software though
Sounds like copyright infringement to me
You wouldn’t download a droid.
He’s a slave boy in a scrap yard on some backwater shithole of a planet. Sue him
Hes a slave. Gota sue his owner Quato or whatever his name is.
Can’t sue him as a kid because he has no money to pay you.
Can’t sue him as an adult because he’ll force choke you to death.
What a grift. He got it all figured out.
There is no copyright if you lack the star destroyers to enforce it. Or enough money to pay the headhunters.
Which people love in Star Wars, but then they want their real life to be, like, a slick, nonviolent, white-picket version of 1984. I get the psychology, but man, it’s weird. A modest amount of risk seems worth it for, I guess, basic honesty.
The first step down a dark path if he’s not careful.
Just because you can open the can doesn’t mean it comes already open.
That some people can run Linux on a PS5 doesn’t make the PS5 open hardware.Star Wars has a data transmission problem in that software isn’t easily distributed across the galaxy.
Its much more likely Anakin found the programming or just a part with the “OS” installed and put it into a bunch of spare protocol droid parts. Maybe it took some tinkering but I don’t think he did a bunch of low level stuff as he’s a slave without real education, and I don’t believe anything of that level of skill comes up again.
Also noted, I don’t think the droids in Star Wars are 1 for 1 “operating systems” as we know them as they (can) have advanced personalities in a way that our software certainly doesn’t do.
but I don’t think he did a bunch of low level stuff as he’s a slave without real education
You know, back in the not-so-far-away days, the best programmers didn’t have educations and the worst ones did.
The movies do imply he’s a pretty savvy scrap engineer, so I’ll give him that.
Its just the environment he’s forced to work in.
Yeah, and it’s perfectly fine for a kid to be an advanced engineer/mechanic and championship podracer at 9-years-old who also saves the day in a key battle, just as long as they’re not a girl because Mary Sues absolutely suck and it’s not sexist at all to say that because Marty Stu exists as an entry in allthetropes. /s
I was a kid when I watched episode 1, and I was so confused by how any of it made any sense.
Midichlorians. Obviously.
Oh right, that shit made me wonder why they weren’t just transfusing blood around to induct new members… Or, you know, giving the power of the force to every person.
Honestly I think knowing he was vader made it a lot easier to accept. Like a main character not dying in a prequel. Still though, it was pretty wack looking back. lol
Fleshhhh you promised me flesssh master.
